How to Make a Strong Standing Tower Out of Balsa Wood

Select dense balsa wood sticks for your tower to add strength throughout the structure. Choose darker balsa wood as it’s likely to be denser than light-colored balsa. Test the density by squeezing the wood between your fingers. Examine the impression made in the wood. The less impression made, the denser the wood.

Use yellow wood glue thinned with water to a ratio of 7 parts glue to 3 parts water when creating your wood joints. The thinned glue will penetrate deeply into the balsa, extending the bond between the pieces rather than creating a light surface bond.

Sand the surfaces of the balsa that you wish to joint together with fine-grit sandpaper to create a level surface. You’ll want to avoid using the glue as filler between irregular wood surfaces, as this can create a weak joint. Wipe all sanded surfaces with tack cloth before gluing the sections together, and avoid touching the area with your hands after sanding to prevent transferring any oil from your skin to the wood.

Make your wood joint an overlapping joint whenever possible, placing one piece of balsa over the other rather that joining them edge to edge. This will increase the amount of surface area for the joint, increasing the strength of the joint in the process. If you need to joint edges of balsa wood together, then add small overlapping pieces of balsa wood over opposing sides of the joint to strengthen it.

Make sure the base of your tower is larger than its top to create a stable structure. Build the tower in levels, creating a squared frame for each side of the level with an overlapping X-brace crossing the center of the frame diagonally. Place the X-brace on the inside of the tower, overlapping the frame pieces to help distribute the weight of the tower at each level equally throughout the frame, rather than at the edges of the frame only.