Okay, some amateur objective testing.
I cut 6 balsa strips from the same sheet of 36” x 6” x 1/16” balsa (actually all from one 12” end)
Strips each 1” x 12”
I alternated selection for raw, adhesive, and balsa
I sanded them to get the all even
I used label paper to paper both sides of two strips.
I used Aleene’s Tacky glue to paper both sides of two strips.
I put the glued strips in waxed paper in a book to dry. I had planned for overnite, but “life”/work happened, so it was 9 days before I got them out. To be consistent, I put the raw pieces and the adhesive label papered piece is the same book.
I didn’t weigh the strips before papering with adhesive or glue, but they are all the same size.
The raw strips averaged 2.0 grams each (we will call this 100%)
The Adhesive Paper strips averaged 3.7 grams each (185%, but remember we are starting with 1/16” balsa)
The Glued Paper strips averaged 5.0 grams each (250%)
Put another way, since each strip was covered on both sides, and was 1”x12”, additional weight from
Adhesive Paper 0.14 grams/square inch (both sides, sorry for mixing metric and English)
Glued Paper 0.25 grams/square inch.
Put one inch of end between magazines and used a 500 gram weight on top, moving it one inch at a time
For the raw, one broke at 4, other at 3. Both snapped quickly
For the Adhesive, both bent quickly at 3
For the Glue, both handled 3 fine, but bent slowly at 4.
I know, not a big sample size, and weird that the adhesive did less well than raw (I probably needed to use bigger pieces.)
Maybe I should try this with 1/8” balsa and larger pieces?
Anyway, can’t draw any statistically significant conclusions, but adhesive paper didn’t obviously provide any extra strength.
Oh yeah, testing was WITH the long axis of the grain. IMO, no type of typing or adhesive papering provides significant strength across the short axis.
Any suggestions on how I could test this better?
I will confirm
@neil_w ‘s note, when looked at carefully, I could just barely see the grain contour distortions on the surface of the glued paper (pretty minimal, but there). I couldn’t see any grain distortion with label paper.
So label paper is definitely easier to do and slightly better cosmetically than glue.