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Cracked spar—is this a problem?

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birdus

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2012
Messages
193
Location
Moses Lake, WA
I started building a Super Baby Great Lakes a couple years ago. Didn't touch it last year. Have been continuing with it the past couple months. I've done nearly all I can do with the initial wood kit.

Recently, I've been preparing the spars (drilling holes and shaping the tips). A friend of mine just noticed a tiny crack in one of them (upper wing, main spar). It's about a foot long (3 cracks, technically, I guess, with a small offset between them). There's another one out past the first one but it's just about an inch long. I shot some close up video of the cracks. The spar is an inch thick, for reference. The cracks are very small in width. I'm wondering if these are a problem. I don't know if there's any non-destructive way to tell how deep they go. Given the general quality of the wood, I suspect the cracks might be very shallow and might not matter at all (also given how overbuilt this plane is), but thought I'd run it by you all. I bought the wood kit from Aircraft Spruce.

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbsKNOgvmQs

Thanks for your advice.

Jay
 
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