My Friends,

The first step in building a plane from a balsa kit is acquiring a building board. The building board is used to hold parts pinned in proper alignment during the building process. Or more precisely, the building board holds the pins that hold the parts in proper alignment.

The building board has to be soft enough to allow pins to be easily inserted and removed. The building board has to be hard enough to hold the pins firmly, and resist deformation. The material I personally favor for kit building is a fiberboard product variously called "Sound Board", "Sound Deadening Board", or "Sound Stop Board". This material ranges in color from a light tan to a dark brown.

A few of my friends on RCGroups have been searching for building board material. My good friend, Chuck "NoFlyZone", has had no end of difficulty finding proper building board material. To aid Chuck, and others, I took a trip to Home Depot and Lowes with my camera to produce a visual record of what to look for when shopping for a building board.

Thanks, Bruce