Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
 

A new source for pink foam

Thanks to Tim Calvert for the source of this information.

Wickes the builders’ merchants stocks a very good foam by the name of Space Board ECO. It comes in sheets 48 x 20 x 2.5” (1200 x 500 x 60mm) and each sheet weighs 2lb 2oz (about 900g I think). That’s 2400 cu inches so I reckon that’s about 1.4 lbs/cu ft. Compare this with the density of balsa wood, and you are in for a big surprise! I got the figures below from a website, BTW.

6lb/ft.cu Contest grade balsa, hard to obtain reliably. Used a lot for indoor planes where lightweight is more important than outright strength

8~12lb/ft.cu Common grade balsa, widely available, cheap. This density of balsa is what most model kits are made of.

So you could have a sheet of this foam 6mm thick and still be lighter than good light balsa. Good uses are for the curved sides of models, where a hot-wire-cut quadrant of foam, say 4mm thick, could be used for unstressed areas. When tissue covered (see next page), the strength rises considerably And the weight of course.

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