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Not a major project, but fun
I was looking for something simple to make for the two kids next door and my youngest two grand kids. What I decided to try was a hand launched flying toy. I've seen these toys before, but had never made any. It took several trial and errors to figure out the best way to get equal angles of pitch on each side of the blade. I tried layout lines and hand cutting, but the thin blade wanted to follow the grain too much. I ended up making a jig for my band saw that allowed me to cut each side of each blade at the 10 degree pitch angle I wanted and then reduced the thickness of the trailing edge with a small spoke shave, hand plane and bastard cut file. You need to reduce the blade weight as much as possible and balance it so each half weighs the same relative to the dowel axis. I also found out that the balance between the blade weight and the length of the dowel is pretty important. A dowel that is too short and it tumbles in flight and too long and it just sinks instead of flying up.
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