How To Bend Balsa Wood Sheets

You can get a bend radius of as little as two feet by bending 1 4 inch plywood whereas the minimum bend radius for 3 4 inch plywood is 12 feet.

How to bend balsa wood sheets. What i ended up doing is makeing formes in the shape that i needed to bend the balsa in. The lam will be the stronger of the two due to the small. I use a small bowl with a cup of water or so and a tablespoon of ammonia. Let balsa dry before removing from former.

Thats a tight radius to bend sheet. For more complex or tighter curves however use some. I then have a small sponge to throughly wet one side of the sheet. Anything can be the former.

The reason why we choose to bend balsa around such curves is for a couple of reasons strength balsa is strongest when the grain runs the length of the wood finish sanding with the grain produces a smoother surface economy it s cheaper to make a wingtip out of a strip of balsa than to use up a much larger sheet of balsa and having to discard the bulk of it. How to bend balsa wood. Right now they are still in the forms i am not sure now long to leave them in the clamps. Balsa wood is often the wood of choice when a woodworking project involves curves that require the wood to be bent.

I then soaked the balsa sheets with windex then i clamped the peices to the form. These radii increase if you bend the sheet along the grain of the wood instead of across it because splinters are more likely to form when bending along the grain. Special methods for bending balsa wood may not be necessary if the curve is a gentle one and the radius is large. Economy it s cheaper to make a wingtip out of a strip of balsa than to use up a much larger sheet of balsa and having to discard the bulk of it.

Stage 1 getting the wood flexible. The available methods of getting balsa to bend more can be broken down into the following sections. Quite frequently in. Find a jar can or a mailing tube to form the sheet around.

I used the windex method. The wood may conform easily. Just finished bending the balsa. I would use 2 laminations of 16th.

Soak balsa in water and tape around a round former of maybe 2 5 inch diameter. To form sheet balsa first i have the sheet to near net size. Another option is to soak the wood in water and ammonia for 24 hours. Food steamers are ideal and can be a good investment if you bend wood regularly.