Santos Dumont No. 18 Hydroplane 1907 by Greg Davis - Scale 1:16

[KeithAug]

All looking rather nice. It would appear that the foils were quite small.

[Keith Black]

Beautiful work, Greg, 

[Greg Davis]

4 hours ago, KeithAug said:

All looking rather nice. It would appear that the foils were quite small.

Yes, they don't seem to have a large chord. I've done my best to interpret a number of photographs and then made them with a 2cm chord - that would make them roughly a foot in reality.

[wefalck]

I remember reading the research thread, but somehow missed until now the building log.

 

I am interested in everything that happened on the Seine, after all it flows past in sight from where I live. However, judging from the background on the photographs, I think Santos Dumont must have run his trials on the Bassin d'Argenteuil, a quiet lake-like stretch of the river between two barrages a few kilometres downstream from me. 

 

Coming back to the construction material: I also would think that steel-tubes as in bicycles were used. Aluminium tubes would have been extremely expensive at that time, if at all available. There was no welding technique at that time that would have not drawn the temper from the steel-tubes. So, I think they were silver-soldered, as is the practice for steel bicycle frames.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by wefalck

[KeithAug]

4 hours ago, wefalck said:

So, I think they were silver-soldered,

Yes - I had thought they might have been brazed.