Once upon a time, I had attempted to carve a few wooden props. After much trial and a whole bunch of error, I found the best results, (for me anyway), were achieved by gluing thin pre-stained laminates together to the desired thickness, penciling in a rough outline based on either blueprints or the kit prop, and going at it with Xacto, Dremel, sanding sticks, and eventually sanding/polishing cloths. After that, I use MinWax stain pens and darken the laminate stains. Coat with a gloss laquer, and you're set.
Here's the prop I carved for my Sopwith. The kit prop had too much of a pitch in it, and mine has too little, but I'm still learning. Sorry I didn't think to take pics from start to finish. It didn't occur to me until after I was getting ready to scratchbuild the prop mounting plates.
Kit prop and mine. I decided instead of attempting to thinly shave the kit plate off, I'd just build my own out of styrene sheet, brass nuts and resin bolts.
The brass nuts I used. Can't remember who makes them.
Front mounting plate after attaching the nuts. Right about here is where my eyeballs tried to cross. Lol
Finished prop, minus the weathering and decals. Notice the odd place for ejector pin marks on the kit prop. The whole thing is like that.
So it may not be precise, but I'm more skilled with paint and plastic than I am wood.
Thanks for looking
