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GeekyGem wrote:Where do we get the material like Balsa Wood and Glue for the construction ? I live in San Diego.

You can order it online at lower cost from AC supply: http://www.specializedbalsa.com/ or Specialized balsa: http://www.specializedbalsa.com/ among others. In San Diego you can get balsa wood from the ACE hardware store, Michale's and perhaps from Hobby Central, give them a call. As for the glue, many stores sell CA glue (sold under many names, one is Loctite superglue). A good CA glue to start with is
Loctite Superglue Ultragel sold by the Home Depot.

Freyssenet wrote:

GeekyGem wrote:Where do we get the material like Balsa Wood and Glue for the construction ? I live in San Diego.

You can order it online at lower cost from AC supply: http://www.specializedbalsa.com/ or Specialized balsa: http://www.specializedbalsa.com/

uhh...

Recognizing the consistency and invariability factor, I still see no argument for bass. Regardless of what size of bass is used, an equal weight of balsa could be obtained that would be much stronger. Basically, my argument is that the equally weighted balsa, even with a huge internal variance, will always be stronger or equal to bass of the same weight.

yes i agree with you and also, the issue with consistency and invariability is actually no issue because if you weigh each stick of wood you use and do a stiffness test on it, there should be absolutely no surprises as to where it fails. Therefore, balsa is a much better option than it may seem to be. Also, with balsa there is the potential to build much lighter towers and if the wood does seem too light and flimsy, lamination is an option. A mixture might be a good idea to start out with but eventually, building an all balsa tower seems to be much more beneficial.

That being said, it is not impossible to build an extremely good mostly bass tower it just depends on personal preference (but balsa is also cheapter)


heres what garrettsbridges has to say on the matter. In general, it is a pretty good, informative site.
http://www.garrettsbridges.com/building/woodtips/

Thanks. When you say lamination? What does that entail? Does it not add a lot of weight?

if done properly, lamination will significantly strengthen the wood while adding less than 1g. I personally would suggest using it with two light and flimsy pieces of wood. I usually like to laminate on the base. So basically, what i do is build the base and my partner builds the chimney and we both connect it.
so, i will build the base normally first but use moderately light pieces of wood for the four 1/8^2 primary compression members. Then i will take an extremely light and spongy stick of balsa (with a mass of roughly 1gram per 48 inches). Then i cut out a piece from it that is a tad bit shorter than my primary compression members, apply glue to one entire side and glue it to a primary compression member. Do this until each of the four members has a stick laminated to it... i find that this only adds about 0.4-0.6 grams to the base to make a 3g base. However, the strength benefits are worth it imo.

Laminating for the chimney is an abject disaster because the primary members are too long so instead, we just put more bracing but if someone has an easy method for that, i would really be interested in knowing it.

a note on gluing: i find that super glue is pretty good for laminating but there can be some issues with weight and the fact that some varieties dry too quickly. You can also thin out wood glue with water. I dont know how much weight that adds but i would say that the lamination with that is pretty amazing(if you can get the right consistency of watery-glue)

another option is to just use something light such as welbond, ambroid, duco etc... oh but a warning: ambroid smells horrible, so avoid it if possible

iYOA wrote:... if you weigh each stick of wood you use and do a stiffness test on it,,,,

How do you test for stiffness? Can it be quantified and if so, what is its unit?

I really would not use bass. When I built a tower out of basswood, it stood 40 kg without breaking. So I made it part balsa and part bass and it still stood 34 kg without breaking. So now I'm using completely balsa. We'll see how it turns out...

BTW it's good to calculate the wood density to see if it's good to use or not
helps you save more woods

SLM wrote:

iYOA wrote:... if you weigh each stick of wood you use and do a stiffness test on it,,,,

How do you test for stiffness? Can it be quantified and if so, what is its unit?

Stiffness is explained on Wikipedia (don't hate on me for using Wikipedia.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus
To test stiffness relative to other sticks of balsa, just take a scale, hold the stick of balsa vertically on top of it, and press down. The scale readings will stop at a certain point. The higher that point is, the stiffer the balsa is.