Good evening all,

I am a young guy from Denmark who has a background from the wind turbine industry where I have worked with the development of new wind turbine blades, the biggest being 75 meters long and weighing more than 20 tons.

Recently I mocved to Papua New Guinea to work for a Balsa company who supplies balsa to several of the wind turbine manufactures.

Every afternoon I see the local fishermen going out to fish in their traditional outrigger canoes. Each tribe has there own distinct design but all seem to be very seaworthy as we often see them far out to sea when we go trolling for Marlin.

Normally the canoes are made from big logs from the rainforest. But this makes them heavy and over time they will deteriorate. Therefore, I will try and make a couple of canoes out of whole balsa logs and glass fiber. So basically, I will get a carver to make a canoe out of one 3 meter long piece of balsa and then wrap it in glass fiber afterwards.  

I have already found a carver (Peter) and the first two logs have been drying for three weeks in the kiln.

I anticipate the following problems with the project: 

• Drying the balsa logs withoutcreating to many cracks. Normally when you dry the whole log it will crackalong the pith in the center of balsa log. This will make it difficult for thecarver to make a complete canoe out of one piece of wood.
• Wrapping the completed canoe inglass fiber without creating wrinkles when vacuum is applied. I still have notfigured out exactly how I am going to pack the glass fiber around the balsacore. Especially the inside will be difficult. I may need to find some kind ofspray glue that can hold it in place while I pack the glass fiber. 
• Resin infuse the cano withoutgetting dry spots and without drilling hundreds of holes through the balsacore.
• Getting resin to Papua is challengeas it is considered dangerous goods, and all internet shops seem to use airfreight.  

So I willbe using this forum to try and find some solutions to these challenges and maybe help others with theirs if I can 

 

 

Wow... quite a project ... And welcome to another Dane on this forum.. with the same surname  no less...


I definitely think the hand layup of glassfibre is the way to go.. use a marine type epoxy (almost goes without saying ... ) that has built in UV filter

Fantastic results can be achieved, just take a look at the many strip-built, glass reinforced boats on various boat-/canoe/kayak building sites..

I have used balsa cores for making ultralight gunstocks for years, mainly with CF covering, but I have made one with tinted resin and very light weight (120 g/sqm) satin wowen glass cloth.

They were all made using hand layup, I was under the impression that Balsa is way too porous to allow you to do a straight on skin infusion ???

Good luck with the project!!

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