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17-12-2003, 10:36 PM

(Archimedes Plutonium) wrote in message . com...
Snip

I wanted to talk about spruce wood and how important it was in the
Wright aircraft.

Question: were the planes in WW1 made of wood? Was it spruce wood? Was
the German ace of Red Baron a wooden plane?

I love the superiority list of woods. Some say that hickory has the
highest tensile strength and some say ash, as per baseball bats. I
seem to think that ash beats hickory but am not set up to prove it.

Archimedes Plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Arch,
You can find a partial list of the comparative strengths and bending
moduli of construction lumber in " Architectural Graphic Standards",
(not at all what the title promises, but an extensive primer on
building design and construction and well worth a trip to the
library).
Spruce was preferred for aircraft construction, and before that for
sailing ship masts and spars because of its high strength to weight
ratio and elasticity. It was not, nor is it now, the only wood used.
Birch is used extensively for wing ribs and sometimes in plywood along
with mahogany. Douglas Fir is sometimes used for spars.
When everything was made of wood, the characteristics of the various
woods were common knowlege, which has virtuallly disapeared today when
other materials are more used. ( Read "The Wonderful One Horse Shay"
for example).
Pragmatist
"The universe is not as strange as you imagine. It is stranger the
you can imagine."