Tour the Demoiselle
Wing Structure
One of the things that the early designers were trying to come up with were
ways to make an airframe strong but make it light. One of the woods they
experimented with was bamboo. Santos-Dumont used it quite liberally in his
designs of his Demoiselles. This example, as you can see, is all held
together with bamboo. You didn't use glue or screws because the bamboo was very
frail around the areas where it needed to join to another piece. You'd lash it
together. Sometimes I felt like Robinson Crusoe building this airplane. You can
see the liberal use of brass wire, which was used originally to clamp all the
pieces together. Then the fabric is just basically laid over the top, stitched
in between the ribs. And then it was laced to the front with that little
baseball stitch style that you see.