Does anyone have a picture of a balsa tree?

All these years I've been building with balsa and I don't know what the tree looks like, where it grows or how tall it gets. With all the extremes guys go to in building planes and engines why is there no one growing their own balsa?

Balsa is interesting. It's been twenty years since I researched this stuff but I once read that balsa is actually more of a large weed than a tree, and can grow to 40 or 50 feet in six years. This makes it possible to grow balsa on renewable plantations instead of cutting forests. Years ago it was reported that the main consumer of balsa was the airliner manufacturing industry, consuming vast amounts as filler for laminated floor panels (aluminum/balsa/aluminum sandwich).

Balsa was also used for cores of composite helicopter blades and even as equipment encasements for early space probes. In WWII it was used for thousands of Navy life rafts and floats. I've even found the stuff inside life preservers.

Bill Groman

>
>Balsa was also used for cores of composite helicopter blades
>and even as equipment encasements for early space probes. In
>WWII it was used for thousands of Navy life rafts and
>floats. I've even found the stuff inside life preservers.

The first "balsa crisis" that I remember was in the early - mid 1970s. Prices doubled and tripled, and it was hard to get good wood. Apparently, balsa was used as an insulator for large tankers that transported LNG. The shipbuilders needed something other than foam, as leaks or the presence of residual gas would accelerate the deterioration of a petroleum based insulation. So, they used balsa. Lots of balsa. Forests of it.

Balsa prices never really recovered. I still remember going to the hobby shop to buy another Ringmaster kit and finding the price had jumped two bucks. I didn't have enough in my pocket. My scratch building days started then and there.

I've heard that a good bit of balsa is now being grown in the South Pacific. Anyone have any facts on it?

V/r

>
>>>Also, balsa is a hardwood, botanically speaking.
>>
>>
>>Hardwoods are classified as the trees that shed their
>>leaves.
>
>If anyone has ever seen southern pines dump their needles in
>October, they would be hard pressed to use that criteria and
>not call them a hardwood... .

As do the conifers (Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock) of the Pac NW. I used to have to dig out my roof gutters every November.