Balsa storage

[Gary Dowler]

I would be interested in seeing how everyone stores their balsa supply. Trying to make good use of space, and one of my biggest issues is going to be where to put all the balsa.  Pictures would be great.

Gary

[Tim Wescott]

You do not want to see pictures of my four or five or six (depending on how you count) stashes of balsa wood that are scattered through my shop.  I may not be the world's worst organizer of shops, but I am by no means the best.

Whatever else you do, you want to store stuff as flat as you can get it.  If you take a nice flat sheet and store it bent, then after a while you'll have a nice bent sheet.  Fortunately, if you take that bent sheet and store it flat, then after a much longer while you'll have a flat sheet again.  So my two or three otherwise random storage bins for sheet balsa are on shelves that are flat, and they're kept neatly stacked so they stay that way.  I have some really random storage for the scrap balsa, but those are lengths that aren't going to warp much, or matter much if they are warped.

[Mark wood]

You do not want to see pictures of my four or five or six (depending on how you count) stashes of balsa wood that are scattered through my shop.  I may not be the world's worst organizer of shops, but I am by no means the best.

Whatever else you do, you want to store stuff as flat as you can get it.  If you take a nice flat sheet and store it bent, then after a while you'll have a nice bent sheet.  Fortunately, if you take that bent sheet and store it flat, then after a much longer while you'll have a flat sheet again.  So my two or three otherwise random storage bins for sheet balsa are on shelves that are flat, and they're kept neatly stacked so they stay that way.  I have some really random storage for the scrap balsa, but those are lengths that aren't going to warp much, or matter much if they are warped.

I'll take on all comers in the worst organized shop challenge.

[Ken Culbertson]

I'll take on all comers in the worst organized shop challenge.

You are gunna loose 

[Mark wood]

You are gunna loose 

I'm not so sure but it would certainly be an interesting exercise. Although, I'm gonna say I have spent a lot of time working on trying to organize my shop. I actually even have space on my workbench to work.

[kevin king]

Gary, I have room for that balsa in my shop. 😁

[Dave Hull]

Gary,

I put up with mediocre storage for a long time.  Then a while back I attempted to organize my disastrous working spaces a bit. That didn't show much of a result, but I did end up building a wood storage cabinet that I'm happy with. A baltic birch plywood cabinet with birch moldings and trim. Fixed separators carefully worked out to try to match the sizes of the wood I expected to store. Now it is much easier to quickly look for the right piece so I'm spending time building something, not looking for something that is the right size, right weight, and not warped.

For guys with particular spouses, if you put a cabinet door on the thing, they'd just call it furniture. A place to put a doily or two and some chachkas or whatever they call them. I didn't have to disguise this one. But, it's a flat surface and you know what they say about those. This one seems to collect airplane kits....

In addition to speeding up things, it reduces the guilt from damaging precious balsa due to poor storage, warping, ruined edges, etc. Win-win. But, cabinet grade baltic ply isn't cheap. If I had this out in the garage, it would likely have been made of something else, but I wouldn't like it as much....

Dave

[Gary Dowler]

Gary,

I put up with mediocre storage for a long time.  Then a while back I attempted to organize my disastrous working spaces a bit. That didn't show much of a result, but I did end up building a wood storage cabinet that I'm happy with. A baltic birch plywood cabinet with birch moldings and trim. Fixed separators carefully worked out to try to match the sizes of the wood I expected to store. Now it is much easier to quickly look for the right piece so I'm spending time building something, not looking for something that is the right size, right weight, and not warped.

For guys with particular spouses, if you put a cabinet door on the thing, they'd just call it furniture. A place to put a doily or two and some chachkas or whatever they call them. I didn't have to disguise this one. But, it's a flat surface and you know what they say about those. This one seems to collect airplane kits....

In addition to speeding up things, it reduces the guilt from damaging precious balsa due to poor storage, warping, ruined edges, etc. Win-win. But, cabinet grade baltic ply isn't cheap. If I had this out in the garage, it would likely have been made of something else, but I wouldn't like it as much....

Dave

Dave, that looks great. What are the dimensions? 

Gary

[Michael Schmitt]

https://www.engineersupply.com/manager-37-rolled-document-storage.aspx?VariantId=ES97

[Dave Hull]

Gary,

The case dimensions on my cabinet are 18-1/2" wide, 30-1/4" high, and about 48" deep. I think this was the biggest case I could get out of one sheet of 1/2" ply. It does let you store and fully protect any 48" balsa you have. The top has birch edge molding on it, so that is wider than the case. The bottom has base molding, so it is about 1-1/2" wider than the case. I left the back open, as it seemed sturdy enough against the possibility of racking. The plywood edges of the front and back are finished with birch edge banding. I used a preglued version that you iron down. That worked fine and has held up well so far. The shelves are also 1/2" birch plywood; the partitions are something like 5mm luan plywood. The thing is dadoed together. Probably biscuits or a tenon on the top molding. I think the finish is Danish oil. I left the interior unfinished as I didn't want it contaminating the balsa.

One of the things that did come over from prior storage methods to this is the use of cardboard tubes to segregate and organize certain strip stock and similar. You can put all your balsa square stock in one. All your basswood strips in another. Piano wire, pushrods, carbon tubes in another. Separate it out until you run out of room. If you can't see your piece, pull out the tube and dump everything. Find it, then slide the preloaded tube back in.

It does ok with blocks but is not as space efficient. Most blocks are not 48" long. If you insist on shoving all the blocks you have into it, you have no idea what you have hidden in back, and they are hard to fish out. When things get pretty full, it is easier to put a sheet of paper underneath the sheet wood and leave a tab sticking out that you can pull out the whole stack. That also works between groups of sheets. For example, between a bunch of 3/32" sheets and 1/16" sheets. Pull the tab and all the wood on top--say all the 1/16"--slides right out.

I like putting all the thicker stuff on the bottom and thinner as I go up, then often put some good 12-14 lb "racing wood" on the very top of the stack to keep everything flat. The other thing I do is put the half-used sheets right at the top. In that case, no heavy full sheets on top as flatteners. Where this pays off is in 1/32" sheets which tend to wrinkle and twist with little encouragement. One-sixteenth does too, but not as bad.

Now if I could just get any other part of the modeling stash under control, like an out of the way rack for the MonoKote leftovers....

Dave

[Gary Dowler]

https://www.engineersupply.com/manager-37-rolled-document-storage.aspx?VariantId=ES97

Michael, thanks for this information. I did get a couple of these ordered.

Gary

[john e. holliday]

That is what I need for my plans.