What about Balsa Wood for Modle Building

by Luis Smith Balsa Factory Most hobby shops have a large rack of balsa sheets, sticks, and blocks that you can choose from if you are going to build a model airplane from scratch. Undoubtedly, because of the nature of balsa, the actual weight of each piece of wood of the same size can vary slightly. When you select the pieces you want to buy you should keep their final use in mind. 

Logically one should select the lightest grades for the lightly stressed model parts (nose blocks, wingtip blocks, fill-ins, etc.) and the heavier grades for important load bearing parts of the structure (spars, fuselage stringers, etc.). To a large extent, this selection is already partly done for you. Here at SIG, we purposely cut up our lightest raw balsa into blocks, and our hardest raw balsa into sticks. Sheets are cut in the entire wide range of density.

Balsa is a very "friendly" wood to work with -- so light, so soft, so easily worked into so many things. You don't need heavy-duty power saws and sanders like you would if working with a hardwood. In fact, even with an extensive power shop at their disposal, the professional model builders here at the SIG factory find that they still rely primarily on 4 or 5 simple hand tools for the majority of their work. If you are just starting out in the model airplane hobby, here are the tools that they recommend you get:

X-ACTO No. 1 knife with No. 11 blade for general cutting; X-ACTO No. 2 knife with No. 26 blade for carving; Razor saw for cutting thick sizes of wood; Razor plane for shaping; A knife or razor blade will work well for cutting balsa sheets and sticks up to 3/16".please always keep replacement blades on hand 

Sponsor Ads

• Ad Space Available - Rent it Now!

Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

Comments