RW nose cone, glassed inside, chipped on outside. Advice needed.

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Bat-mite

Rocketeer in MD
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Last night I accidentally dropped my nose cone on a tile floor and chipped pieces off of it. It is a Rocketry Warehouse cone for an X-Celerator. It is a hard plastic nose cone that is glassed inside. When it hit the floor, some pieces of the plastic chipped off.

The FG is totally intact inside. Can I just epoxy the chipped pieces back onto the FG, and walk away?
 
Can I just epoxy the chipped pieces back onto the FG, and walk away?

Absolutely. That's what I would do.

With filler and sanded primer in the cracks no one will ever know there was any damage.
 
Wish I had taken a picture, but it was late. A few pieces around the edges where the bulkhead attaches. Not on the visible surface above the shoulder.
If it's just the shoulder, gluing the pieces in is fine - possibly not even necessary. how big were the pieces?
 
The biggest is about the size of a quarter, but I am actually more concerned that more will flake off if I don't get some adhesive on there.
 
That's pretty big, probably want to get that back in there.
 
Sounds like this is a gel coated fiberglass nose cone and not a filament wound, is this the type of cone that you have? If this is gel coated, you probably want to epoxy the piece back in or fill the space with epoxy and filler and sand down. My experience with gel coated nose cones is in the shoulder where I had pieces fall out. What I do now for gel coated nose cones is to cut off the shoulder and epoxy in a filament wound coupler to replace it. I've done this with a RW 5.5 inch Nike Smoke without any issues.
 
I'll give it a go tonight. Thanks.

Tip: After the chip is epoxied and pressed back into place you can save yourself some sanding later by using a Q-tip(s) dampened with rubbing alcohol to remove all the epoxy that oozed out of the cracks and/or got shmeared around.
 
Tip: After the chip is epoxied and pressed back into place you can save yourself some sanding later by using a Q-tip(s) dampened with rubbing alcohol to remove all the epoxy that oozed out of the cracks and/or got shmeared around.

Good tip, thanks.
 
I don't know what kind of nose cone it is. RW's site simply says "fiberglass". But it is fiberglass on the inside, and on the outside is a shiny white, thin, brittle plastic. There are seam lines on either side. Is that the gel-coated?
 
Yep, that sounds like gel coating on the outside. I can only speak on my experience with gel coated nose cones, where the shoulder is where I have a lot of the gel coat break off, I use shear pins in the shoulder and after a while they start to chip off, so for gel coated nose cones, I cut the shoulder off and use a filament wound coupler instead.

Here is a photo of my gel coated Nike Smoke nose cone with a filament wound coupler.

View attachment 250965
 
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