Wooden Rotor Blade Span Balance Jig

thingiverse

I fly gyroplanes or autogyros. Most modern gyros use factory built rotorblades ranging from $4000 - $5000. In the old days (when I learned to fly) there were still some people who built their own wooden rotorblades. I was fortunate enough to not only learn to fly on wooden rotor blades but to also learn to build them. Myself and another gyro bloke I teamed up with who had significant wood working skills built our own wood rotors. At the time these cost $120. Today's money this would be more like $500 still 1/10th the cost of commercial rotors. Obviously this requires some skill (but not as much as you might think its not beyond an average person). In fact Ken Wallis flew on wooden rotors in his Wallis autogyros and even today Kaymen high lift helicopters still make their rotors out of wood. The reason people went off wooden rotor was not so much a issue with Wood per se but rather difficulties in understanding how to properly chordwise and spanwise balance wood rotors. I am currently building a gyroglider (towed behind a car) and have been repainting my 30 year old wood rotors which are still in good condition. Being capable of 3D deign and owning a couple of 3D printers I decided to print a span wise balance jig using standard skateboard bearings to provide a nice simple method of gaining very smooth balance. I printed these with my resin printer I'd suggest using one of the tougher resins but in fact I used a bog standard Anycubic Photon white. It worked very well indeed.