Jason:
Basswood is a denser, and slighly heavier material, Which to use depends on what you are building.
most model rockets use balsa, to save weight, while the Basswood is a little heavier, it is a good bit stronger than Balsa, It has a much tighter grain, sands well, and fills much faster than Balsa. For very large wings and fins as with a 3X Ram-jet I got away with useing 3/32" basswood instead of 1/4" Balsa, in many flights I never broke a fin, When it crashed on the tarmac during an airshow, none of the fins were damaged while the model was destroyed, as a matter of fact I still have the fins waiting for a new body
For large light weight fins Like on a 3X upscae laser-X 3 D12 main, single C active upper stage, I used 3/16" Foam Core with 1/64" Birch Plywood "Aircraft Ply" cotact cement applied outer skins, Very Light, and Super Strong. For Micro-Maxx Scratch models and Small Scale models up to .736"Od (BT-20) .010",.015" and .020 waferglass, 1/16" & 1/32" Basswood and Cardstock built up fins. I'm working on a .281" body Scout-B with scale fins folded and CA'ed from regular print paper. As you can see the material really depends on the project. For my money, unless there is some very strong compelling reason to use Balsa for a project fins, I'd always go for the Basswood. Basswood holds edges and detail better also.
John
