I am New to the Forum - Dale MacMullin

[MacMullin]

For my first post, let me introduce myself, my name is Dale MacMullin and I live In Fredericton, New Brunswick. Canada. I have been an aviation enthusiast plus an artist since my childhood.

In my spare time, I focus my energy creating Canadian Military & Aviation themes in a painting medium know as egg tempera. I love Canadian Aviation history because it gives me a large range of interesting personalities and stories from which I may draw.

I received my Bachelor of Fine Art at Mount Allison University ('86) majoring in Painting and Printmaking. I am presently a member of the Canadian Aerospace Artist Association (Acting President) and the Canadian Aviation Historical Society.

Creating paintings historically and visually accurate is sometimes a difficult task, especially if resources are not close at hand. The internet sometimes can be a very resourceful place, but getting access to good photos, drawings, or other related documents and materials is not always easy. I have joined your forum for your help on a few projects I have planned for the future.

I would like to create style of still life painting called Trompe-l'oeil using fixed wooden aircraft propellers as the focus of each work and surrounded with aviation artifacts and memorabilia. For an example, a Sopwith Camel prop mounted on a wall of an old WWI wooden hanger with a shelf filled with old aircraft parts (Sopwith Camel - Fuel tank pressure release valve or old can filled with used rigging turnbuckles, etc.) or propaganda posters or maintenance reports thumb-tacked to the wall.

I anyone can help me, I am looking for images of multiple view elevation drawings of any known wooden fixed propellers. Any kind of digital image or scan from a book, the patent office or archive documents. Images do not have to be big, but it must be historically accurate and identified. These items will be used only for my personal resources.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way. I when on a trip last fall to our national Capital Ottawa and took a visit to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. I took as many pictures of aircraft and propellers I could. One item that grabbed my interest was an early one-piece prop from our first powered flight in Canada – “The Silver Dart”. I thought this artifact would be cool to paint along with other relevant historical items. I took pictures of the prop in segments and I have stitched them together by eye. Since the artifact was laying down in an acrylic display case, I did my best to remove my shadows and odd reflections.


Canada Aviation and Space Museum
Artifact no.1967.1156.001
Manufacturer Location: Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada
Manufactured Date: Between 1908 - 1909
Context: Canada
Propeller: for A.E.A. Silver Dart, the first airplane to fly in Canada.
Description: Wood -
Number of Parts: 1
Length: 240.0 cm or 94.50 inches

[Dbahnson]

Hi, Dale. Welcome to the forum.

Authentic blueprints ("drawings") of propellers are quite rare. They seem to have been largely discarded with the relative obsolescence of early wooden props.

I have taken photos of most of the propellers I've owned over the years, most recently including both front and side views. What's missing from photos is the mathematical pitch of the blade and the cross sectional shape of the blade at various locations along the blade. (See this diagram.)

So you could come up with a reasonable reproduction by using the photos of actual historical props linked on this page and just guessing on a cross sectional shape along the blade. The pitch is typically stamped on the propeller, and often one blade shape and diameter was associated with several different pitch options.

You'll notice on your own photo how distorted the blade appears when the camera is at an angle to the center hole. You may also notice on photos on my web pages that the center hole is always position in the middle and the camera always seems to be looking directly down the center of the center bore. That's done on purpose to mitigate the distortion, although there will still always be a parallax effect as you move outward from the center, but it should be fairly small.

[MacMullin]

Thank you for your time and your great advice, I will give it a try. Over time, I have managed to come across several propeller elevation drawings in aircraft books and magazines. For the last week or so I have been combing through all posts here in the forum. Mind you, I have not finished yet.

I am very surprised that an institution or a prop maker has not asked you to digitally scan your collection. I would think this would be valuable information for the future. Perhaps, if you put that request out, someone might take you upon it.

I took a quick search on Google and found at least 50 plus manufacturers and tech costing anywhere from $200.00 to $34000.00 for their large object scanning equipment. You never know, perhaps one of these companies along with an Aviation Museum might scan you collection for promotional & archive purposes.

[Dbahnson]

I am very surprised that an institution or a prop maker has not asked you to digitally scan your collection. I would think this would be valuable information for the future. Perhaps, if you put that request out, someone might take you upon it.

It's a good thought, but although I've owned all of the props that I've photographed I've also traded many of them and thinned out my personal collection significantly over time. Storage was even getting to be a problem as well so I've just made it a point to get photographs as my own method of "preservation" of the early propellers.

You might try contacting someone like Chad Wille at St Croix Propellers. He has made a number of reproduction props, including some for Cole Palen's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. He may have some more technical information that would be useful for your project.

My guess is that the "drawings" for early propellers were large blueprints that just didn't lend themselves to long term storage and eventually were just discarded as the propellers themselves became obsolete with high RPM engine development.