Balsa Stripper

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JohnOSullivan
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Balsa Stripper

Unread post by JohnOSullivan » Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:41 pm

As an old time balsa model builder I have been staggered by the increase in prices of Balsa wood.
While the cost of sheet balsa is high enough, the cost of balsa strip wood is outrageous.
I have been cutting my own balsa strips for many years and it has many advantages.

1) by cutting strip from a single balsa sheet, it results in uniform consistency between the strips
2) results in big savings over buying individual strips.
3) very often it is not even possible to purchase individual strips especially if you need oddball sizes.

Commercial balsa strippers rely on adjustable holders which use Xacto blades and have to be adjusted for every size cut. Typical of these is the Masterairscrew Stripper https://www.masterairscrew.com/products/balsa-stripper . These work OK but the Xacto blade is thick and for finer strip cuts is too thick and crushes the balsa.

For many years I have been using my own strippers made up from basswood. They are made up as a combination of individual size strip cutters in a block. In the photos, you can see the various sizes. The nice thing about them is that you can go back, time after time, without adjusting anything and get the same size strips. I have a collection of these which can take sizes from 1/16"x1/32" to 3/16"x3/16 and another that can take 1/16", 3/32", 1/8" and 3/16" thick sheet to 1/4" to 1" wide strips. There is virtually no wear on the blades and they will last many, many years.

Lately I have been eyeing my 3D printer and figured I could combine many sizes of strip cutters into a single stripper unit.
There are some quirks in 3D printing, such as when I specify 1/8" thick cuts, it often gives less thickness, so I have to fiddle with the thickness to bring it to 1/8" precisely. This can be a tedious process to adjust over the full thickness range. The cutter as shown takes about 6 hours to print, so any adjustments add up into much printing time.
I have made up a test cutter, shown partially completed in the photos. Initially, I am using 0.015" OLAF snap-off blades (similar in thickness to Xacto blades). However, I'm not really happy with these and have some much thinner blades coming.
Will make the cutter available when bugs are sorted out.
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John
MAAC #5401 L
MACI (Ireland) IRL#26

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retiredVTT
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Location: Bedford, NS,CANADA
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Re: Balsa Stripper

Unread post by retiredVTT » Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:55 pm

Great post John, I mused over it and thought ...what would our late friend Steve W. say about this ... something like this I guess,

"It's a very good day, and all is right with the world, when a man wants to share his stripper..!"
Bill
HEFA #5
MAAC #13708

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