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Normal Topic Cutting balsa wood (Read 5641 times)
pyro
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Cutting balsa wood
Aug 31st, 2019 at 7:45am
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Hi Team

My wife has a craft project underway that requires plenty of 8mm balsa to be cut in to square dimensional accurate lengths.

We are currently doing it with a craft knife and square and while it works, it's slow and tricky to get the cuts truly square.

Any suggestions?

I have been looking at mini table saws on Ali express which seems reasonable.

I can't help but think I am missing a few ideas though, ideas that are potentially cheaper and easier?
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #1 - Aug 31st, 2019 at 1:20pm
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hacksaw or wood saw with VERY fine teeth.   maybe an old school paper guilatine??? there must still be some around somewhere.it would probably squash one edge.try hack saw first and see how you get on.
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #2 - Sep 1st, 2019 at 6:00am
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I would do it on my bandsaw with the 10 tpi blade
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #3 - Sep 2nd, 2019 at 12:11am
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always just used a scroll saw or bandsaw good clean cuts
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #4 - Sep 3rd, 2019 at 6:20am
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Cheers team

I was in Bunnings yesterday and they had a couple of options of band saws there, and hey, if they are no good for balsa, at least I will have a band saw!
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #5 - Sep 3rd, 2019 at 9:33pm
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Have a look on trade me. Search Japanese dovetail saw.
Beautiful saw with very fine teeth, will cut it like a hot knife through butter.
If you have a few and you want the cuts perfectly square, you could buy a mitre fence of jig too, which will hold the blade exactly at 90 deg both across and up/down.
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #6 - Sep 9th, 2019 at 10:34am
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Hi Team

Update, I purchased a dove tail saw and fine toothed mitre was and box yesterday. (Got the bacho ones from mitre 10 rather than the Japanese one as per post above) the results were that they are too course for the cutting of balsa, across the grain.

Leaves a burr that by the time it's cleaned up takes about the same time as a Stanley knife. This was good to see as the mini table saw wood have been far too course, so saved some cash there...

Good news is that I have a brand new mitre saw and dove tail
saw!

Any one got any experience with a dremil (sp?) and the small circular saw blade attachments?

Thanks for the input so far.
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #7 - Oct 17th, 2019 at 7:13pm
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Hi there,
Cutting balsa can be time consuming. I built model aeroplanes for many years.
There are small hand-held saws with very fine teeth out there, like this one with interchangeable blades:
https://www.trademe.co.nz/building-renovation/tools/hand-tools/saws/listing-2353...
If you want a motorised version I'd shop at Hobby King, the go-to place for modelers.
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/mini-drop-saw-diy-assembly-kit.html
I guess in your case it depends on how many little pieces you want to cut, how accurate you want the angles to be etc...

Hope this helps!
  
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Re: Cutting balsa wood
Reply #8 - Dec 6th, 2019 at 5:24pm
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I've got a small laser cutter, but thats only really good for 3mm or so... But make some inquiries - maybee someone local has a 40w CO2 or bigger... will be fast and cheap if you can supply the gcode files.
  
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