Making your own wadding the safe way

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this spring when I was looking for boric acid (crystals), I found it at my local drugstore, $5.47 for 6oz(enough for 3 gal.s of fire 'proofing').
rex
 
Centuri sold flame resistant crepe paper wadding as well as the flame resistant fluffy cotton material.

Crepe works, but if is stiffer than Estes TP wadding and it can allow hot gasses to blow by the sides if you do not form a proper gas sealing piston.

Estes did indeed make the wadding by dipping the enitre roll of TP and then allowing it to dry. They had a big rack with a lot of rolls on it. I saw it when I got a quick tour 30 years ago. It's dry up there, so I wonder how fast they dry?

Cellulose insulation with a bit of Estes or Quest wadding below to prevent it from falling into the motor area or out the back is what I use. If squirrels get into the bale of cellulose, simply transfer to a sealed plastic tub. insanely cheap and highly effective.


Our club (somewhat ham-handedly) mandates dog-barf use, and we make available enough of the stuff for free at launches that some people take a zip-lock bag of the stuff home with them for their personal launches.

Myself, I still like the Estes wadding and have plenty of it from wal-mart engine packs and bulk packs, and I sneak it in to my club launches occasionally just to get a rise out of certain club officers.
 
I think we have missed the point here. The original idea was to save money. Using lettuce will not save money, nor will using nomex(very expensive). You have to buy a baffle for every rocket. I have about 30 at this time.

I still say the cheapest way is to make you own.

Andrew
You've got to be kidding, right? Nomex is very expensive? Maybe if you use it once and then throw it away. Since a Nomex flame protector is meant to be used dozens, even hundreds, of times, how expensive can it be? Let's see now, a TFR 3x3 Nomex Firewall protector is just under $4. If I get 400 uses out of it, that's $0.01 per flight. Since a cheap black powder motor costs something like $3 each (or more), my total cost per flight soars to.......wait a second......$3.01. Oh my, can I swing that?

Ejection baffles are a pain, because you have to build one for every rocket? Well, maybe....if all you ever fly are RTFs and E2X rockets, then yeah, constructing a baffle from a kit really would be the most complicated part. But compared to....making your own wadding by mixing up batches of solution, soaking strips of TP in them, and then hanging them up to dry? And doing that over and over again, many dozens of times? No thanks - I'd rather spend 5 minutes constructing a baffle and installing it in my rocket. It's a task that I only need to do once, rather than repeatedly, endlessly, as would be the case with making a consumable item like wadding.

I don't know about you, but I build my rockets. Constructing a baffle and installing it during the build process is trivial. So is packing the recovery system into a baffle-equipped rocket at the field. No time spent searching around for where I stashed my pack of wadding (or finding it after the wind blows it off the table). No time spent ripping off little bits of it, stuffing it down the tube and checking to see if I have a good gas seal. No time spent worrying about whether I have put in enough, or if I have put in too much. No time spent policing the recovery area to pick it all up afterward. (If you don't think that last thing is an issue, try conducting a club launch in a public park.) Nope, you just fold up the 'chute, stuff it in, and complete that part of the flight prep in less than 10 seconds. You never have to worry about running out of it, either. A Semroc ejection baffle for BT-60 or ST-16 is $1.60, and baffles for ST-18 and ST-20 are $1.75. Like Nomex, it's a non-consumable item. Buy it once, install it and you're done.
 
If that's the way you want to go...cool. But the original post was how to go on the cheap and do it right.

But lets look at this for a moment. I build from scratch a rocket with a BT-50 body tube. A 2 dollar nose cone and I make everything else.

So I go out and buy a 14 dollar normax blanket.

I just don't see the logic.

Now for sure if I'm building a Level 3 rocket, normax is the way to go.

But until I do, which since I am on a rocket budget, won't be for a long time, I will stay with the home made stuff.


Andrew
 
Roy, that is great how your club provides dog barf at its launches. Most of the guys in the group I fly with also use dog barf.

Andrew
 
I think some of us are missing the point here. The point is not what is the cheapest, most effective, high or low tech solution - the "best" solution for the task at hand. The point is that this is a "do-it-yourself" hobby. We do this for fun and our own education/edification. There are lots of ways to do just about any rocket task, and Andrew's is no less valid than anything else. If he wants to make his own wadding, well, I applaud that! If it increases his enjoyment of the hobby, then its all good. And if, by sharing his technique, someone else is intrigued enough to try it, well, that's good too. Heck, I might even give it a try some time - being able to go to a launch and say "I made that" adds to the fun of this hobby.

Back to the OT, has anyone tried making cotton balls fire retardant with one of these formulas? As was mentioned earlier, Centuri's wadding was fire retardant cotton It had the advantage of "scrunchability" like dog barf, but unlike the latter would hold together in one mass. That is the main fault I find with dog barf - it doesn't hold together well for larger diameter rockets.
 
as mentioned in post#2, yes. decided dog barf and/or baffles was the way to go :).
rex
 
I tried it and it worked for me. BUT, and it's a large one. It seems to me to take for ever to dry.

Andrew
 
All crepe paper sold in the US is flame resistant by law. I'm not sure how effective it would be at protecting your recovery system, though.
I've been using it for quite a while now. I save the Estes wadding that comes in the rocket engine packs from Wal-Mart for use with smaller rockets, because it's easier to pack in, and use crepe for anything BT-55 or larger.

My hand-cut crepe paper comes in wide sheets, 20" x 7.5'. They are hard to cut into 4" squares.
Huh. I've never had any trouble cutting up those sheets. I got a bunch for under a buck a pack at Hobby Lobby before they raised the price to (gasp) a buck and a half. I cut the whole package into four sections, then slit the sections apart with scissors.

What's the rationale for that, Roy?
I don't know Roy's club's rationale, but I've been told that it's all about the mess left behind. Regular wadding from a club launch would amount to a lot of litter in the park; if it's a public place, that's a no-no. But dog barf just disappears into the grass and melts when it gets wet later (rain, dew, etc.)

Personally, making my own by soaking toilet paper and then trying to dry it without it falling apart is just a bit too cheap and too much trouble for me.
 
You don't need the boric acid. The 20 mule is what you need. 2 teaspoons in 16 oz of water seems to be just right for me.

Andrew

The boric acid buffers it so it will play nice with whatever you put it on. Plus, it's also a retardant.
 
What's the rationale for that, Roy?

The unsightliness of toilet paper on the ground. Quite silly if you ask me. But this has been going on for ten years. We fly at sod farms and parks for the most part, so maybe there's a point, but a few times we have flown on cow pastures and they still object to Estes wadding.

Still, dog barf is dirt cheap, and usually sufficient, so I only complain when someone else complains that someone used Estes wadding.
 
I tried to make my own wadding 20 years ago and just ended up with stiff sheets of Bounty and wads of Charmin.
 
Yep, it's stiff. But cheap and doesn't take up much room like a 10 pound bag of dog barf.

That was my point. I don't have room for a 10 pound bag of dog barf.

BTW adding a couple of drops of food coloring can make some wild wadding.

Andrew
 
Ok, after reading this post, I got curious...I just happened to find '20 Mule' at Walmart, and picked some up. See any reason I couldn't mix the solution and apply it with a squirt bottle on 'mist'? Maybe hang the TP, and then spray it? The thought of trying to hang soggy TP doesn't sound easy/fun to me...?
 
I'm with you, TP(toilet paper) just didn't work for me, but a 39 cent roll of paper towels...now your talking.

I found TP too hard to work with and falls apart, but let us know how misting works for you.

Since starting to fly mid-power reloadables, I find that paper towels are great in 2 to 3 inch body tubes.

Andrew
Practicing the dark art of reloadables
 
$14.00? kind of pricey for a nomex flame resistant blanket for a BT50 body tube.

Currently listed on Sunward's site, on sale, for 3.22.

Or, do what I did, and buy the biggest Nomex protector you can find and cut it up into smaller pieces and add a shock cord slit to each. I think I started with a 24"X24" piece, and made a bunch of 3"X3" and 6"X6" protectors, plus a few 9"x9"s. My wife finished the edges on her serger, but I suspect you could seal them with a narrow bead of CA if you don't have access to a serger.

Using Sunward's current price of $11.99 for a 24", you could get 64 3"Xs for $0.19 each out it, or 16 6"Xs at $0.75 each. A lot less work than treating paper towels and, I suspect, cheaper in the long run.
 
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