I once had reason to source some balsa to reline the collector tank bay on a Jaguar from a fairly local supplier to Coltishall ( Watton actually ) Walked in and said I need 1/2" planks x however many metres it was.
Q: " crikey what are you building ? "
A; " A Jaguar "
Q " what scale ?"
A " oh 1:1" ;)

In all fairness, I'm really hoping Allen's sister doesn't break up the Flying Heritage collection. I live just a few miles from there, and it's an outstanding aviation and combat armor museum. My understanding is that admission fees were covering the operating expenses (at least pre-COVID) so it doesn't really cost anything to keep that fantastic collection together. Unfinished projects - OK, you need someone with a lot of determination to see those through, but the existing displays don't take much effort to maintain.

Thanks SLB, that makes sense. Thinking about it later, I wondered whether it was about achieving better glue penetration through the end grain.

Fuselages were of plywood construction, two layers of thin plywood strips were placed over a mold to form one half of a fuselage shell. The fuselage halves were then glued together, covered with a layer of fabric, and doped. Sounds just like the Mosquito, but no, this was 1915. The process was a patented invention of the Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft company which used the process on its Roland C.II, photo below. The German Pflaz fighters of WWI used the same construction method under license.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....542caafd69.jpg

The plywood moulding method was invented and used by German aircraft manufacturers as early as 1915 indeed. I doubt that they used balsawood as sandwich filler. There is a subtle but important difference to the Mossie construction technique however.

The Germans simply patched thin veneer onto a mold which bends nicely onto the curved contours. When it comes to plywood which itself is made of numerous veneer layers things become complicated. Plywood doesn't bend as nicely as veneer does. Bending it onto a compound surface is a challenge. Steam treatement helps to a certain degree but has its limits. Therefore the surface needs to be cut into numerous patches which can take the bending. This results in gigantic puzzle. To make things even more complicated the joints of every puzzle piece must be scarved at an exact angle to offer sufficient glueing surface. An enormous amount of work.

I pull my hat for the Mossie team.

Here's another project which faces similar challenges
www.projekt-arbalete.ch

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/glouc...81973200797355

Brief article about the wartime production of plywood in the Forest of Dean. Spot the deliberate mistake…

Lots of things one could take exception to but the idea of 125,000 Mosquitoes takes some swallowing!
The idea that the plywood for all of 'em (even for the corrected number of (I think) 7,761) came from Lydney is highly unlikely since the Canadian- and Australian-built examples would have used locally made plywood.

The original I snapped a couple of years ago ge. I wasn't so much referring to the balsa/ply sandwich, but the molding over a former and joining the two halves, de Havilland merely introduced an innovation by separating the ply layers with balsa.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c19e8f04b9.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....20e34645b0.jpg

No doubt that the Mosquito was an amazing aircraft both in its construction and the many roles it took on which it was not initially designed for, the glue problem became evident early on when the aircraft where flown to warmer climates along with the speedier deterioration of rubber components, I have seen a photograph of glue stricken Mosquitoes at an MU in Egypt placed in a circle (tails inward) where the Merlins and Engine Bearers had been previously chopped out with an axe, their fuel tanks chopped open and a Flare fired into them making a huge bonfire.
Post bonfire the locals would move in and recover any metal lying around.
In regards to the furniture manufacturers involvement the method of construction certainly went into Post War furniture construction especially when it came to dining tables and sideboards.
When I married around 60years ago and was putting a home together there was a number of choices when it came to furniture ranging from cheaper second hand Wartime utility with the unforgettable mark stamped on the "Orange boxwood" to the very expensive virgin wood G Plan whose tables and sideboards warped badly when they sniffed out any heat, in the middle was a make called Lebus which benefited from the experience of constructing Mosquitoes halves using plywood and along with a highly varnished finish made decent looking tables and sideboards which did not warp at all and were of course a bit cheaper than GPlan.

My 17m 1967 Phoebus C had balsa cored epoxy sandwiched GRP wings. Built by one of the ATAFLIEGS..iirc Stuttgart. Gave it an interesting polar as wing had a marker lower under camber profile which meant that at low speeds it was in laminar whilst upper wasn’t and high speeds vice-versa.
Some bright spark suggested that I took core samples to check for rot .obviously didn’t understand the implications of the hardwood nor its purpose in the construction.
My father built MTBs in the war and in the 60s commissioned a high speed hull mould ..both used formers with triple veneers glued to form the complex curves.
I designed a caravan using end grain balsa sheets for the infilling but there was a problem with adhesion using polyester resins during the moulding process…our competitors..Eric Birch,who moulded Prout catamarans for a while and made Jaguar yachts, went over to a special foam with appropriate glues which cured the problem 20 years later. Apologies for the pun.

The Mosquito had a number of other issues besides delamination and Glue problems it was indeed difficult to fly if one of these issues cropped up inflight especially those learning at OTU's, looking at 13(not a good number) OTU based at what is now Teesside Airport just after War ended the accident rate is quite high (mind you not as high as flying the Meteor out of the same Airfield), an earlier accident with a Mosquito is highlighted in the Graveyard at the little Church to the South of the Airfield Perimeter Fence where a F/L lies buried, the Son of the local Coalmerchant but Instructing in Canada at the time flew his Mosquito into one of the few clouds and the tail snapped off.