Boomilever B/C

[xiangyu]

Lol, this may seem like a weird question, but does anyone else bake your boomilever the night before competition? I've been doing this to get moisture out of wood and decrease weight but I wonder if it affects boom strength.

[CrispyFern]

Lol, this may seem like a weird question, but does anyone else bake your boomilever the night before competition? I've been doing this to get moisture out of wood and decrease weight but I wonder if it affects boom strength.

Does your boomilever absorb moisture in the time between baking and competition? In my experience it has so I haven’t been baking, but I think it’s a good idea. It shouldn’t affect the strength much at all if you don’t set the temperature too high. I’m not 100% sure so anyone else please chime in.

[kjlokesh]

@xiangyu. How long do you bake and at what temp?

By removing moisture completly, will it not make the wood brittle?

[dholdgreve]

Not sure about booms, but I bake my turkey at 350 degrees for 20 minutes per pound!...
Seriously, I'd worry more about the damage to the glue more than the brittleness of the wood. In northern colder climates, there is not much ambient moisture in the wintertime. As spring rolls around there may be a need, but even then, I'd recommend maybe taking a blow dryer to the competition, and working it over for maybe 10 minutes or so before weighing it inside a garbage bag. Keep in mind, this is very short lived. It may reduce weight by 1 or 2 tenths for 20 minutes or so, but will return to ambient humidity shortly. Personally, I don't feel it is worth the risk of breaking an X brace trying to get it in and out of the bag. Far better to spend this time going after the bonus in construction..

[xiangyu]

Not sure about booms, but I bake my turkey at 350 degrees for 20 minutes per pound!...
Seriously, I'd worry more about the damage to the glue more than the brittleness of the wood. In northern colder climates, there is not much ambient moisture in the wintertime. As spring rolls around there may be a need, but even then, I'd recommend maybe taking a blow dryer to the competition, and working it over for maybe 10 minutes or so before weighing it inside a garbage bag. Keep in mind, this is very short lived. It may reduce weight by 1 or 2 tenths for 20 minutes or so, but will return to ambient humidity shortly. Personally, I don't feel it is worth the risk of breaking an X brace trying to get it in and out of the bag. Far better to spend this time going after the bonus in construction..

Hmmm, I was thinking about baking it and then immediately sealing it in a box with lots of silicon dry packs. Should it pretty dry until I take it out of the box? In the past, baking it has decrease my weight anywhere from 0.3 g to 0.5 g from my memory (Which could be inaccurate lol)

I generally bake my boom at 170 Farenheit (lowest on my owen setting) for about an hour.

Does my settings damage the glue?

Xiangyu

[Lorant]

Would the added brittleness after baking/blow-drying aid structure in any way, or is the only added bonus for baking/blow-drying the marginal reduction in mass?

[dankdecidueye]

wait last year at nats did most people use the standard boomi design or did they use a tower chimney

[MadCow2357]

wait last year at nats did most people use the standard boomi design or did they use a tower chimney

I think tower chimney was the most successful.

[dholdgreve]

wait last year at nats did most people use the standard boomi design or did they use a tower chimney

Again, different strokes for different folks, but I'm a firm believer that the more joints a boom has, the more opportunity there is for failure. Wood, especially balsa wood is anything but homogeneous! There can be quite a range in densities within the same stick. As these sticks become smaller and smaller, these inconsistencies form a greater part of the stick.

In chimney type designs, there are probably 3 to 4, maybe more, times the amount of joints (i.e. opportunities to fail), plus they take much longer to build.

Charles Mingus once said "making the simple complicated is commonplace: making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity!" I tend to agree with Charles, keep it simple!

[xiangyu]

I'm sure this has been answered at some point previously in time, but is there a place where I can buy the testing apparatus seen at most competitions? If no, are there plans or guides for how to build one?