Making a Toy Airplane (P26 Peashooter)

This toy came together with a great 1930's vibe and the iconic "Yellow Wing" look of interwar US aircraft. I had wanted to make a version of this airplane for quite awhile. I think what held me back was trying to make it a bit too complicated. I'm finally beginning to learn my lesson that simple is better especially with toys.

So a little history on the P-26. It was made by Boeing in the early 1930's and was the first US Army Air Corps all metal monoplane fighter. Only about 150 were made and even though they were obsolete by the start of World War Two, they did see action against the Japanese when flown by Chinese Nationalists and Filipino pilots. There are only two original P-26s still in existence. I'm lucky enough to live near the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and it's amazing collection of aircraft. A P-26 that had been sold to Guatemala was returned and is on display there.

I love airplanes but hadn't made many wooden toy ones that weren't kits. Norm Marshall's Great All-American Wooden Toy Book has several great airplanes in it, three of which represent historic aircraft. I built the P-40 in the book and it looked great with one exception (more on that later.) His instructions for creating the fuselage are what I followed but with a P-26 outline instead.

I got my line drawings for the P-26 from one of my favorite reference site - The-Blueprints.com. The vast majority of the drawing are available for free. I found one I liked and then sized the image in PowerPoint until it came out to about 1/32 scale and printed it out. (Wings 10 1/2", fuselage not including cowling and tail about 7") I used a spray adhesive on the wood, let it set up for a few minutes and then applied the paper templates. The tail surfaces were then cut out on the bandsaw. I used a 2x4 for the fuselage, 1/4" surprisingly hard pine for the tail surfaces and 3/8" wine crate wood for the wing.

One thing about the P-26 is that the wing goes through the fuselage as opposed to the fuselage sitting on top of the wing. I wanted to capture that look and I did by cutting a mortise in the body before I shaped it. I used a scrap of the wing material to match the size. 1/4" wing may have been closer to scale but, I'm making a toy, not a model and it needs to be sturdy.

I gotta tell you, although in the end it came out great, it was a lot of work without the proper sized and sharpened chisels or a true mortiser handy. I used a scroll saw for the initial cut and then had a lot of file work to get a good fit. It may be simpler in the future to make this a low wing plane instead...NAH! Why make it simple when you can make it complex?! (Also note that I drilled a hole for my propeller shaft and cowling connection at the front while it was still one large block of wood. It is easier and safer to drill into it when it is a solid block..

The fuselage shaping was remarkably simple. You can do this to create the general shape of any airplane you want to make. First make the long vertical cuts along the length of the fuselage template. Just follow the contours. I used my bandsaw but you could use a coping saw. The engine cowling and the tail are separate pieces that will be attached later.

Then, here is the "trick." Reattach those sawn off parts with tape to reform the block. Then set the block on its side and follow the contours to make the horizontal cuts.

In the picture here I'm about halfway done. I cut a 1/4" notch where the horizontal tail wing is going to sit. Be careful not to take too big a divot that you can't sand the top of the fuselage back to blend in with the tail. Also, as pieces fall off, you can re-tape them to give you the support you need until all your cuts are done.

I decided to include a pilot. The history guy in me was worrying that a goofy wooden peg pilot would "ruin" this toy. Luckily one of my daughters gently reminded me that "IT'S A TOY!" and kids love little people to fly and drive various things. I used a 5/8" Forstner bit to drill all the way down through to where my wing mortise is. It caused some split out but this is hidden by the wing. No worries.

I removed the template and any tape still attached and then it was off to my friend "Bob The Belt Sander" to clean up the wiggles and sharp edges and get my general shape in order. I used a palm and detail sander to finish it up after the other parts were attached.

The P-26 has a large hump/headrest as an identifying feature. I felt like I couldn't get the shape right using one large piece of wood. So what I did was cut the hump off, sanded it to the profile I wanted and then reattached it to the fuselage with glue later. I decided to leave the windscreen off. I could have done the same thing and maybe painted it white but it seemed too fiddly and destined to break off.

The rudder and tail are very straight forward. Basically, you just want to make sure the horizontal stabilizer is going to sit flush on the fuselage where the notch was cut out. I set it up on this little jig and drilled a 1/8" hole through the horizontal stabilizer and into the fuselage. This is so I can peg it and glue it later using a 1/8" dowel.

The rudder needs to fit vertically on the tail and tuck unto the gap between the horizontal stabilizer. Since I already had a hole drilled in the stabilizer, I lined up the tail and drilled into it using the other hole as a guide. (In the picture you are looking at the underside of the assembly.)

The fit was checked... and checked... and checked. Sometimes, I need to give it rest. This isn't intended to actually fly. Just saying.

I paint my pieces pre-assembled as much as I can to get crisp lines. This is during final assembly and out of sequence but you can see the peg that will go into the fuselage and then have the tail sit on top of it. Everything is glued and it ended up being very solid.

The piece I wasn't thrilled with on the P-40 was the landing gear. They were pretty solid and looked good but seemed clunky. I also didn't like using metal screws to attach the wheels. One of the things that attracted me to the P-26 as a toy was the spatted landing gear. Besides having a cool retro look, they would also be solid and wouldn't have any metal parts.

I used the template from the line drawing just to get the general shape of the spats. You aren't cutting the spat at this point, but rather an over sized block. I used an awl to mark where the axle for the wheel should be. (I did this twice for each spatted wheel. Remember to "mirror" them so they will line up correctly.)

Then I used a Forstner bit to drill about 1/8" into my 3/8" think wine crate wood. The idea is to make a sandwich with a large enough recess for a wheel to be housed inside that will still be able to spin freely and contact the ground. (7/8" Forstner bit, 3/4" round wheel, 3/16" thick with a 1/8"axle hole.)

Rather then show every step, let me just walk you through and show the finished product.

• Cut out the blocks of wood that will be the spats.
• Drill 1/8" holes through the small pilot holes made by the Forstner bit.
• Insert a 1/8" dowel and sandwich the sides together lining up the wheel wells. (Double faced tape will hold them togther.)
• Draw your spats pattern and then cut out your shape.
• Later, open it up, remove the tape and then sand, paint and glue as desired.

I made a quick template out of 1/8" plywood and used it to mark and then drill two 1/8" holes into the top of each spat. The holes are offset to put one into each side of the spat. These need to 90 degree holes so I used the drill press and clamped the pieces in place.

My wing wasn't painted but I lined it up to be sure it was centered properly. I then used the same template to mark and drill corresponding holes on the undersides of the wings. These holes are about 1/4" deep. The wing is made from 3/8 wine crate wood and was cut out using the line drawing as a template.

The fit on the spats was tried several times. There was some slight trimming of the 1/8" dowels to get a tight fit between the tops of the landing gear and the bottom of the wing.

Later when the wings and spats were painted, I lined everything back up and drilled 1/8" holes through the under side of the fuselage and into the wing. 1/8" dowels then secured the wing and I didn't have any messy glue push out from pushing the wing into the mortise.

Okay, last bit of cutting is the very distinctive engine cowling.
This was crazy simple. I used a 1 3/8" Forstner bit (which is actually a common size used in cabinet making. Who knew?) to drill indentations a little under 1/8" deep into a 1/2" thick board.

Then I lined up a 1 3/4" hole saw  (which is actually a common size used in toy airplane cowling making. Who knew?) on the same holes and drilled about 2/3rds of the way through the board. Having a way for the saw dust to exit the cut really speeds this up and reduces how hot the cutter will get.

Flip the board over and finish the cut to eliminate tear-out and then off to the belt sander for final shaping, especially the rounded off back edge. I ended up using some very surprisingly hard pine IKEA bed slats for this that were a little thick but I hit the finished cowlings on the belt sander to get them close enough. I made two at a time in case I messed one up.

A 1/4" dowel was used as the propeller shaft and to help secure the cowling to the fuselage. I free formed the prop. Pretty sure I used a paint stirrer. I shaped it on the disk and belt sander. The hole in the prop was just a little larger than the shaft. An axle cap keeps the prop in place. I did add a smaller disk (painted blue in the photo) that was a little thicker than the recess in the cowling to give the prop clearance over the cowling edges.

Next was painting and final assembly. Without a doubt the biggest hassle with this was the rudder with its 7 red and 6 white strips (representing Old Glory and the 13 original states.) I originally tried using a color printed piece of paper but the results were poor. I should have used thicker paper stock and a real laser printer but, hey, live and learn. Ultimately I used painters tape, a tiny brush and most of my limited supply of patience to finish it up.

From 1919 to the very early part of our involvement in WW2, the US Army Air Corps roundels had a very classy look. I printed mine with a deskjet on regular paper, cut them out, used white glue to attach them to the wings and then hit them with a coat of  gloss spray acrylic. Unfortunately, this classic design had a red circle at the center of the star. In combat it could be mistaken for just a moment as the Japanese Hinomaru (the red sun symbol used on Japanese aircraft and flags) and was discontinued in May of 1942.

I added a headrest made out of a scrap of 1/8" clementine box wood and glued everything up and coated it all with gloss spray acrylic.

Last thing was some pilots.

The young boy this toy was built for is African American. And yes... I KNOW THE USAAC WASN'T INTEGRATED IN THE 1930s! However, I'm not gonna let that stand in the way of this special little guy having a pilot for his toy that looks like him. So I painted up a nice little batch of pilots, two of whom are destined for the next airplane.

All in all it came together really well. A lot of steps but all of them were easy. Several years in the thinking and a couple of weekends in the making. I gave this to his grandmother (who is a fantastic colleague and a wonderful person.) I was super happy to hear how much he likes playing with it. Totally worth it.

________________________________________________________________________

This project was completed under the watchful eye of Teddy.
All parts were thoroughly tested to be 100% mouse free
and fully compliant with the laws of gravity.

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Making a Wooden Curtiss Goshawk (Legends of the Air Kit)

As I've said on numerous occasions...I'm a sucker for $1 Store wooden toy kits, especially airplanes. It's fun to try and turn them into something that that is immediately recognizable as a particular plane and give them some fun historical detailing.

While you come to expect the sub $5 arc welder, 20' band saw or 3,000 ton industrial press from Harbor Freight, you might be surprised to know that they also sell little wooden airplane kits for under $2. The line is called "Legends of the Air." They are made in Taiwan and the pieces are punched from 1/8"sheets of plywood not balsa wood and they are not puzzles as the HF site says.

There are six kits in the line. Four are WW1 aircraft. Two of those are Allied - a SPAD and a Nieuport, and two are German - a Fokker Triplane and an Albatros. The other two kits in the series are interwar biplanes - the Bristol Bulldog and this model, the Curtiss Goshawk.

So this is actually the Curtiss F11C Goshawk that was made for the US Navy in the 1930s. The Navy only had a few dozen of them in service. There was another more widely produced version of the actual aircraft and it had retractable landing gear, not the fixed "spatted" gear on this model. A little bit of an odd choice as a "Legend of the Air" but still reasonably cool.

So I started on this model over a year ago. I had finished the Fokker Triplane from this series and was ready to tackle this one. Over the course of a weekend little one and I painted parts and glued parts up following the "directions" included. The instructions consist of an exploded view of the numbered parts. It is an exercise in patience and clairvoyance to put them together.

I covered a bunch of this when I wrote up the Fokker build but these kits really aren't for unsupervised construction by the "Age 6+" crowd. Besides the issues with the instructions, the wood is fairly stiff and you are going to need to use rubber bands and or clamps to hold the pieces in place while it is gluing up. I even boiled some pieces to make them bendable. Speaking of glue... not for one minute did I think about using the white glue that came with the kit. I went right to my wood glue.

So after some initial work, it all went into a clementine box with the intention of being pulled out the next weekend for completion. Well, something, or a lot of things, must have come up. Quite a few weekends went by and the box sort of bounced around in different places throughout the house for a year before making its way to my work bench a couple of weeks ago.

Only one piece was missing; a vertical strut. I was able to trace out a pattern on a scrap piece of the 1/8" plywood all the pieces were punched out of. That trick is something that I learned to do when I built my first balsa wood and tissue airplane from way back in the day. (A Guillow's Hawker Hurricane, thank you very much.)   You certainly can't do that with plastic models if you break or lose a piece.

In my book a toy airplane has to have a spinning propeller. Unfortunately, these kits are not designed with that in mind but where there's a will, there's a way.  This one took a little figuring to get to a way. Basically I assembled the cowling and then drilled a 3/16" hole through the center. I assembled the prop but drilled a shallow 1/8" hole in the back of the spacer so I could put a piece of 1/8" dowel to use as the shaft. I also made a small nut with a 1/8" hole in it to place at the end of the opposite end of the shaft.

I then used a forstner bit around the back of the cowling to make a hole deep and wide enough that I could put a disk on the end of the shaft that would allow the shaft to spin freely once the assembled engine was glued to the fuselage.

Hole deep enough to allow nut to spin freely.

Wood nut cut from scrap and glued to shaft.

The wing roots needed to be trimmed up a bit to fit into their slots on the fuselage. Again, this is one of those things that will be a little tough on the 11 year olds who work on the kit but dad can lend a hand. Just remember the woodworking truism... You can always remove more wood but you can't add any back on. Take off a little at a time and keep checking the fit.

I paint as much as I can before I assemble things because sometimes it is awfully hard to get the paint in there with parts in the way. I made a mistake in initially painting the struts black so I repainted them silver and then took my time and glued them up carefully. Take your time. No rush. Make sure everything lines up. With the outside struts in place, I fit the small ones on the fuselage. They needed to be trimmed up to fit in their slots the same way the wings did.

US planes from this era are often called "Yellow Wings" because... well... THEY HAD YELLOW WINGS! They also tended to have red and white tail stripes and brightly colored cowlings and markings. It's a very classy look and a big part of the reason for this was to make them highly visible for search and rescue efforts. It was also a bit of a bold confident statement but the idea was never to go into combat like this. I went with the blue stripes and cowling on this so that it would look like a Goshawk that was assigned to the USS Saratoga. Blue painter's tape gave me great lines for what I needed. After I glued the top wing in place and let it dry, I put the single rear struts in place on each side.

I probably glued the landing gear a bit higher into the fuselage than the plans called for but it seemed to match the scale better that the picture on the box. I also think it will make the landing gear less fragile. I had temporary shims wedged in while the gear dried. I made sure the wheels were level and the angle was the same on each side. After they dried, I added the external fuel tank... which had two different size teardrop sides... weird.

Last thing was I printed out some US 1930's roundels with a color printer on regular paper. I carefully cut out and glued the roundels in place and then sprayed the whole toy with several coats of clear gloss acrylic. (We stopped using those roundels early in WW2 because the red dots could be confused in the heat of battle with the markings on Japanese aircraft.)

There you go. I like how it came out and it makes me want to make more "Yellow Wings" era themed toys.

Again... these Legends of the Air kits have poor instructions and some questionable fits but are really fun to turn into a neat looking little toy. Now to make a toy aircraft carrier for it to land on...

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