One of my daughters wanted to try her hand at carving an airplane after seeing me work on my Thunderbolt. She selected the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. She has done everything except use the power tools (with the exception of the belt/disc sander we used to get the wings and tail pieces down to size). She has fun using the chisel.



I used a jig saw to cut the pieces out for her.


She carved the fuselage on her own. I used a band saw to thin the wings and tail surfaces down.


She did all the carving and sanding on the wings as well. I just told her where to draw the lines and how to carve it down.


We tried the ID model method of carving the wings flat, then adding the dihedral. I made the cut in the center of the wing, but didn't go all the way through, intending to leave some wood at the bottom when we bent it for the dihedral. I had her sand out the cut, but when we went to bend it to the angle, it just snapped in half anyway. Oh well. We added some shaving pieces since the groove was a bit wider than we needed. It has since dried and seems to be just fine.

Tell your daughter she has a magnificent talent for carving.

Louis

Quote from: lastvautour on January 03, 2025, 09:32:31 AMTell your daughter she has a magnificent talent for carving.

Louis

Thank you! She is very interested in it and will ask me if we can go work on her airplane without me prompting her to. She just kept asking, "What do we do next?" so we kept going!

Good to see she has developed an interest in modelling.

Keep up the good work.

Gordon

The Zero has lots of cam schemes.

Lou

Another.