CoosBayLumber

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Resizing Balsa

Recently I came across a quantity of small pile of irregular and poorly cut sheets of balsa from a freight forwarding outfit. What I would like to do is to plane the stock down to standard and special fractional thicknesses using a household joiner.

Has anyone done this before?

My neighbor has a 6 inch wide joiner which can be utilized. Do the blades have to be ground to a certain angle? How sharp? What RPM or FPM range should be tried?


Wm.

BMatthews

I don't think this will work very well. For starters the blades would need to be razor sharp... literally. Ground and honed and finally stropped to a polished razor edge that you can literally shave with no pulling at the roots. Otherwise the wood will rip those fibers out and pile them up on the edge of the blade much like what happens if your razor plane blade is dull.

Secondly the pressure feed rollers are often toothed and I would think that the pressure will "print" into the wood too much if the wood is soft enough to be worth using.

I suspect you would be better finding someone with a thickness sander. And if the stock is thick enough start by resawing with a bandsaw.

Can you not just use the odd sizes as they are and fudge around the sizing?

blvdbuzzard

I will second the comment about the planer knives eating the balsa instead of cuting it. Just the air moving across the blades will pull the balsa in farther until there is no more balsa.

I have had good luck with panel sanders like this one. http://www.southern-tool.com/store/2...um_sander.html I have been able to take 1/16 inch and make 1/32 out of it. I use the sander at my brothers to do it.

Dru.