Balsa+me=no bueno

[dudeincolorado]

Ok so next year I'm pretty sure that I will be the builder next year. (my school has like a 6 person team and they dont enter building events beacuse no one does them and we would have gone to state if we just entered one so I'm doing it next year) So kinda did bridge in 6th grade and i did tower in B last year (13th at states) and I made one just our team would have one and be able to enter it. So what advice do you people have that might help me improve. Beacuse I've only made 3 towers last year and one bridge in 6th So i don't even have that much experience. Any help will be apricciated.

[andrewwski]

What event?

Take a look through all the pertinent event help threads in this forum, and the old forum. Look in the archives there as well.

And be prepared to have fingers coated with CA for the entire season...takes about a day to pick off and then you'll get it all messy again.

[rocketman1555]

you need to keep building and testing, you need to make each tower you make better than the last, so don't start out building light, start by building heavy, then make each consecutive bridge lighter

i would suggest making a frame to build off of, because that really helps keep each bridge exactly the same

[Aia]

I'd say the same as rocketman- simply building and testing a lot really helps. You'll learn a ton after your first 3-4 bridges (if that's the event you're doing) and develop better building techniques.

There's a lot in the old threads too, so you might want to check there for specific details and whatnot.

[dudeincolorado]

oh im diffinatly doing bridge and probly eggonaut. what do you mean by frame?

[rocketman1555]

i mean either a sheet of paper that u have drawn the design on, so you can build on that, or you take some wood and build an outline to follow so that the bridge is the same every time

[andrewwski]

Get a sheet of poster board that you sketch it on. Or if you can design it in a modeling software and your school has a printer that can print "C" sized sheets or bigger, you can do that. Then lay it down and cover it in wax paper before you build. Then the CA doesn't stick the wood to the template as bad.

I actually prefer to staple the template and wax paper to a cork bulletin board. Then use pushpins to clamp the wood down (don't insert it through the wood). Just like building Wright Stuff frames. It allows you to build it very accurately.

[rocketman1555]

tape works if u don't want to use pushpins, but not as well, and if u need to u can use needles to hold pieces of wood together when u glue them

[carneyf1d]

ive gotten used to building Scioly planes without taping them down or holding them in a fixed place. When you glue two pieces just find a 90 degree area on a table and make sure they are set straight. If you use CyA then you wont have to worry too much about it rearranging position when moving it. If you're careful frames can be made very quickly, and you wont have to worry about taping/untaping and pinning and unpinning. The plane under Construction Photos was built without taping or pinning, and it seemed to turn out fine.

[rocketman1555]

i've found securing it makes it easier for me to build, i know some ppl don't need to, but it works if u need to