Hi folks,
I get lots of ideas. Many of them are dumb, some just don't work.
I'm always looking for better ways to seal/fill/strengthen my balsa (occasionally basswood) fins. My current go-to methods are papering followed by CA flooding, or occasionally just saturating with CA, or for simplicity just repeated coats of filler primer (fills, doesn't strengthen).
I had one method a few years ago where I mixed auto body spot putty with Minwax wood hardener. It worked, but took a while to set up. I moved on. Eventually landed relying on CA-based methods most of the time.
A couple weeks ago we were at a Halloween event at a local park, and there was a "mad scientist" who offered an invigorating tonic to a volunteer. "Just pour it in that styrafoam cup first" ... and the cup melted instantly. This was outside , but I nonetheless caught a whiff. Lacquer thinner, or something like it.
Now, there's no surprise to me that styrene melts in LT. But nonetheless it got me thinking... What if I made a mixture of LT and styrene, thin enough to soak into balsa, thick enough to build up...
Today I was working on an old project ... a Renegade-D (single stage version) from 4.5 years ago. It was a project I started with my older son, he lost interest, and I saved it for when he would be interested again.... that never happened, so I decided to finish it. You have to glue these pods based on plastic nose cones to balsa fins. It's a plastic-to-balsa bond you need. YEah, I know most people would use epoxy, but my epoxy takes a long time to set up, and the positioning of this bond is very finicky and pretty much has to held in place until it sets... I almost tacked it on with CA followed by epoxy fillets (and I would recommend that for anyone reading), but I decided to use plastic glue, which I've found sticks pretty well to balsa as long is it is thin and runny.
But all my plastic glue was dried up to a thick consistency. No use.
I decided to melt some styrafoam in LT and make my own plastic glue. So I took a polypropylene cup, put a splash of LT in it, and dumped a chunk of styrafoam in. FST! it melted and formed a blob at the bottom of the LT. A few more chunks of styrafoam went in. FSST! FST! Interestingly, the melted plastic didn't really seem to dissolve in the LT, it stayed as molten plastic with s specific consistency no matter how much I stirred. OK, still useful.
I got some on a Q-tip and used it as glue... it soaked into the balsa reasonably well, and bonded nicely to the nosecone plastic of the pod, and pretty soon I was all set. I only had to hold each piece for a minute or two.
I ran out of time but plan to come back to using this mixture, or a similar one with a different solvent blend, to fill some scrap balsa and see how it goes. Maybe acetone would work better than LT for this?
Has anyone tried this kind of thing, and if so do you have any experiences? I'm trying to combine ease of finishing to a smooth surface with a good penetrating capability. Yeah, probably I should just stick with CA, but as long as I'm using stinky things I might as well experiment with plastics.
Very interested to hear any experiences in this line of application.
Marc
I get lots of ideas. Many of them are dumb, some just don't work.
I'm always looking for better ways to seal/fill/strengthen my balsa (occasionally basswood) fins. My current go-to methods are papering followed by CA flooding, or occasionally just saturating with CA, or for simplicity just repeated coats of filler primer (fills, doesn't strengthen).
I had one method a few years ago where I mixed auto body spot putty with Minwax wood hardener. It worked, but took a while to set up. I moved on. Eventually landed relying on CA-based methods most of the time.
A couple weeks ago we were at a Halloween event at a local park, and there was a "mad scientist" who offered an invigorating tonic to a volunteer. "Just pour it in that styrafoam cup first" ... and the cup melted instantly. This was outside , but I nonetheless caught a whiff. Lacquer thinner, or something like it.
Now, there's no surprise to me that styrene melts in LT. But nonetheless it got me thinking... What if I made a mixture of LT and styrene, thin enough to soak into balsa, thick enough to build up...
Today I was working on an old project ... a Renegade-D (single stage version) from 4.5 years ago. It was a project I started with my older son, he lost interest, and I saved it for when he would be interested again.... that never happened, so I decided to finish it. You have to glue these pods based on plastic nose cones to balsa fins. It's a plastic-to-balsa bond you need. YEah, I know most people would use epoxy, but my epoxy takes a long time to set up, and the positioning of this bond is very finicky and pretty much has to held in place until it sets... I almost tacked it on with CA followed by epoxy fillets (and I would recommend that for anyone reading), but I decided to use plastic glue, which I've found sticks pretty well to balsa as long is it is thin and runny.
But all my plastic glue was dried up to a thick consistency. No use.
I decided to melt some styrafoam in LT and make my own plastic glue. So I took a polypropylene cup, put a splash of LT in it, and dumped a chunk of styrafoam in. FST! it melted and formed a blob at the bottom of the LT. A few more chunks of styrafoam went in. FSST! FST! Interestingly, the melted plastic didn't really seem to dissolve in the LT, it stayed as molten plastic with s specific consistency no matter how much I stirred. OK, still useful.
I got some on a Q-tip and used it as glue... it soaked into the balsa reasonably well, and bonded nicely to the nosecone plastic of the pod, and pretty soon I was all set. I only had to hold each piece for a minute or two.
I ran out of time but plan to come back to using this mixture, or a similar one with a different solvent blend, to fill some scrap balsa and see how it goes. Maybe acetone would work better than LT for this?
Has anyone tried this kind of thing, and if so do you have any experiences? I'm trying to combine ease of finishing to a smooth surface with a good penetrating capability. Yeah, probably I should just stick with CA, but as long as I'm using stinky things I might as well experiment with plastics.
Very interested to hear any experiences in this line of application.
Marc