I’ve seen very little here on the forum so far about balsa kits, & I was wondering
if anyone still built them. They seemed to be more popular 30 years ago when I
was a kid. I only ever built --or tried to build–one kit myself, but I marveled at the
skill that it must take to build a good looking balsa aircraft. It would seem to me
that the possibilities for realism & detail are somewhat less in this genre, although I’ve noticed that there are some really huge, bodacious kits out there
for sale by Guillow’s. So what are the attractions, potentialities & pitfalls of balsa
kits? I’ve always been curious. Any balsaheads out there?
I have finished a 1/4 scale P-40E, 8 channel with retracts and anti flutter control, powered by OSMax .60, a Spirit of 76 soarer, a should wing sport and a sport scale A-10 ducted fan from some plans that came in a RC modeler magazine. Problem is I cannot find time to fly them.
Built em 50 years ago or so as a kid. Spend weeks building one, then destroy it on it’s maiden flight. Went from freeflight to control line and a breif stint with RC over the years. Been at least 30 years since my last one.
Just finished a p47 razor with 30" wing span powered by electric motor. fun to fly in the front yard.
Thad
They are truly wonderful kits! I love working on the ol’ stick-and-tissue balsa kits. I built my first one when I was about 12. I’m 33 now so they aren’t always for the “old timers.” My wife got me the Guillow’s Stearman kit for Christmas and I am so chomping at the bit to build it! The time constraints of having a new little baby in the house has cut my modeling time down to about an hour per month though. No lie.
You asked what the attractions are among other things. I love them for several reasons. While I am a die-hard plastic scale plane builder, it does not compare to the feeling of taking some balsa wood pieces and constructing a beautiful work of art from them. And they really are works of art. I feel like an actual “builder” of a model more so than just assembling pre-made plastic parts. It also accomplishes two things: Not only have you constructed a model of an interesting subject, but it can also fly if you want it to! I also love the feeling of great accomplishment I get when I finish a nice balsa plane. Perhaps above all else that is the one aspect which brings me happiness from working with a balsa kit.
Eric
PS. Not too many pitfalls. The one big thing you have to look out for is realizing your completed wing or fuselage structure is now glued to the wax paper overlying your plans! LOL! If you haven’t built a balsa kit in your life you owe it to yourself to try it just once. I’ll bet you’ll love it!
I’ll still build the occasional SIG plane, but the Guillows stuff never flew that well for me.
I built many of them as a kid, unfortunately, they didn’t survive the move out here. Why would the movers put them at the bottom of a box? I packed everything else myself, but overlooked the stick-and-tissue planes. Bummer.
Dan
Thanks for your input, guys, & especially you, Echolmberg–a very inspiring post.
I have built a couple in the past few years. I find them simple enough to build and they can come together quite quickly.
In order to be good flyers uniformity and balance are key. My first one had uneven dihedral and I can hardly say it flew. My later ones are much better.
I have a 1/8th scale Corsair ready to finish powered by a ST.75, flaps, and retracts. I fly a 1/5th scale P-51 with a OS .120 4cyl. Currently rebuilding a Piper Cherokee that I crashed two weekends ago. This is my “other” addiction. RC aircraft and boats.
Building from scratch is becoming more and more popluar because the of advent of ARFs. Many people don’t want a plane that looks like the next guys, and kits are getting scarce, so if you want to build a certain subject, you buy or draft plans, and build it from scratch. I’m researching now the idea of scratch building a 1/5th scale P-36. This will have a plywood frame and be sheeted in balsa, covered in fiberglass, and painted.
I owe my scratchbuilding skills to the old stick and tissue kits. I miss going to K-Mart or Woolworths and buying the Guillows and Sterling kits and putting them together over a weekend and getting them all smashed up the following week. Then doing it all over again.
My wife wants me to just have one addiction, which one to chose plastic,balsa…plasic,balsa… I have no choice I must do both.
Thad
Moby,
If I could I’d like to recommend a balsa kit. Dan is right when he said that the Guillows kits are a bit touchy to fly. I, too, have had trouble with some of their scale kits in the past. However, about six years ago I decided to skip the scale and look for a plane that looked like it was designed to be a GOOD FLYER. I bought the Guillow’s Arrow. It went together fairly quickly and the simple shape of it made it a breeze to cover (and I’m not the world’s best cover-putter-onner! LOL!). I took it out late one night to give it a test fly. I did it under the cover of darkness because I didn’t want anyone to witness my failure if the thing took a nose dive. Anywho I wound up the rubber band, gave it a toss…and it went up and up and up in the most gentle of turns! It stayed up for a nice long time; more than long enough to satisfy me. In fact I was wondering if it was going to come down! It finally met its demise several months later when I wound the band too tight and SNAP! The snapped band pretty much shredded the innards of the fuselage and the tissue. I need to purchase another one because that was a beautiful plane.
Best wishes!
Eric
I’ve started a ‘tradtion’ with these kits. I build one a year. We usually spend our summers (weekends, anyways) at the cabin/cottage and I usually take one of these up to the lake with me. I haven’t painted or finished one off yet, just built them up and then got the rubber band wound up! The first one had several good missions, but ended up with just a few too many bad landings. The second one was a Piper Cub and really turned out nice. Flys really well, and is still in pretty good shape (a few ‘patch’ jobs and some extra balsa where there were a few ‘injuries’).
So, this will be year 3 of what I hope will be a fun tradition. My son will be 2 years old this year, so he should get a kick out of seeing them fly around this summer!!
They’re a nice change from the plastic and can be a lot of fun.
Murray
Check out this link…http://www.renderwurx.com/rc/SBD/index.htm
What an amazing build!
I scratch built a Bf-110 and a spitfire at 1:72nd scale from balsa using the plans from the plastic kits. They actually flew pretty well. The wings were solid sheets of balsa, which I sanded to the correct shapes. The fuselage and wing engines were sanded down from a long thick rectangular piece of balsa. I also made free spinning propellors and used screws in the engines to get the CG correct.
This was a long while ago, (I was about 14) but I remember the Bf-110 porpoising wildly on it’s first flight, because the tailplanes were directly level with and therefore in the turbulent wash of the main wings. I moved them up and it flew a lot better.
…hmmmm…maybe I should try this again…[^]