How to carve a DSLR out of balsa wood

Inside the online Canon Camera Museum lives a tutorial on how to turn glued balsa wood into a life-sized camera model, just like industrial designers do when mocking up real products.

Balsa Wood Mock-Up Modeling Tutorial [Canon via Core77]

[#1 posted by kaiza , October 2, 2008 4:15 AM]

Totally awesome. I tend to use a lot of Renshape, which is a dense urethane foam for modelling, since it doesn't have a grain.

For quick mockups to test ergonomics I'd be more likely to use polystyrene insulation foam because it's cheaper than Renshape. But the balsa model here is fantastic and would take a lot more abuse than a polystyrene model.