can’t see why not. Balsa is in the “hard wood” catagory. yeah, I know… it doesn’t feel like that.
Balsa is a bit like fibre glass. Add a good resin or dope to it and it is like concrete. I’ve seen balsawood planes collide with gum trees and the tree trunk came off second best !
If you want a REALLY cool idea for making bodies…. try this ………..
Start with a block of candle wax.
Carve it down to exactly how you want it to look,
OR
take an existing shell you want to modify and
push it into soft play dough and pull it out, then melt the candle wax into it. Vola ! you have a wax
template.
step 2. Take your wax ‘positive’ and mix up some plaster of paris. Place the wax model into it, but don’t submerg it.
Let the plaster set, when it is done, use a hot air gun, or hair drier or flame to melt out the wax.
you now have a ‘negative’.
Now you can use this as a mould for the shell itself.
You want to make sure your shell isn’t going to stick to the mould. use something like graphite, vasoline etc.
The material you use can be epoxy glue or fibreglass resin, with or without the fibre glass.
Pour it into the mould and add some sort of tag/handle that you can use to pull the shell out of the mould.
If you can’t pull the shell out, you will have to break the mould and your shell will turely be one of a kind.
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