Repairing Wooden Blades...

I'm using flat bottom woodie blades for my BCP... I know the blades are inexpensive but I have 3-4 sets of blades with very minor 1/8 chips and dents and things like that... Is it possible to repair them using wood filer or something similar and sanding them down to smoothen them out? I'd assume if you balance them out afterwards with tape it should be ok... right?

[BLACKHAWK DOWN]

nah, thats taking shortcuts....shortcuts...cut up ur bird! remeber that
just be patient and buy new set of blades...rather then messin up ur whole rotor head and tail boom and everything else..

[Daz(DJLFlapper)]

The problem with repairing any wooden blades is that it is very risky. If your just talking about a little dent in the leading edge and the wood is not cracked then it should be ok to use them still. If your talking anything more than just a dent in the leading edge. I would have to say unless you know what your doing then dont go for the repair. Trust me I have heard of terrible things happening when bits of a blade have shot of it and hit people.

I do have a set of woodies that I repaired but have never had the confidence to use them. Now I use carbon blades so there is no chance now anyway.

Some of the things you would need to think about is that wood filler would not hold up to the forces that a blade spinning produces I think.
For a repair in the leading edge:
You would have to use epoxy resin filler of some sort. Then you would have to shape it to match the area of blade. Now you will have moved the chord wise ballance of the blade as the filler is heavier than the wood. So you would have to find out how much of a difference there was and then correct this by adding some into the wood at the rear of the blade. You would now need to recover the blade in shrink film this would give a bit more rigidity to hold the repairs in place. Only now when you have the chordwise ballance restored would you be able to then go onto balancing the blade normally (static and Dynamic).
At this piont your heli would be ready to spool up I would think that with a micro heli you probably would have added so much extra wieght to the blades that it may affect the heli's performance (I dont know this for fact).

Anyway I myself have thought about it in the past BUT decided it is somthing best left allone.

If your in any doubt about the airworthyness of your main or tail blades, CHANGE THEM.

Wow, when you put it that way your probably right... I'll hust buy news ones !

Thnaks

[Nidrah]

This is gonna go against the gain a bit but .. that's me.

I assuming the woodies were talking about are the ones with a nice [mylar?] wrap, plastic supports screwed in at the blade grips. Standard E-Flight woodies .. yes?

As long as the wood is not split. Especially anywhere near the grips.
If the nicks and dinks your refering to are just tears in the mylar and a ripple in the wood, your fine. Use a bit of tape to secure the covering down, keeping the tear of the tape facing the trailing edge. Try to apply the same to the other blade. Or better yet, remove them and rebalance after repairs. If you keep it neat and clean you won't really notice a differnece. I had a set that the tips were really bad. I sanded them down, actually taking off about 1/8" on each. It was fine. At my stage of crashing about I need to be as resourceful as possible.

But for safety .... when in doubt ... throw them out!