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icyfire wrote:How much does moisture affect the tower? Should I be concerned enough to put a few packets of those water absorbing stuff in the tower box?

I would guess that the ambient humidity may affect the overall weight of your tower by up to .05 grams. At the same time, it will also affect all of your competition's towers as well. I've seen balsa wood structures complete packed in rice to dry it down, i've seen structures slipped inside the LDPE newspaper sleeves with one end zip tied to a blow dryer and the other end open. I've seen mountains of silica desiquents pile in the boxes... If we were dealing with larger crossections, it may be worth it, but when dealing with 1/8" x 1/8" material and smaller, I would guess that within 5 or 10 minutes these structures will reacclimate to the surrounding humidity... If that is the case, why risk damaging the structure trying to fit it inside a plastic sleeve, or digging it out of a rice cake? Far better to carefully protect the structure and check each joint with a manifying glass... Just like the chain, it is only as strong as the weakest link!

dholdgreve wrote: balsa wood structures complete packed in rice to dry it down

Completely packed as in... completely covered by or submerged in rice? Would that have a noticeably different effect than a smaller amount of rice, i.e. four or five cups of?

I think submersing in rice might be a bit risky. When you pick up the box, some of the rice will fall down, which has the potential to break a few good 1/16" pieces.

Would it be okay if the smallest wood dimension used is 1/16" x 1/8"?

I'm not sure, I've never really worked with 1/16" by 1/8", nor have I submersed my tower in rice. I think what you have to watch out for is relatively long pieces of 1/16" by 1/8". Clearly, if you had a piece that was around 4-5 cm, it's pretty unlikely that rice would be able to break such a short piece.