Since I've been a modeler, I've never built the Sig Dewybird or the Staggerwing. So, I ordered these two kits from the LHS and picked them up yesterday along with an Akromaster kit.
They suck. The wood in the Dewybird kit is so bad, I doubt the plane would even get off the ground due to the weight. The Stagerwing isn't much better. Sterling wood was better than this.
I don't get it. Most of the Sig wood on the shelf is pretty good stuff. Why do they put all the crap wood in their kits? I've already replaced most of the Akromaster's wood.
Another thing, I thought the Stagerwing was supposed to be a stuntable model? How stuntable can it be with flat bottom wings?

I haven't built a lot of SIG kits... a couple of Skyrays, a Skyray35, and a couple of Akromasters, but so far I haven't replaced any defective wood. I DID substitute balsa ribs for the plywood ribs and half ribs on the Skyray 35, but that was by choice. Perhaps I've just been lucky.

If you wanna talk bad kit wood, think Berkeley! 

George

I recently bought the Staggerwing direct from Sig and the wood is really nice in my opinion. I have seen much worse in many other half A kits. Of course as balsa varies widely in both grain and density it is hard to have good consistancy in most kits. Especially when it comes to the older, mass produced kits. It was more about the money and meeting supply demands than it was for making sure each piece of wood was "hand picked". In more recent years we have expected better and from some suppliers we have gotten better wood. This can spoil us!

Robert

I'm just going to copy the Dewybird to better wood and save the kit for patterns. I guess I'll try to assemble the Stagerwing the bes I can, replacing wood as needed. Makes me mad that I shelled out dough for kits and then have to re-kit everything.
Oh, I picked up a Brodak Flying Clown today too. Worlds better than the Sig stuff.

Another thing to consider when commenting on these "beginner" types of kits, these were never really kitted with the experienced modeler in mind. When most of us were building for the first time we would hardly have noticed the quality of the wood so long as there were no holes that didn't belong and the wood was not warped beyond use as we were more concerned with trying to make sure that the thing was easy to build and turned out looking pretty close to the picture on the box!
Our next concern was getting it airborn at all and then... trying to do a little more with it as we became more comfortable flying it... That is, if the plane were to survive all of our bumbling short comings and goofs up to this point!

We have learned to be able to lighten our models since then and we can apply many of these techniques to such kits today. This of course will mean they won't be as sturdy but most of us can live with that as we are beyond the learning curve.
We can take the shaped balsa wings and cut lightening holes in them and in some instances add a few ribs in the larger holes. After the sanding and covering you will have a much better wing than you would have had you merely sanded and doped.
Another posibility is to of course replace the wood with lighter wood or even build a built up wing to replace the original. With an airfoil on both sides if you wish!

With the kit as a starting point you could wind up with a much better plane in the end with just a little more money in the parts and a reasonable amount of work.

One thing is sure... Those wonderful decals in the Staggerwing kit are sure hard to beat! It would be a pretty difficult to improve on these as they come out of the box!

Clint, be sure to keep us informed with your building progress!

Robert