scratch built balsa buidlings

[gregc]

how easy is it to build a realistic looking wooden building from balsa. are the walls simply balsa sheet, or would it be more realistic to somehow texture the sheet to make it look like individual boards, or possibly even cutting up teh sheet and glueing them back together?

and what about other wood used in building, is it difficult to find balsa in the proper size (1/16"x1/16") that looks like a scale 4'x4' or 8'x8'?

and what about stain/painting, how realistic does painted balsa look?

 

[rlundy90]

Basswood is a much better choice for model structures. It glues, carves, stains much better than balsa. It comes in all shapes and sizes for all scales.

 

[Larry]

I've found over the years that balsa tends to soak up paint or any kind of stains you apply. It's also very flexible unless you put a backing of some other kind of wood. I've always tried to use a stiffer wood, like old panneling or a birch or Luan. If you have a hobby shop or a Hobby Lobby near by, U can usually find the right scale of lumber to use, especially for board & batten siding. Many years ago I acquired about 25 hundred wood stir sticks & I've been trying to use them up ever since. Some of the other forum members probably have diff. idea's about Balsa.

 

[NH Mike]

Being a soft wood balsa tends to have a fuzzy surface unless you use sanding sealer or model airplane balsa dope. Cut outs for windows, etc also tend to end up with the fuzzys. As has been mentioned balsa soaks up paints and stains like a sponge because it is so dry. The sanding sealer or dope helps reduce this too. More so than bass wood or other preferred hobby woods balsa will warp badly unless both sides of it are sealed equally well. Even then it isn't perfect. The most common grade of balsa is the blonde colored standard grade you can find everywhere. A more rigid and denser grade is cut from the heart wood and is a reddish brown color. The airplane guys often use the heart wood grade where more strength or hardness is needed.

 

[rlundy90]

Hard balsa, the kind airplane modellers use for wing spars, isn't too bad for painting, but why would you want to use it when there is such a variety of scale wood available at hobby stores and online. In HO scale you can get scale lumber from 1x2s to 12x12 as well as sheet stock clapboard, board and batt and scribed, plus much, much, more.
Balsa is really much better left where it works best, as a very lightwieght, and incredibly strong building material for model airplanes and boats. I think it would be a very good material for building things like trestles, though.

 

[NYW&B]

how easy is it to build a realistic looking wooden building from balsa. are the walls simply balsa sheet, or would it be more realistic to somehow texture the sheet to make it look like individual boards, or possibly even cutting up teh sheet and glueing them back together?

and what about other wood used in building, is it difficult to find balsa in the proper size (1/16"x1/16") that looks like a scale 4'x4' or 8'x8'?

and what about stain/painting, how realistic does painted balsa look?

As others have already pointed out, basswood is far superior for building structure models. Likewise, whereas balsa comes only in a small range of "stick" sizes, or as plain sheet stock, basswood can be purchased in a very wide selection of accurate scale dimensions (2x4's, 2x6's, 4x8's, 12x12's, etc.) and as sheets milled into the shape of scribed, clapboard, novelty, board and batten sidings and other shapes. It also takes both paint and stain better than balsa does.

I have scratchbuilt numerous highly realistic HO structures from basswood, an example illustrated below, that would have been quite impossible to replicate using balsa.

NYW&B