balsa fenders or pine fenders

[Kinser Racing]

Thanks for the tip, I kind of did something like that. I did prefer pine. Buy thankfully I will never have to build another fender again. Thanks to the GEE fenders.

 

[Obsessedderbydad]

+1 for Gee Fenders... so much easier and less work /images/boards/smilies/smile.gif

 

[jator359]

Yes, balsa is the lightest fender material to go with but if you're all thumbs like me, the fragility and softness of the stuff is maddening. Ive sealed with thin CA so it absorbs more easily and there aren't as many "high" spots to sand. But the challenge is even if the fenders are perfect mirror images, the uneven application of super glue might make one side heavier than the other. This year all fender builds for us are basswood.

 

[GravityX]

Mr Kinser, since you said you prefer to use pine, take your two pieces of wood, use spray tack to lightly glue a sheet of paper between them back to back, cut/sand to shape, split them on the paper seam with a thin putty knife, then finish sand the pair.

Same thing I was thinking, but your way may be slightly easier to separate the halves. The thin sheet of paper is a good idea, my idea involved no paper and only a very small drop of Elmer's common white glue.

 

[LightninBoy]

This is what I do to help deal with the fragility of balsa when shaping the fender. After making the rough cut including the radius, I coat the inner radius surface with CA glue. Then, I can shape the rest of the fender including thinning out the upper and lower lips without fear of large chunks of balsa coming off. Once the fender is shaped as needed, then I coat the rest of the surfaces with CA glue.

Once I started doing that, I haven't had any issue at all when shaping the balsa fenders. In fact, if anything, the CA glue makes it a bit of a pain to sand back the top and/or bottom points if they reach too far above/below the wheel.