Balsa or Bass

[yogoperson]

In my opinion, I'd stick to one type of wood. Mixing might earn you serious points and cost you even more.

[iYOA]

Because if a tower breaks it will be harder to distinguish why it broke with balsa due to so many different variable.

i think that with a little experience, a little bit of attention to details such as the mass of the balsa sticks used and a slow motion video, it is pretty easy to distinguish why a balsa tower broke.

Consistency with balsa is also not tough once you build lots of towers. I think that after 15 towers, you should be fairly consistent.

[Vizard007]

Because if a tower breaks it will be harder to distinguish why it broke with balsa due to so many different variable.

i think that with a little experience, a little bit of attention to details such as the mass of the balsa sticks used and a slow motion video, it is pretty easy to distinguish why a balsa tower broke.

Consistency with balsa is also not tough once you build lots of towers. I think that after 15 towers, you should be fairly consistent.

Yea, that sounds about right. Maybe a little low? But, I prefer not to use Balsa unless I personally hand pick every single piece and check the grain and weight and everything.

[iYOA]

Yea, that sounds about right. Maybe a little low? But, I prefer not to use Balsa unless I personally hand pick every single piece and check the grain and weight and everything.

yep, what we do is mainly check the mass of each stick but now we can also start testing stiffness. I suppose the best way to improve consistency is to make lots of mistake, have many premature failures and learn from them. if your tower breaks because it is crooked or because the top part is a fraction of a mm too wide (causing the loading block to slip right through under higher loads), and you eliminate those errors in future towers, it will significantly improve consistency and hopefully you will notice noticeable improvements in efficiency( and it feels sooo good!).

I also cannot stress the importance of building constantly enough. we built about 2-3 towers a week for 1.5 months and we improved so much. we went from getting a 5 to a 17.6.

[bmbw123]

Wow, 2-3 towers a week. I wish I was as dedicated as you haha . What I'm wondering is what wood densities you're using, because on the site I previously bought balsa wood from, the nice, light balsa wood that would be great for this event are all from $0.55 to about $1, and using 2-3 towers worth of wood per week seems like quite a bit of wood.

[lllazar]

Ha, i wish i had time to build 2-3 towers a week, ill stick to my 1 for now....

[iYOA]

what we do is split up the work and have one person specialize in making the top while the other specializes in the base. By now, we can each make our part in 2 hrs and it probably takes about 30 min to properly connect them. So, 2-3 towers a week is doable.

For the wood, we use the site balsawoodinc.com and i would say that the wood is pretty good. the first time we ordered, the 1/8^2 sticks were $0.17 and were 48in their weight varied anywhere from 2.4g to 3.5g, the 1/16^2 sticks were a similar price, same length and they averaged 0.7g to 0.9g. We were able to make 9g towers with these sticks so, they are not bad. for our second order however, the sticks were MUCH lighter; 1/8in sticks averaged to 1.4g and all the 1/16 in sticks averaged 0.5g and remember, these are 48in. on specializedbalsa, the equivalent sticks would cost around 85 cents and would be shorter in length.

[lllazar]

Its much harder when your partner is lazy and doesn't know how to build sadly....

But thats interesting, i actually order sheets and strip them...i will check that site out though.

[yogoperson]

Well, actually if you know how to use the balsa it'll work as good, if not better, than bass.

[GeekyGem]

Where do we get the material like Balsa Wood and Glue for the construction ? I live in San Diego.