Customer Reviews

Midwest Products Project Woods Balsa Economy Bag

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wood is scrap salvage. Not finish milled. Requires lots of extra sanding to finish. Many pieces starting to split and crack. Don't expect first quality balsa.

I am a big fan of Midwest's wood products--the ones sold individually on the rack at the hobby store. Those pieces are always pre-sanded/finished and look/feel great. This bag is full of nothing but rough un-sanded pieces (literally splinters coming off of them at all angles; that bad) which are good for only a few applications where scrap wood is needed. I create enough scrap with normal wood usage so I don't need a bag of scrap. I thought this would be a sampler bag of different wood sizes/shapes and while it is that, they are not of the same quality as Midwest's normal line of wood found at the local hobby shop. I can therefore not recommend this product to anyone looking for anything other than scrap wood pieces.

If you are into serious hobbies, or anything that requires really high quality wood, I would not recommend this bag at all.
It worked okay for what I needed, as I was just cutting up some wood to practice with, but for actual use, it's not really ideal.

There were a lot of really large chunks of wood, that you really couldn't do a lot of stuff with. If you're looking for a lot of thin slices, this really isn't your bad. Additionally, I know that balsa wood is generally fragile, but some of the thin strips had already broken by the time I received my package.

Overall, this wood wasn't really that high quality. It was very rough, and I've seen a lot better for a little bit higher prices.

I was expecting thin, small sheets of balsa wood, pre-cut for a classroom project. I got only a few 'slices,' the rest were blocks of wood taking up the one package, not practical or usable. Nothing could slice those blocks into sheets for practical use.

Finally,a place to buy balsa wood products in various sizes widths and lengths, nice combination of woods.I had been looking for awhile for these to use with model type tools.

My co-workers have been trying to convince me that Balsa is the strongest wood, and as an engineering major, I was skeptical at first. I decided to do a little research and purchased this item and did a little experimentation. The following is what I found.

It is a misnomer that the Japanese use bamboo for the majority of their construction, for I have found they often use Balsa in their minka. Students often model with Balsa wood because of its great strength, however, full-scale bridges, though structurally sound, cannot be built due to the economic unfeasibility.

Basswood is a similar wood type named after an equally resilient sound: bass.

The original Louisville Slugger was made of Balsa, but proved to be too expensive for the average ballplayer to afford (in those days the average professional baseball salary was $2000/year). In 2003, Sammy Sosa (an upper-tier salary superstar) tried to venture back to the Balsa bat after breaking too many hickory ones. The union was upset at this and accused Sosa of corking his bat to bury it under the table.

The U.S.S. Constitution had a thin layer of Balsa on the exterior hull which is attributed for why it was able to repel so many cannonballs. It earned the nickname "Old Ironsides" (as Iron is also the strongest metal known to man), because of this Balsa layer, for which it is fondly remembered. Similarly, the Red Baron's plane was constructed of Balsa, to which his success should be attributed. In fact, he died not of plane failure, but was mortally wounded from gun fire to his exposed upper-torso.

How anyone could question the resiliancy of this wood is beyond me. While some will argue the merits of the density of Red Oak, I would like to see someone bend a length of Red Oak into a perfect arch. In fact, the original design for the St. Louis Arch had it made of Balsa.

William Randolph Hearst used Balsa to floor his Hearst Castle (to rave reviews), but the trend proved a caveat to those without enough money to see their own housing project through. I do, however, highly recommend this (quite affordable) economy Balsa pack.