Ice Flyer: preparation

Preparing to build the ice flyer took a few days. First, I had to download the plans. The designer released the plans to the public years ago, however, his website has been offline for quite a while. It turns out that some of the ice boat forums maintain copies of the plans, and they are also still available online via the Internet Archive.

 Once the plans were printed out, I was able to take a close look. The plans are not in a step by step format. Once you read through them a few times to get a good understanding of how the boat goes together, they are reasonably complete.

 The first item on the agenda was to print out the templates included in the plans. This was entertaining, as each template is divided into multiple six inch sections. You have to print out all the pages, then break out the scissors and start literally cutting and pasting everything together. And, to make things even more interesting, all the dimensions were slightly off when the templates came out of my printer.

 The second item on the agenda was to pick my materials. The designer recommends Sitka spruce. It turns out that Sitka spruce is like gold, rare and expensive. In the end, I decided to substitute a good quality 11 ply zero defect Birch plywood for the fuselage. Now that I've purchased it, it seems fairly strong, though I'm not impressed with how the plys completely separate under catastrophic failure. Guess I'll have to overbuild.

 For glue, after a fair amount of research I settled on Titebond II. It's well established, has a decent working time, is stronger than the wood it bonds to, and is waterproof as long as it isn't used underwater for extended periods.

Here's a picture of my first completed template, ready to trace out and cut. This is the one of two side boards, and it is approximately eight feet long.