In this journal a few months ago, I related the sad demise of the McCauley propellor on my Centurion. Over four decades, the leading edges of each blade had eroded a quarter of an inch. Multiply a quarter of an inch across the 40+ inches of a blade, times each of the three blades, and my prop was too small for the plane Cessna had riveted together in 1979. Working backwards towards the root cause, the principal source of the erosion on my prop was the annual ritual of “dressing the blades” which removes nicks from the edges of the blades. And what causes the nicks? The most common cause is FOD, “Foreign Object Damage.” Get rid of the FOD and your blades will last forever.
