Where to get balsa?

Barker
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Where to get balsa?

Post by Barker »

In the beginning of the year my team bought a whole bunch of balsa from a supplier online (I forget which I'll check when I get back to school) but when it got in it turned out just to be terrible wood, all of it was really heavy or extremely light a flexible and most of the planks either had knots of were spitting. Needless to say, we delegated most of it to thermodynamics and threw the rest out, or rather left it sitting in the box untouched for the last 4 months.
So since then I've just been going to hobby lobby and hobby town for wood when ever I need it but I'd prefer to get another big order.
Does anyone know of someone I could order from that has reliable wood and a reasonable price or should I just keep going to the ol' hobby store.

PS. Sorry if this has already been discussed already but I didn't really want to sort through hundreds of pages of forums.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Julian »

For things like this, I find that the search feature can be your best friend. As you can imagine, it is a fairly common question and it has been answered many times before.

Specialized Balsa is one of the most popular online stores among Olympians. They are relatively cheap, and you can specify the exact weight per stick for certain dimensions. We've been using them for a few years now, and we have been quite satisfied with their quality of wood.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Balsa Man »

I agree with Julian on both counts:
Specialized Balsa is the best I know of; that's who we use.
Search feature gets you what you're looking for without reading "all the rest."

BTW, This question was last asked (and answered) within the last few weeks, here on the towers thread, so checking maybe 10 pages would have gotten you your answer, not "hundreds of pages."
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Barker »

Search feature gets you what you're looking for without reading "all the rest."

BTW, This question was last asked (and answered) within the last few weeks, here on the towers thread, so checking maybe 10 pages would have gotten you your answer, not "hundreds of pages."
I'm just going to have to snark at you for a minute, and I apologize beforehand to those to whom this is not intended:

First of all after I had been introduced to the search feature, by the kind replier before you I tried to find a second opinion using that method, however, I could not find the proper keywords that would retrieve relevant discussion. Search is not infallible.

Second of all I was able to find the closest I could find to my question being previously answered using the keyword "specialized", that however turned out to be a two blurb long note that even if I had read a few more pages of forum I likely would have missed. Also that blurb was in the Design section of the towers forum where I would think it would fit better under the heading of "General Discussion"

Thirdly, for the sake of being able to follow a conversation I generally read from beginning to end, not backwards, so yes I would have had to read the entirety of the general discussion, before maybe going on to the design forum or else having to revert to previous year's forums. So yes I would have to do a lot of reading.

In conclusion, I generally did not appreciate your attitude in your response to my question, which may have been overlooked had you said anything constructive besides "I agree with the last guy". Looking back on previous forums I see that you often exhibit similar behavior and would hope that in the future you think things through a little bit attacking anyone with a question that you think is "below you" particularly because it seems that you are so knowledgable in the subject of towers that you have no questions of your own and thusly appear to have no reason to be on the forum except to aid others.

Furthermore, I would like to here other opinions on the subject of balsa suppliers (not that I don't trust the opinion already provided on Specialized Balsa), just of ra little bit of comparison and also to see if anyone else can share any caveats with particular suppliers.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by LKN »

Duplicate post, deleted
Last edited by LKN on February 21st, 2012, 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by LKN »

Barker,

BalsaMan is simply trying to get across a point. Too many people just sign up to the forum to get their one burning question asked and answered, and while BalsaMan and SLM (main contributors, along with admins) love to give out advice and help builders, the olympians with questions that have already been answered appear... well, somewhat frustrating. I am not saying that you didn't support your reasoning with your question, but have an idea where people who have "been around for a while" have to put up with. Everyone is new at some point, and reading through the forum (for me, the last whole 3 years) is the best way to get acquainted with the forum. Again, not supporting the argument at hand for either side, but just to give insight on why BalsaMan answered the way he did.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Barker »

Yeah, sorry about that, with the people I go to school with, that's kind of an automatic response for me sometimes (so much pretentious!), and I understand the frustration that can occur for frequent contributors, but if the forum is not for questions, then what is for? Regardless, few people set out to make things difficult for others, so why make it difficult for them, as the frequently asked questions are often the most simple, they are not that hard to answer beyond the tedium.
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Balsa Man »

Barker wrote:Yeah, sorry about that, with the people I go to school with, that's kind of an automatic response for me sometimes (so much pretentious!), and I understand the frustration that can occur for frequent contributors, but if the forum is not for questions, then what is for? Regardless, few people set out to make things difficult for others, so why make it difficult for them, as the frequently asked questions are often the most simple, they are not that hard to answer beyond the tedium.
In E-mail and posts on forums, it is very easy to read things in that the poster/sender did not intend; to misinterpret attitude, intent, etc. It's the nature of the beast.
You read pretentiousness into my post, I read a disrespect for other's time into yours. I don't think, in either case, the reads were entirely correct.
Yes, the forum is for questions. Beyond that, it has developed into a tremendous resource- a library of information. But to use that resource, you have to use it- put your time in reading/reviewing.
Enough said
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Julian »

Barker, I do sympathize with Balsa Man and the other regulars on this forum. They put a lot of work and effort in their discussions and have been helping Olympians for a number of years now. At the beginning of this season, in preparation for Towers, I actually went back and read all of the posts from previous years of Towers and Elevated Bridge. It literally took me a couple weeks to crawl through the pages and pages of discussion. Every year the same questions come up without fail. It was tedious enough reading through the same questions over and over again, but I have always admired the fact that these guys still take the time to answer them. If you stick around here and gain a little experience in Towers, you'll soon realize what a wealth of knowledge they bring to the table.

I repeated your search using "specialized" as a keyword, and you are correct that very few helpful entries are returned. I apologize for not checking myself. The truth is, this question has been answered a number of times, but apparently only in previous years threads. At the bottom of the main index of forums, you can find the archives that go back to 2009 and older. This is only the second year of Towers, but balsa events have been around every year, and a lot of the same principles and engineering still apply today. If you search through the 2011 Towers Forum, for "specialized" you'll find that there was a thread discussing just that here. If you feel like you need a second opinion, many other veteran builders have vouched for Specialized Balsa there, as well as provided a few other alternative sources.

I was wondering if we could take steps to prevent this miscommunication in the future. I think that Balsa Man, SLM, and the others' would much rather spend their time discussing tower ideas and strategies rather than answering common questions from newcomers. Do you think making a stickied page that lists and answers FAQs would be helpful or not? On one hand, it may answer the most common questions, e.g. what type of glue to use, where to buy balsa, what are common dimensions, etc. On the other hand, people may demand answers to "trade secrets" like what's the best kind of bracing, what density do you use, how do you test your wood for stiffness. I understand a lot of that is readily available in the discussions, but I think part of the beauty of this forum is that if you really want to know the answer, you have to put in a little bit of effort to search for it. Having everything spoon-fed isn't going to spark creativity or bring in better discussion. Any opinions on this matter?
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Re: Where to get balsa?

Post by Balsa Man »

Well said, Julian; thanks.
I like the sticky FAQs idea. Some mechanism for making it easy to get beginner questions answered It is a bit of a pain, both for info seekers and providers, dealing with the same basics over and over and over.

The thing that...gets me grouchy sometimes are posts that come across as "hey, I don't have time to dig thru", or "I don't want to take the time- what's the answer?; spoon feed me." That's asking- sometimes almost demanding - that someone take their time. It carries an implication that you have decided your time is more important, more valuable, than theirs..... Particularly when the question has been asked a zillion times, and maybe been answered a few pages back, its easy to snap back with the standard, "take a little time to read what's here." The wiki is certainly a possible way to deal with this kind of stuff. Great for things that are.....totally straightforward- like where do you buy good balsa, what are the basics of glueing. Not so good for things where opinion (and successful experience) varies... That's clearly "forum stuff" - a bag of ideas and experiences to draw from.

Part of science and engineering- a really important part - is research. On any topic, in any field, today's knowledge and understanding is the sum total of what has been developed by everyone. Anyone setting out to apply "what's known", and/or to advance what's known needs to know what's known. Not that many years back, it was very difficult to do that- to "review the literature." Very hard for anyone who has grown up with the web to grock how different it was, and what a powerful tool on-line access to accumulated information has become.

In our little corner of the world of science, we have created "the library" of this forum. I think learning how to use it (along with other on-line, and not on line resources) is a critical, and important part of "doing" science-o. I think it is important both as part of the competition - figuring out "winning angles"/ideas, etc., and as part of learning important life skills. It used to be that you needed to know how to navigate a library; now its how to navigate the web. It used to be resolving the .....validity of a fairly limited set of books and journal articles, now its filtering through a lot of information to find what you're looking for, and to figure out what's good information, and what is....not so good, or even trash.

The amount of information available (on-line) to everyone has exploded. In science, and about everything. An inherent problem is that anyone can put information on-line, and the challenge becomes figuring out the validity. News, politics, science- same problem; who is....off the wall, and who is right-on. Back to our little world here- the body of info developed here is a mix of noise, chatter, mis-information, great insights, detailed how to information, multiple approaches to a given problem that have worked for someone, etc. Learning how evaluate; to find and pick out and use good information out of an information cloud is both a key to doing well, and a skill that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

I'm not, btw, suggesting that I think the info I post is uniquely, or especially, or totally good. As I often caveat what I have to say, "this is just what we think we've learned, how we currently do it." Every year, we learn new things, from what we do/try, and from what we learn, and insights we get from the discussions here. An awful lot of that learning has come from the discussions and ideas on this forum - reading, thinking about, considering, playing with. For the value received, I feel I owe value back; more than glad to try to provide that. Only once, and that was a number of years ago, did we approach real nation competitiveness (as far as I could tell from reported nats results). I continue to be amazed at what the folk that win at Nationals are able to do. We do have a decent handle on how to be very competitive at a State level, and how to do that in an efficient way, that minimizes the time demands on the students, and I try to share that openly (while not giving away cool new ideas/approaches the team may have discovered till late in the season).
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