Glue for Balsa Wood

Re: Glue for Balsa Wood

deanj

>From my years of building model sailplanes...

Good old yellow glue, thinned a tiny amount works really well. CA glues work too, but are a little less flexible. It depends on what you are going to be doing with the wood. Even Ambroid is great for long joints - like glueing up a sheet to skin a foam wing....

-D

Re: Glue for Balsa Wood

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Anything better than flour-and-water paste is going to be stronger than the wood. It's a porous enough wood that I'd think regular white glue, or the highly water-resistant TiteBond if it's going to be outside, should be fine, and it's an easy glue to work with.

Re: Glue for Balsa Wood

Jorge Castañeda~East Penobscot Bay

>Jodie,

In the now long gone days when I built flying model airplanes, we used "cement", it came out of a tube we bought at the model shop and it smelled strongly to some kind of slvent, it dried moderately fast and remained quite flexible. Check a model shop.

Jorge

default glue

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Hi Jodie,

I think our default glue should be hot hide glue. Despite balsa's low strength, it could be put together in ways that would overwhelm PVA (yellow and white glue). Pretty sure the manufacturer's recommended clamp pressure would crush your balsa. Without that clamp pressure, you may not get much strength.

Hide glue would give you all the strength you could ever want, plus its quick grab would allow for a fast assembly.

Adam

Re: Glue for Balsa Wood

Alan Hamilton

>Jodie,

A little less than twenty years ago was the last time I had to glue balsa, when I made a RC airplane. This required glue with high strength (obviously) and idealy, low weight. The hobby-shop guy recommended CA glues. They worked extremely well.

On another project, which required minimum strength, but needed to be easily assembled without clamps, I used a contact cement. I don't recall whether I used rubber cement or contact cement; either would have worked. I had no problems at all. The parts went together quickly and easily, and properly done, it even allowed some minimum adjustment before the fatal grab.

Alan

Re: Glue for Balsa Wood

todd stock

>CA for sticks, with baking soda as semi-structural filler.

Yellow glue works OK if you have all day for the stuff to dry and don't mind the high water content warping sheet stock (in other words, use CA for sticks and spray contact adhesive or epoxy for laminating).

For joints that have to move a bit, 5 minute epoxy does a good job without being too brittle.