I had just completed a couple of planes, and was "straightening up" the shop area, when I found a piece of balsa that had been stashed away. It is a 28 inch long remnant of a 1/2" x 4" sheet from SIG, and the ink stamp on it reads 65 cents.
 I've had this one for a while, huh? Do you guys have any old, good balsa in your supplies?

I have a good bit of Testors sheet out of a storage area.  Some of it is not too bad. 

I bought a 3x3x36 piece around the mid 80s. I just cut into it for my latest airplane. now I am down to 2x3 x36. One has a split several inches deep. Still have a piece of light ply bought at the same time that is 1/4x12x36. I don't have much use for it. If i need that thickness I will usually laminate  two 1/8 pieces or use a combination of light and birch ply. I might use the 1/4" to make part of a new flight box.

Ken

Sig 1/4" x 3" x 36" was 38 cents in a September 1961 copy of American Modeller.

Occasionally I still find in a scrap bin (I have lots of balsa scrap bins...) a piece of balsa from a supply that my dad found back around 1947 or so.

It seems that after the war many of the fighter planes that were brought home were being scraped in New Jersey. Before scraping them, all the salvageable stuff was stripped out. The gas tanks were also removed to prevent water contamination I suppose. It seems that after stripping the planes, they were put on a barge and towed out to sea for dumping. The tanks had been wedged in place in the planes with large blocks of extremely light balsa. Dad told me that for just a very few dollars he was able to purchase a good-sized truckload of these balsa blocks.

I remember when I was very young that the rafters in the basement of our house were stuffed with huge blocks of balsa. Dad shared a lot of this wood with his fellow Union Model Airplane Club members, but there was still a large number of blocks left to store and use.

As the years wore on, I started to use this balsa in my stunt models. The majority of the blocks were in the 3 1/2 to 5-pound density range, and I remember that there were lots of fungus marks throughout them. This was extremely light wood!

In the 1970's I was still using this wood for the top and bottom blocks, the cowl blocks, the wing tip blocks and other parts in my planes, and also sharing it with my fellow stunt fliers in the Garden State Circle Burners club. We built a lot of very light models using that wood and it lasted a long time. Near the end of the supply we started using it just for top and bottom blocks, but there was a lot of scrap generated, and I saved every piece! Again, some of it still turns up at the bottom of a scrap bin.

I'm fairly certain that I will never again see balsa that light!

Bob Hunt     

Well, my oldest plane still flying was built in 1962.  I'm not going to take it apart to check the balsa prices.

F.C.

Hi Floyd,

My oldest, still flying plane was also built in 1962, but it was a Veco kit.  IIRC, the price was 7.95.  It is a Smoothie.

BIG Bear
RNMM/AMM

In my wood bin I found 7 sheets of SIG Contest 1/16"x3"x36" for 32¢.

Roger

There is much to be said for "Contest Grade" balsa and I used to buy a lot of it years back.

However, it has one drawback for me is that it is often very delicate.  Case in point, one of the many kits I recently bought from custom producers came with beautiful, light balsa.  The box was so light, I wondered if I bought an empty one.

Down the road as the airplane was nearing completion, I became aware of the many cases of hangar rash on the profile  fuselage, just from jigging and handling.  Sanding the first coat of primer off revealed many small dings, reminding me of the "death by a thousand cuts" story.

The wood was absolutely  perfect when it came out of the box.  Not so after I got my Neanderthal mitts on it.  It took so much spot putty, it reminded me of pigs in a blanket.

I really need to sand the calluses of my hands and trim my nails much shorter.