Chris Schanzle

AS PART of the requirements for the seventh-grade Industrial Arts class at Montgomery Village Junior High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, we had to make a model of something invented before 1930. I have been building and flying model airplanes since I was six years old, so it was natural to choose some type of aircraft as my subject. Well, I've always wanted to build a Wright airplane, so I chose the 1907-1909 type. The teacher expected the project to be done in the classroom, but it is hard to slice ribs made of 1/32-inch balsa with a five-foot band saw with a blade that is 1/16-inch thick! And a one-foot-diameter power sanding disk with 80-grit sandpaper doesn't help much either, so, I began at home. The reference for the plans is a book called The Wright Brothers, by Gibbs Smith. My father purchased this pamphlet several years ago when he visited Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the site of the first sustained powered flight. This book has seen considerable use since I used it as a reference for a report on the Wright Brothers in the fourth grade.