Off Topic, 1918 the building of wooden airplanes

[Ol' Ron]

I think most of yoy will appreciate the technoligy and manufacturing of 100 years ago. Including the Liberty V12 engine. Maybe someone will know which aircraft they were making. I thought it was a Jn-4 but???
Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOU78bhu7iI

[AnthonyG]

Very cool Ol' Ron, I'm an old Machinist so especially enjoyed the over head leather power belts running multiple machines from a common shaft above. The V12 crankcase looked to be aluminum? Pretty advanced for the time.

[J Witt]

Those look like DH-4 biplanes using the Packard built Liberty V-12, a larger plane and higher performance than the Jenny.

The JN series mostly used the Curtiss OX overhead valve V-8s, later ones used a Hispano-Suiza V-8.

I did a lot of research on Jennies, at one point, to build this model. It's now in the Airman's Museum as part of the National Air and Space Museum collection.

The Jennies were manufactured using the methods as shown in the video though. Thanks for the link.

John

[rotorwrench]

The Liberty V12s were used in US built DH-4 two seat light bombers and some British DH-4 aircraft due to shortages of the Rolls Royce Eagle engines near the end of the war. The US got into the war so late that not many US built aircraft were completed before the armistice. What's somewhat amusing though, the US built way more engines than they could ever use before the wars end in Nov 1918. This led to large surplus stockpiles of the damn things. Army mechanics on the DH-4 types would just chuck the old engine after it crapped out and put on a new one. This lasted till the mid 20s when better stuff started to come into use. The Liberty had plain babbitt bearings and they would disintegrate somewhere between 50 and 200 hours of use depending on how hard the engine was treated. Allison engine company later improved the bearings to use replaceable shells and they worked a lot better. After the war they used the Liberty designs for flying boats, fast boats, and tanks among other things. Surplus always finds its way into something in some guys back yard eventually. Whatever it was, it just needed a bigger motor!

[jagnweiner]

Beautiful plane, John. I'm an RCer too, although I haven't gotten around to flying in the last few years.

[Ol' Ron]

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I'm glad youse guys liked it. I'm impressed by the precision that was done manually, by many talanted craftsmen and women.

[bruce lee]

Only a breath of air needed to turn a perfectly balanced propeller WOW. Amazing craftsmenship. Thanks for sharing ron.

[expavr]

Originally Posted by Ol' Ron

I'm glad youse guys liked it. I'm impressed by the precision that was done manually, by many talanted craftsmen and women.

X's 2!!! The fabrication of the propellers is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
Les Williams

[51 MERC-CT]

Originally Posted by AnthonyG

Very cool Ol' Ron, I'm an old Machinist so especially enjoyed the over head leather power belts running multiple machines from a common shaft above. The V12 crankcase looked to be aluminum? Pretty advanced for the time.

Aluminum crankcase advanced for the time? Not really, because the Wright Brothers 4 cyl crankcase was aluminum.
Back in 1965 I was fortunate enough to be able to fabricate parts of and assemble the replica engine that sits in the museum in North Carolina.

[Seth Swoboda]

That was a good video. Men and Women took pride in their work and country then. There were no snowflakes back then.

Also, interesting to see that the crankshaft was not counter weighted.

[rotorwrench]

Originally Posted by Seth Swoboda

Also, interesting to see that the crankshaft was not counter weighted.

Those crankshafts in the film were somewhat problematic. They suffered from breakages a lot more than the engineers expected. Either later in war production or after the war they made them with thicker cheeks and it seemed to solve the problem to a good degree. They may have put a better radius on them too.

I was impressed on the hand forming of of the fairings & cowlings. There were no presses or dies to form that stuff. Near all of this stuff was hand formed clear up into the 1930s. I also thought the machine tools they used were very interesting. They had filing machines that I've never seen before. We use air drills now days but many of the drills I saw in that were hand operated. Both the push type and crank type were shown. A lot of the construction was wood so they didn't have to worry about dull bits as much and they used the drill presses for the steel reinforcement parts. Very archaic stuff but very interesting too. You don't see films of this stuff very often.

[Ole Don]

I was surprised at the number of women in assembly, and black men too. Thanks Ron, time well spent here.

[J Witt]

How about the vests, white shirts and ties!

[Ol' Ron]

When I was a small lad, living in chicago. They would dump a load of coal in the street in front of the house. Then one of the men would shovel the coal into bags and dump them in the coal cellar. After he was done my Grand mother would let him wash up in the basement and he'd change his close and goto the street car to his next job, but he was wearing a white shirt and tie. I was 8 years old when the Japs bombed pearl harbor. It was a different world back then.

[ursus]

The first part of this shows the use of US Army soldiers assigned to work as loggers to cut Sitka spruce on the Oregon and Washington coast. Sitka spruce was favored for aircraft construction because it had a high modulus of elasticity and low density. It also had a property useful in warfare in that bullets could pass through it without splintering or cracking. The Army set up "spruce camps" near the prime trees and wood selection was directed by Army engineers with a forestry background. The local loggers weren't too happy about the situation because the jobs were being taken by enlisted soldiers rather than local civilians. My grandfather did find work in training the soldiers in how to fall trees and swear in Swedish.

[fordy_nine]

My maternal grandfather was a "dope and fabric man" at McCook Field in Dayton, OH where the Wright brothers flew their first gliders. When McCook field closed, Wright Field was developed to replace it. As it continued to grow, it became Wright Patterson AFB, home of the Air Force Museum and the AF Research Laboratory......Bob L