Scale Soaring UK

I need to fashion a tailskid from 18swg spring steel, any idea of a source for such material and how does one go about cutting/shaping it? Or maybe there is a more practical elternative??

Stephen,
When I made up the multi-leaf tailskid for a 1/3 scale Slingsby T21 a year or so back, I recall that I may have needed to anneal thigh carbon steel in order to be able to cut/form it, but then certainly had to re-temper it to get the required spring (to a light blue colour.)
I remember having to have 2 goes at getting enough spring without it being brittle. First attempt was a little too soft.
I cannot now remember where I got the spring steel from, although I think I bought a length of suitable width/thickness carbon steel strip on Ebay & cut that up into lengths, drilled, curved the ends as required.
There may be some additional info. in my Jilles Smits 1/3 scale T21 build thread.

Stephen,
T21 build thread is here viewtopic.php?f=12&t=755&start=40#p9910.
Mention of the tail skid in on page 5 & it definitely appears that I started with annealed carbon steel strip, cut this as required, then tempered the resultant pieces.
I will see if I can find any reference to the material I bought.
Peter

Thanks for that Peter, I'll take a look at your T21 thread for further detail.

Sold by Reeves2000. This is the sort of thing. They do other sizes, search for spring steel.

https://www.ajreeves.com/search/for/spring+steel/



BC

I seem to recall I used a short length of wing joiner bar on mine...

Barry, thanks for the link, it looks very similar to wing joiners as alluded to by Chris.

chris williams wrote: ↑04 Dec 2019, 21:34 I seem to recall I used a short length of wing joiner bar on mine...

No you didn't, I made it for you. (or maybe that was another one....)

Well I found another option, an old saw:


A stroke of luck, at 1.2mm the blade was the correct thickness so a few minutes work with the Dremel and I had the blank made:

Well done Stephen.
There is often a solution to hand if you use the grey cells
Not sure how much carbon is in your material, but you may be able to re-temper if necessary to alter springiness.
(Note that local heat from your Dremel cutting may have altered the saw material hardness).