CoosBayLumber

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Resizing Balsa

Recently I came across a quantity of small pile of irregular and poorly cut sheets of balsa from a freight forwarding outfit. What I would like to do is to plane the stock down to standard and special fractional thicknesses using a household joiner.

Has anyone done this before?

My neighbor has a 6 inch wide joiner which can be utilized. Do the blades have to be ground to a certain angle? How sharp? What RPM or FPM range should be tried?


Wm.

Flyboy Dave

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You shouldn't have to do anything special, just treat it like regular
wood. Feed it slow enough to aquire a nice flat cut, without ridges.

FBD.

the-plumber

Yup. Do it alla time m'self.

Do realize that a jointer only knows about the surface it's cutting. Nothing about a jointer to make the surface being cut _parallel_ to the other face of the wood, and you could easily convert all yer balsa into very long wedgies if you're not careful about feeding the wood _flat_.

You need to square the boards before you try to cut the thickness.

Run a face through the jointer, then run an edge, then rip the opposite edge, and finally deal with the remaining face.

That's best done on a thickness sander or planer, not a jointer.

BTW - maybe restrict the thread to one forum instead of two ?

CoosBayLumber

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Plumber....


That is interesting. According to the respondants over in the Scratch building forum, it cannot be done. Seems to be a different crowd reading items from this forum.

I had seen it done before, but that was about twenty years ago, and not too familiar with the equipment that was being used then. The tool grinding place down the street from here will cut the knives to a razor edge, but they already mentioned that such work goes dull quickly too. I would think that balsa is so soft that several sheets would not dull the blades.

The joiner has a rubber coated steel roller just aft of the knives, which I presume if to provide constant tension so that the wood does not lift while being planed. Biggest situation now is that it had been stored in a barn with a leaky roof, and there is significant surface rust all over everything. The adjustments are stiff or do not move, and it need to coincidently get them operable.

I am in need of some 5/32" sheets and it is not feasible to purchase any except on special order of 100 or more. This the main reason I am interested in it's use.


Wm.

2 Piece

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You could always get a Preac thickness sander.
http://www.preac.com/thickness_sander.htm

2 Piece

the-plumber

Nah. Same bunch. I was also told a jointer won't cut balsa worth beans and that a thickness planer wouldn't work either.

Not true, if you understand that a slow feed rate is necessary. You can't feed balsa as fast as harder woods because the knives will indeed rip the wood if you feed it like it was pine or a hard wood. Gotts to give the tool the time to do the job and don't worry about fast cuts.

I have a Delta table top hundred-dollar variety jointer, right outta th' box with the original knives. The only thing I did was make sure they were set correctly. It cuts balsa very nicely. Super sharp knives usually have very thin edges, and they will indeed dull quickly. The correct shape is that of a chisel, not a razor. Correctly sharpened knives last a long time on the sort of woods we use.

The main problem I have is snipe, but that's just brain fade when feeding the wood. Gotta keep even pressure on the stock all the way through the cut you'll get wedgies instead of planks and sheets.

I made off with the balsa stock from Tom Runge's estate sale . . . essentially all the balsa which didn't sell when Thunder Tiger bought Ace R/C. I've got several thousand board feet of over size rough cut balsa, and I'm processing it as I need it.

I'm saving up my shekels for a Delta thickness planer 'cuz I've seen those process balsa quite nicely.

My check book is pretty skimpy right now, after buying a 7'X16' tandem axle airplane trailer and a 2003 Ford E-350 XLT Super Duty van to pull it.

Then again, Santa has been _real nice_ to me these last few years, so maybe that thickness planer will be here toot sweet.