Building

Balsa Wood

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Balsa wood is unique from all other woods. Its properties make it valuable to bridge builders, wood carvers, surfers, and many others. Bridge builders have to be careful, however, when using Balsa. You can’t simply pick up two pieces of Balsa with the same dimensions and expect them to perform the same.

How to Build a Popsicle Stick Bridge

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Building popsicle stick bridges is one of my favorite activities to do in my spare time. I have built many popsicle bridges over the years, and love coming up with new designs. A huge focus of my bridges is designing blueprints that are easy to build and structurally sound at the same time. You can purchase many of my plans and blueprints in my store.

How to Build a Model Bridge

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Building a model bridge is one of the most rewarding hobbies I have done in my entire life . I have learned a ton about working with wood and tools. I have also learned the basics in bridge engineering, and have a greater appreciation for real bridges. Model bridge building has also given me a originative outlet that I can share with others. Not only does it give me something fun to do, I can show off my creations and attest to their abilities.

Cyanoacrylate Glue

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CA Glue (aka Cyanoacrylate) could revolutionize the way you build models. CA glue takes away the wait time for glue to set. No longer wait 30 minutes, or even 4 hours for the glue to harden up enough to move on in the building process. Instead, CA glue allows you to instantly bond two surfaces together. However, CA has disadvantages as well, including health concerns. Read on through this entire article before making your decision to use CA glue.

Efficiency Score

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To help clear up any confusion when I talk about the “efficiency” or “efficiency score” of the bridges I build. This is a mathematical equation to determine how well a bridge performed

Video: Build A Model Bridge

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This is the absolute best video I have seen about building model bridges. Roy Coleman, the founder of the International Bridge Building Contest, gives a very informative presentation in this video. The presentation is over an hour long. He shows how to build a bridge from scratch. He is gearing his video towards the…

Lateral Bracing Joints

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I want to put x-shaped supports on my bridge, but I don’t know how best to join them. I’ve heard of something, I think it’s called a half-lap joint, that I think might work best. You cut half of the wood off the part of the strip that will be the actual joint, and then connect the two pieces at those joint parts. There isn’t any part of the wood sticking out, and they are very connected, I think, as far as how the weight/force is distributed, which I figured would be good. But is there a better way to make an x

Bridge Terms

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Hey everybody once again it’s me, First Timer. I thought the one thing that would make this website even better would be some vocabulary on the parts of bridges. Here are a few terms that might help if you ever need to describe different aspects of a truss or bridge. Let’s start with “Arch”…