A Balsa Stripper is a device that allows you to trim off a fixed-width section of material from sheet materials such as wood.
What use are they?
Balsa Strippers allow you to cut accurate strips of wood to the dimensions that you want, so you no longer have to rely on the limited pre-cut sizes provided by other manufacturers. All you need to do is buy in Sheet wood in various thickness's and then strip that down to whatever widths that you need for your current project.
How do you use them?
Balsa Strippers are very basic and simple to use. They comprise of a guide block, a blade and a Dial that allows you to vary the distance of the blade from the guide block.
The dial itself is attached to a "worm screw" that moves the blade exactly 1/32nd of an inch for every full rotation, which allows you to determine exact cutting width.
The blade itself can be any that fits into the mounting brackets.
To use the stripper all you do is first set the width that you want to cut by rotating the dial X many times. Then check that the tip of the blade will cut all the way through the material to be cut.
Once that is done simply align the Guide block to the straight edge of a sheet of balsa and pull the block along as shown below.
The result is a perfectly straight cut section of wood of the exact thickness that you set the dial to.
I find the Balsa Stripper to be of immense use to the scratch-builder and the ability to cut accurate widths of wood is immensely useful. It is one of those tools that you didn't know you were missing until you get it, and after then you won't give it up.
It's simple to use, reliable, rugged and cheap.
The "Master Airscrew Balsa Stripper" is available from Antenociti's Workshop.
