Tips and Tricks for balsa wood
To use this type of wood safely, we recommend that you read the following tips and tricks on balsa wood.
First of all, unlike sugar glass, this wood is a natural product.
Consequently, the standard props or stunt props made of balsa wood that we supply, are all unique. In fact, each item has a different humidity level, a different density, structure and more or less different colour.
Depending on their use, balsawood props will probably require incision, so you know in advance where the prop will break off. There is never a 100% guarantee because there may be invisible, weak spots in the wood other than where you made the incision, but it does offer some degree of certainty. A Stanley knife works best for this.
As with the baseball bat on the left, you hardly notice there had been incision in the balsa wood after breaking the bat. In fact, with a little luck, you can glue the broken pieces back together. We recommend hot glue for that purpose. If you use normal wood glue, the glue can become stronger than the wood, and you will not know where the bat will break off.
Attention! Please take note!
- Balsa wood is very sensitive to humidity. This is partly due to the very open structure of this wood. So try to store balsa products in a dry place!
- All our balsawood materials are delivered without any finishing. This means that they are NOT lacquered, stained, painted or sprayed. A number of objects will have to be assembled or glued by yourself.
- Occasionally, there will be some (inevitable) foxing (damp mould), consisting of dark dots or stripes in the wood.
- Precisely in order to avoid foxing, we only buy our balsa wood at the last minute. Production may therefore take more time, so please keep this in mind.
- If you have any doubts about the proper and safe use of Balsa wood products, talk to your stunt coördinator!
