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Re: Woodworking, French, Soviet, and British.
Hello!
Of the book I mentioned. The title is:
Projektirovanie derevjannyh samoljetov, published by NKAP, Moskva 1945.
The book is "перевод с английского" - translation from English, but the original is not given (at least I didn't find it). Many of the illustrations (drawings) do show La-5 (or -7?) manufacture so likely the book is adapted.
I was wrong about the German wooden propeller manufacturing technique - it is not from USA. The technique is original German Leichtholtz-Mantel patented by Gustav Schwartz Propellerwerk. The patent was used by foreign companies too: Engineering Research Corp. of Riverdale (USA), Rotol (!!! UK) and Nohab (Sweden). Source for this info Finnish magazine article of wooden propellers (Suomen Ilmailuhistoriallinen lehti 3/2001, pp. 10-13).
It would still be interesting to know how many Yaks and Lavochkins would have been manufactured without the Lend-Lease deliveries of phenol formaldehyde and it's raw materials.
Plywood may produce the lightest structure if it is stability (= not strength) critical. This is sometimes the case with light general aviation planes. Metal has the big plus that it yields before braking up - structure may buckle or deform and still keep itself in one piece. This is not the case with wood (or carbon, glass, aramid etc. fibres).
Cheers,
Kari
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