Advise for Elevated Bridge

[NozaninS]

Hi My name is Nozanin, I am a 6th grade student that is trying out for the science olympiad. I am really interested in build events, but to get into build events I need to build an Elevated Bridge. Do you have any advise about building an elevated bridge?

[TheSquaad]

Easiest place to start is materials..

Get your wood from https://specializedbalsa.com/. They have very good consistency (you can specify densities, grains etc).

Glue - use medium cyanoacrylate (medium is easier to use, cyano is the best kind). I also recommend wearing tight nitrile gloves.

Knives - most exacto knife kits will do. Also get a metal ruler for a straight edge to cut along, and some sort of decent cutting surface.

Other - masking tape is very useful for holding wood down, and sharpie for marking wood. Also some fine grit sandpaper is very useful.

As for building itself, best to wait until the draft rules come out. In the meantime, look through old forums to get a picture of building techniques (cutting spars, gluing efficiently, etc)

[NozaninS]

I don't have too much experience with elevated bridge (or any events in this rotation really), but if you haven't seen the Elevated Bridge Wiki, that's probably a good starting resource. The page itself has a lot of information, the box in the top right contains links to the old forums for Elevated Bridge, and at the bottom of the page are links to external resources.

[knightmoves]

Glue - use medium cyanoacrylate (medium is easier to use, cyano is the best kind). I also recommend wearing tight nitrile gloves.

Let's expand on this a bit. Cyanoacrylate glue will stick to you. Do not hold a joint together with your bare hands while the glue cures, or you will probably find yourself glued to your build. (If you do glue yourself to your build, it's usually easier to free yourself with a twisting motion rather than trying to pull.) We never found gloves convenient, but used bits of wax paper between the build and any fingers.

If you use thin CA glue (the sort that has the consistency of water, and wicks in to joints) then this is particularly important, because that stuff gets everywhere. The medium CA doesn't migrate quite as far.

Oh, and the important bit - don't try to build something freehand. Use some kind of construction jig (could be a 3d frame that you build your bridge on, could be a 2d drawing on a sheet of paper stuck to foam board. There are other options, too. Basically you want to ensure that your bridge is symmetric, and doesn't accidentally acquire a twist built in to it or something.