Has anyone ever stained balsa?

I did last year for the kits I assembled for my rocket classes. I wanted the fins to be colorful, but still be able to be glued - so prepainted fins were out. I used Rit dye, like was described in one of the Apogee newsletters. I haven't used wood stain, however.

I have with great success.
You can use leather dyes, many colors are available from Tandy Leather.
You can also use wood dyes in different shades of brown.

It looks best over wilder grained balsa.
If you use Carpenter's Wood Filler:
Sand the fin surfaces smooth and round the fin edges. Then fill the grain with CWF before applying the dye.
If you use Sanding Sealer:
Sand the fin surfaces smooth and round the fin edges. Stain the bare wood then fill the grain with sanding sealer.

Just be careful sanding a stained surface. You don't want to sand deep enough to remove the stain.

The CWF is water based and the stain will permeate it.
Sanding sealer will seal the wood and the stain coat will go on uneven.

I haven't tried wood stain either, but I did try using just plain old colored markers for a steampunked Nantucket Sound project in the works. Here is a picture of some practice pieces...

By the way, Jello... I sent you an IM about rivets.

Years ago, I stained fins on a BT20 sized rocket. I think I used minwax. Body tube was green with a black spiral pinstripe. It looked ok, but somehow it did not look like a rocket to me. May not have been the best combination of colors. Never did it again. YMMV.

Don

I used to stain balsa with a wash of India ink and alcohol to make aged planks for 1/35 scale dioramas. Depending on the piece of wood you can make it look like just about anything.

Since balsa is wood then it looks like wood.

Stained and tinted it. I've done a lot of carving (non-rocket stuff) in balsa. Pretty much like any other softwood species.

sooner.boomer said:

Stained and tinted it. I've done a lot of carving (non-rocket stuff) in balsa. Pretty much like any other softwood species.

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Balsa is a hardwood.

FatBoy said:

I haven't tried wood stain either, but I did try using just plain old colored markers for a steampunked Nantucket Sound project in the works. Here is a picture of some practice pieces...

By the way, Jello... I sent you an IM about rivets.

Click to expand...

This is pretty much exactly the look I was thinking of going for. What color marker is that?

Wish I had a picture of my Dads "woody" rocket. Covered the body tube in oak veneer and then stained everything. It was a hit!

awseiger said:

Wish I had a picture of my Dads "woody" rocket. Covered the body tube in oak veneer and then stained everything. It was a hit!

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Here's my "Wood Sprint".

The body tube is covered with Macassar Ebony veneer, the nose cone is Black Walnut, the Tail Cone is Osage Orange and the fins are balsa stained.

The launch lug is covered with Black Walnut veneer.

When I sprayed one side of the veneer with window cleaner it soaked in and curled up just right. I maintained the curl with tie wraps and when it dried the curve held.

I have some sanding to do on the fins yet then the whole thing gets covered with 3 or 4 coats of urethane varnish.

Wait until you see the decals I made for it!:wink:

Green Jello said:

This is pretty much exactly the look I was thinking of going for. What color marker is that?

Click to expand...

I actually used a few different colors, including a yellow highlighter, red, orange, and a few different browns in these experiment pieces. Once I found the recipe that gave me the look I was after I was going to write it down, but I never got further than this. Since then I have also been experimenting with some super thin zebra wood veneer.

Here is a quick test. I wiped some Minwax Mahogany Red 225 on a scrap piece with a paper towel. Looks good.

I have used Minwax and Zar stains on RC models.

Here's a link to that Apogee article on using Rit dye to color balsa. Good advice.
https://www.apogeerockets.com/education/downloads/Newsletter17.pdf

The short answer is yes.
The long answer is, many pieces here and there through several decades both for military models as Tarasdad mentioned, and for railroad models, using inks, thinned paints, shoe dye, and who remembers what else. While looking through things right quick found an 8oz can of Minwax Ebony stain that I don't recall its intended use or how long it has been there: apparently never been opened.
The rocket-specific answer is these Estes Big Daddy fins and I don't recall what stain was used; might even be colored shellac - fins have a little more of a honey-colored hue in real life than in photos.
Silver leading edge is from some kind of adhesive sheet from R/C plane supplies: umm, 'Monokote'? (I'm too lazy to Google it right now)