The ailerons on my sig 4*60 kit are warped pretty bad and I have used water to straighten them, but when the water evaporates, the warp (of course) comes back. Would using a sealer to keep the moisture in and, in turn, elliminate the warp/keep it from coming back work or should I just get new balsa? Any tricks out there that work? Thanks a lot, this has been holding me up.

People have had success with denatured alcohol in the past. You need to soak the wood (or the area that needs bending) and bend it to the shape that you want and let it dry. I personally like acetone but try alcohol first. Remember the harder the wood is then becomes harder to reshape. sometimes heat also helps . Welcome our new friend to RC forum .

Thanks for the welcome. I'll see if I have some alcohol and give it a try.

I have a similar question. My aleron isnt warped, it's BOWED. Bowed, not laterally, bowed like, if I fit it to my TE one side will look beautiful, but the other side ends up 3/4 an inch away.

Bleach also works well.

rbeck

There seems to be a bit missing here...

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but after whatever treatment you give the offending part-

You gotta stick it down somewheres good and flat while it dries out thoroughly.

My practice is to pin parallel 1/2sq strips on my building board, and then pin or band the offending piece on top. This allows both sides to dry at much the same rate and (I hope) keeps drying stresses to a minimum. Oh, this is an ideal use for the world famous T-bone pins

Some people put a compensating opposite warp into the piece while it is drying. Personally if it is that bad it is better to get a new part.

Finally, no amount of warping twisting or anything like that will take out a warp that is caused by or in a lamination. So if you laminated a warp into something it aint gonna come out again.

I just make new ones....nice and straight, every time.

You might try soaking the wood in ammonia and then hold it in the shape you want. When I was a graduate student in the Wood Science department at Colorado State, we would take 1/8 in thick oak strips and soak in liquid ammonia (under an exhaust hood in the lab...don't try this, the vapors are poisonous!) and we could tie the wood in knots. After the ammonia vaporized, the wood would stay in that shape. Ammonia plasticizes the lignin in the wood. Lignin is what holds the wood cells together, and is what is dissolved out of wood chips to make pulp for paper.

What I can't tell you is how much lignin is in balsa wood. it is a tropical hardwood and different anatomically than our domestic woods, but I suspect that any solvent with ammonia in it, like windex, would help bend the wood. The more ammonia the better. In fact, you might just try straight ammonia. I have used windex to spray on sheet balsa as I formed the front of a wing and it helps keep the curvature.

Give it a try,

Terry Brown
Wood Science and Engineering Dept.
Oregon State University

A clarification to the post I just made. The ammonia used to bend the oak was gaseous ammonia cooled with liquid nitrogen until it was liquid. That is why it was so easy for the wood to hold its shape. As soon as the wood was bent, the ammonia gas vaporized and left the wood in the shape it was bent into. The ammonia liquid you buy in the store is not the same. if you use that kind of ammonia, it will not be as effective, but it still should work. It will take a while for the wood to dry.

Terry Brown

Thanks for the help guys. I'm going to shoot to the hobby shop tonight to get some new wood. I've never had to buy any balsa; how expensive is it?