Nick,
This wood sounds like a few planks I got from Stan Chilton when he
was unloading a heavier than specified shipment from New Guinea. They
are milky white with very straight uniformly dense grain. It may be
just my planks, but the grain "pattern"/"texture" reminds me of Luan
(fake mohagany). Mine are pretty bendy pretzels so they are used in
carved props. As Stan noted, it's beautiful looking wood.
I've heard another tangent to the "genetically modified" story where
real planes are using low density balsa in decking composites. An
Austrailian manufacturer does market these for alternates to phenolic
honeycomb/carbon composites.
Bruce in Seattle
--- In Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com, "Nick Aikman"
<nickaikman_at_h...> wrote:
>
> I haven't seen a piece of balsa like this for a long time!
>
> Veering slightly sideways, in Europe, much balsa now originates in
> Australasian plantations and comes through Eastern Europe to get
> here. I've noticed that this material tends to be whiter than
normal
> and some 'hobby shop' wood and sheets cut specifically for indoor
> are very stiff. Much of Charles Leeson's wood was like this and I
> also hear that the wood is genetically modified specifically to be
> stiffer than usual.
>
> Nick. (Still believing that the next piece of balsa I buy will be
> the most perfect piece in the world!).
>
> Balsa trees which sways severly in the wind when growing will
> have 'wind
> > check' marks in them and make the wood act this way. If you hold
> that
> > sheet up to a bright light, you will probably see faint darker
> lines
> > going across the wood grain or at an angle, and the wood will
> crack at
> > these areas very easily. I give wood like this to my son to play
> with.
> >
> > Don
> >
> >
> > > off a piece and it immediately splintered into 1-2 inch
> fragments. With
> > > a little magnification, you can see a very weird grain pattern
> that runs
> > > at a slight angle to the sheet. Where this crosses the edge of
> the
> > > sheet it breaks. The wood is also an odd color- it's almost
> gray, as if
> > > it had weathered. My question is, what can I do with it?
> > > Nicholas Huang, Boise, ID
> >
>
Received on Sat Jan 21 2006 - 09:26:38 CET
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:44 CET