Model Balsa Wood Kits

Get yourself a thimble.

Get a ceiling tile or piece of fiberboard from Home Depot, much easier to push ins into. Pin the plans to it and then cover the plans with waxed paper.

Aways worked well for me.

Mark

Yep I use fibre board stuck to a piece of MDF - the MDF makes the board nice an rigid and keeps it flat.

Cheers,

Nigel

Thanks everybody! My thumb will thank you for ever!

Also, thanks to Serge - just after I sent the posting, I remembered that I used to use my wife's thimble.

Memory dims as you get older.

I will now see how much I remember of how to make a model!

John

there are round head pins easier on the hands. i used to use a corkboard, a cheap noteboard variety. you can get it at home centers by the square.

part a to part b, repeat until it looks like the cover of the box it came in.

Hold on! I'll just write that down - "part a to part b, then repeat until it looks like the cover of the box it came in"

Okay, gotcha! I'll see if I remember in the morning.

I'll also look for them there round headed pins.

Thanks again,

John

Back when I used to try wood the best way I found was to get a cheap bulletin board made of cork and cover it with first the plans and then wax paper. But at was 40 years ago!!!!

Cookie Sewell

great retort! you got points for that. (ouch!) any sewing/craft store should have them. but lmk if you can't find them and we'll get you some. the pins, i mean.

great minds work alike...

Use masking tape to hold a chunk or corrugated cardboard to the top of a nice flat sheet of plywood - then put a piece of wax paper over the plans, build on top of that, and you're golden.

Don't forget the sheet of waxed paper over the plans, so that the parts don't get glued to the plans.

When I did balsa models as a kid, I always used a sheet of corrugated cardboard, not a wooden board. A cork bulletin board would work too.

Go to a sewing supply store and buy some pins with glass or plastic heads. They have a small ball molded around the head so they're easier to handle. They're also easier to spot if they fall on the floor.

Zen Chinese model instructions: "Particular pieces go in particular places in particular ways. Build model and achieve new step towards enlightenment. Lucky numbers: 1/35,

Pat

Ye olde standby! That must have been going on since the mid 1930's. Which came first? Balsa and tissue, or waxed paper? :-D

Pat

Cork board is good and reusable. A cheap alternative is to go to a builder's supply and buy a 2'x4' ceiling tile. They cost around $2.00 (usually less, sometimes fo' free if you spot one on garbage day). I use them backside up for layout and when they've gone as far as they can, I cut them to a smaller size (around 7"x7") to put items on that need spray painting. I can hold pieces with an alligator clip and jam said clip into the tile to keep the force of the spray from blowing the piece around too badly.

Another type is the posting board pushpin. It's got a head with a good concave )( surface that's easiy to handle and will act as an anchor for the balsa pieces.

on 4/12/2008 2:29 AM Pat Flannery said the following:

Don't forget to rearrange your workshop according to feng shui to attain ch'i.

I made up a board from a piece of particle board four foot by one foot, and covered it with thick cork self-adhesive tiles.

Someone makes and sells a balsa-wood building board. However, since balsa is now fairly expensive, the resulting board is expensive too. Also it hurts me philosophically to use balsa for anything other than models :-)

There are also some "magnetic" boards sold, with a steel surface and a bunch of magnets that hold the pieces in place while the glue sets.

BTW, I now cover the plans with saran-wrap rather than the old waxed paper we used to use. You can see the plans better, and I always worried about getting too much wax on wood that might inhibit other, later gluing.

the egyptians used balsa. for ships. not models

my feng shui is chaos.