Heavy Metal Thunder

Seeing those tool boxes(range box?) in the background reminds me I need to get another..The one I have(which looks to be identical to those in the picture) has done overflowed with motors! The 2nd one will hold my D and higher impulse motors Stand looks nifty as well!

Pantherjon said:

Seeing those tool boxes(range box?) in the background reminds me I need to get another..The one I have(which looks to be identical to those in the picture) has done overflowed with motors! The 2nd one will hold my D and higher impulse motors Stand looks nifty as well!

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I have eight or nine of those Stanley toolboxes. They are less than $10 each at Wal-Mart or a home improvement store. I have one box for model rocket stuff, one box for motor sets, one box for Dremel stuff, one box for electronics stuff, one for general tools, etc. Some contain duplicate tools - for example, I have pliers and screwdrivers in the electronics box as well as the "tools" box. That way I can usually grab one box for a specific task. It's not a bad system for organizing things.

The only problem is that Stanley changed the design of the boxes. So they don't all stack nicely. If you buy any, make sure they're all the same. I'm going to replace half of mine some time when my wife's back is turned.

-- Roger

The stand really helped with applying the fiberglass to the main body tube.

Today I added a bracket to the fiberglassing stand that holds my cordless drill. I screwed a wood screw in the end of the rod and used my Dermel to file off the screw's flange so that a bit extension connects it to the drill. Now my stand is automated!


I talked with a friend about how he achieves a super-smooth finish on his fiberglassed rockets. He told me he uses "SuperFil." I wanted to try that, but couldn't get any locally. So I created my own filler following directions I found on the web. I added three parts or "microballoons" to one part of epoxy to make a thick glaze I spread over the whole tube. Once it's dry, I'll sand it and see how it comes out. It already looks pretty good.


I found the microballoons at a boating store. They were $17 for a quart. I only used about 1/5 of the container on this four-foot tube.

-- Roger

Very nice build and the pictures are great. Nothing wrong with taking your time.
If you had to do it as fast as you can that would be called WORK! Love your drill rotisserie. It only has to work once , right! And very clean clear fins. Very nice lines. Good luck!

Nice Mustang...

Roman said:

Nice Mustang...

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I did crop that photo to make sure the car was in the frame.

My Level 1 rocket is nicknamed "Mustang Sally." I featured our car in the video I made about my Level 1 cert flight:

https://www.payloadbay.com/gallery/v/movies/Level1.wmv.html

-- Roger

cornyL said:

Very nice build and the pictures are great. Nothing wrong with taking your time.
If you had to do it as fast as you can that would be called WORK! Love your drill rotisserie. It only has to work once , right! And very clean clear fins. Very nice lines. Good luck!

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Thanks. I'm devoting all the time to it that I can. But I don't have much free time. And, I don't want to rush anything and make a mistake. I hope to take a few days off from work between Christmas and New Years. I should be able to accomplish more then.

-- Roger

Taking advantage of my wife's good graces during the holiday season, I ordered two (!) HiAlt45K altimeters from PerfectFlight. One will go into the HMT. The other will replace the MiniAlt/WD in our Big Daddy Akavish and the spider-roc's MAWD will also go into the HMT. There's plenty of room, so having a backup altimeter seemed to be a good idea.

-- Roger

A couple of days ago I cut slots in the bottom of the main tube for the fins and managed to really screw it up. So I just cut a foot off the main tube. Afterwards, I realized I could have just cut each slot a little too large and flilled them after installing the fin can, but it was too late. But I think it's still okay because the shorter main tube gets the rocket back to the original length I had intended. And it'll fit the semi-scale Titan missile look a little better.

I created a coupler by cutting a length of tube and cutting a slice out of it so it fit inside the short section of tube which will be the electronics bay. I glued the coupler inside the e-bay tube.

Then, I spent the past couple of days sanding, priming, sanding, filling, priming, filling, sanding, priming, filling, etc. I decided to finish priming the tube before cutting the slots this time, I realized it would be harder to sand a tube with eight slots in it. I've made two trips to the store for primer. It's a big rocket.

I don't have any photos of the filling, sanding, and priming. It's just so messy that I didn't want to fool with the camera in all that dust. But I should get some photos tomorrow. It's starting to look like something.

Also, over the past couple of days I created one the two "altimeter pods" for the rocket.




I started by cutting a piece of 29mm motor mount tube to length. Then I cut a notch out of the side of it. I mounted the MAWD altimeter to a small piece of wood and glued it into the tube. I added a few more pieces of wood to brace the tube (leaving space for a 9v battery).
Then I cut a three-inch long piece of 38mm motor tube and a piece the same length as a 38mm motor's thrust ring (about .4"). I cut a slit down the length of the 3" tube to reduce it's diameter so it fit inside the smaller tube. I used a wrap of masking tape to make the new diameter a little less than the inside diameter of a 38mm motor mount tube. I glued the 3" tube inside the short tube. Then I glued this assembly to one end of the 29mm tube containing the altimeter. This creates an assembly that can slide into a 38mm motor tube and secured in the same way a motor would be retained.

-- Roger

I don't have any photos to show my latest progress because I made quite a mess.

I cut slots for the fins in the bottom of the main tube and decided they weren't straight enough. So I went ahead and cut about 9" off the bottom to allow me to re-do the slots. It was while marking the tube for the new slots that I realized that I should have just enlarged the original slots instead of cutting the tube shorter. Oh, well, the shorter length will look better with the Titan-missile-like paint job and I think it'll still be stable without nose weight.

Anyway, the second time, I cut slightly wider (and straighter and neater) fin slots. I slid the fin can assembly into the tube with the fins in the slots and everything lined up well. I used wood glue to secure the assembly in place.

I used epoxy to seal the gaps between the fin slots and the wood braces holding the fins. After that dried, I filled the assembly with expanding foam. Here's where I really messed up. First of all, I'm sure I didn't really need the foam. Second of all, I made a hole in the top of the fin assembly for the foam and for running the wires from the timer to the outboard motor igniters. But I didn't make the hole large enough. When the foam expanded, it caused bulges in the body tube between the fins. And some of the foam found places to leak out of the bottom of the rocket.

I was able to clean the foam from the bottom using a Dremel, my fingers, wooden sticks, a razor knife, and quite a few cuss words.

As far as the bulges ... at first, I was going to leave it be and claim I planned it that way. But I realized I'd have to mount the rail buttons on stand-offs or a stringer to get over the bumps and that didn't appeal to me. And I finally decided that it just didn't look good.

So I spent a lot of time cutting the bottom of the tube from the bottom centering ring, pealing back the "flap" between the fins, scraping out foam, and clamping and gluing it back together. The bending of the body tube to get to the foam cracked the fiberglass in a few places, so I've got some things to fill and sand. But it really doesn't look so bad now. It's painful trying to fill and sand the cracked parts between the clear fins, but I'm working on it.

-- Roger

Can't wait for you to finish this. Because then you will do the Saturn V!!

Ben

ben said:

Can't wait for you to finish this. Because then you will do the Saturn V!!

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I'm definitely glad I tried this first. I'm learning a lot.

-- Roger

jadebox said:

I'm definitely glad I tried this first. I'm learning a lot.

-- Roger

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thats good. I am contemplating a 1/31st scale Saturn V. All stages loads of motor. Video Maybe do that instead of a Terrier bosoter for my 1/2 scale Sandhawk. Not sure.

Ben