Wood Wing as Bookshelf

[crusty old aviator]

Tim Talen built a hangar, with an "apartment" off the back, in Boulder, MT. The apartment has a loft, with faux, uncovered wooden wings for railing sections along the edge. The leading edge is the handrail. It looks great, but is a cobweb factory!

Pitts ribs, made with 1/4" square capstrip, aren't strong enought to support books, and the drag/anti-drag wires will get in the way. There's a fella near Vancouver who converts old WWII trainer control surfaces (with the fabric removed) into bookcases and bar shelves. I've sold BT-13A parts to him for this. The aluminum ribs are pretty stout, and the all aluminum structure is easier to dust than a wood one.

I would follow Ron's excellent lead with his sketch, above, and make a shelf unit of appropriate materials that looks like it could be a real wing, by maybe "gluing" some bits of torn fabric to the leading edge with paint, or just make it as beautiful as you can, with polished aluminum leading and trailing edges.

[rwanttaja]

To resurrect this older thread, here's a link to a guy who's building a desk from Fly Baby wing plans. If you look at the pictures, the applicability to a bookshelf should be obvious...

http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/fo...tml#post268509

Ron Wanttaja

[Frank Giger]

Oh good grief, Ron, that guy is ridiculous. He casually jots down that he's going to make leading edges out of of aluminum for his desk.

I spent weeks figuring out how to put them on my actual aircraft wings and now that they're on never want to do it again. Thank goodness for fabric covers - they hide a lot of minor sins.