Simple Balsa stripper.

[wonwinglo]

Take a look at the prices of strip balsa and see how much that you save by doing the job yourself.

There are commercial balsa strippers available some of which work better than others but you can adapt a simple tool that you probably have already in your kit,what you need is the ordinary wood marking gauge,the sort that has a large stock at the end with a pin driven into the arm,take a warding file and get to work on the pin bringing it to a sharp edge,thin the pin out a bit while you are at it.

To strip your wood take the gauge in one hand and the balsa sheet in the other,slowly draw the wood downwards,this will effectively cut half way through the wood,turn the sheet over and do the same the other side,keep going until you have enough stock stripwood to do the job.

The marking gauge now doubles up for both marking and stripping wood with that small modification. :goodluck:

 

[Malcolm Fisher]

I've been using that method for best part of forty years - it must have saved me an awful amount of money.

Wonder where it all went?

Malcolm

 

[Kiwi]

The only problem with that style of stripper is that because the guide is only in contact with a 3" (or so) section of the edge curved strips are inevitable as the guide follows the curve that forms on the edge of the sheet, the x-acto hand held stripper suffers the same drawback.. My stripper has a guide that is 40" long and produces strips that are truly straight.

 

[wonwinglo]

A solution to this is to use a long length of brass curtain rail,drill one hole either end where woodscrews clamp it to a bench,slide the balsa sheet underneath,set the width,then clamp down the screws,draw a blade to cut the strips,provided the balsa is aligned against a set square and a simple jig to mark the widths there should be no problem,the simple stripper described is fine for making small scale models where there is not much length attached where convenience is the byword,for larger models something better is needed.