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(and weight) can be cut out near the tips. Spars can be of thinner stock. Gradually cut the thickness of the webbing to 1/32" out at the wingtip.
Note: The above is fine for flight conditions -- but if you "catch a wingtip" on landing, that's another story!
COVERING: Not all coverings weigh the same! The low-temperature mylars are lighter, while fabric is heavier. Even among the "standard" coverings, the weight varies. (Monokote is lighter than Ultracote, for instance.) Color also makes a difference. Lighter colors are heavier! It takes less pigment to color something black than white! Don't have any large overlapping areas on your covering. that's just wasted weight!
SANDING: Can anything be simpler? The more you sand,
the less your plane will weigh! Obviously, this could be overdone -- but at least sand in curved corners when they are shown on the plans. That sawdust may not seem like much weight, but it all adds up.
FUEL PROOFING: Using thick coats of epoxy for fuel proofing adds unnecessary weight to your plane. Try dope, glas-coat, brushed on rustoleum, or equivalent. Don't skip out on fuel proofing. Besides being harmful to your wood and glue joints, soaked-in fuel is heavy! (Okay, so it's a glow newsletter. km)
FITTINGS: By all means, use quality, strong fittings (pushrods, clevises, control rods, etc.). Be weight conscious, too, and don't overdo strength to where you add unnecessary weight.
BALANCE: DO NOT ACCEPT adding any lead to a plane! An exception might be an ounce or two in the wingtip to balance laterally. Move servos, battery, and even the engine to avoid adding lead to your plane. Bolted, or glued, in lead is unnecessary weight, and it adds extra loads to your airframe. Scale builders may be stuck with this. Quite often scale planes tend to be heavy anyway; adding lead becomes the "last straw" leading to the stall, snap, crash tendencies of some of those planes.
EXOTICA: There are more exotic measures taken to save weight. Usually in larger, more complex aircraft. Modelers use aluminum, carbon and boron fiber, expensive honeycombs, and kevlar to increase the strength-to-weight ratio. All this technology is expensive, but worth it when performance is the prime consideration.
SAFETY: You must keep in mind that whenever you make changes to a design specification, YOU are now responsible for the aircraft's integrity.
 Most model designs are heavily overbuilt, but it's always going to be up to you to decide what is overbuilt and what isn't. We're not rocket scientists (and neither are the designers!), so don't be afraid to ask an experienced modeler (preferably several!) about modifications that you're not sure of.
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