Fliskits Spitfire - Beer Can Version - Build Thread - FINISHED

I've already built one Spitfire and I can't say enough about how much fun this kit is to build! I highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys fun builds and flying rockets that are more than 3 fins and a nosecone. This is one of the kits that is customized more than most others, and I've really enjoyed seeing all the fun ways people have made them look different. The first one I built I made it completely stock and it turned out really well.

Before I'd finished that first build I decided that I'd someday build another one and customize it so each section would look like a beer can. Or at least, made from parts of a beer can. Ironically I can't stand drinking beer from a can. I love it in bottles or in a glass, but for some reason beer in a can just isn't pleasing.

So some time later I was talking to kcobbva (Kevin) about other kits, and I told him about this one and how much fun it was. I think he ended up buying one to build too. When I told him of my plan for beer cans but that I didn't have the ability to edit the wraps - no software here such as photoshop - he offered to do it for me. So a huge thank you goes out to kcobbva because he did a great job and figured out how to use the templates that fliskits made available and insert the graphics I provided to him. Thanks Kevin! Hopefully it'll turn out looking as great as I hope it will.

I plan on LOTs of pictures in this thread because that's what I like to see in threads that I read.

Having said all that, here is the obligatory shots of the kit package and parts. Next to the bagged kit is the first one of these that I'd built completely stock.



These are the recommended engines. For anyone that hasn't built this and might be using it for a guide... this rocket flies on the short fat engines - 24mm Cs and Ds, but not the long ones like the Es are.


Here's the parts.



This kit has quite a lot of centering rings!!

this will be fun to follow!!!

NJRick said:

this will be fun to follow!!!

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I sure hope so. I'll try to show a lot of pictures and document any mistakes if/when I make them. I usually goof up at least a couple of times per rocket build.

The next step will be the engine mount - a normal first step in a build. This is a very complicated build, with very detailed instructions. I've read Jim Flis mention a couple of times how this is such an intricate build that he even has to follow the directions each time he builds one. So following the directions must be super important!

Step one - time to deviate from the directions. Instead of using the supplied engine clip I will use the extra long engine clip that I bought from Odd'l Rockets. These clips are 1/4" longer and go over the top of the engine block ring instead of under it. The reason this is better is that when the ejection charge fires and the engine is propelled backwards, the engine clip blocks it and is also pulled back, which then pulls backwards on the top of the clip. Normally the top of the clip is only sticking through one layer of tube or sometimes with a reinforcement band around it, but if it extends to the top of the engine block there's a lot more there to hold all that force. This may be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, because I've never torn a tube due to the ejection charge that I'm aware of, but it couldn't really hurt.

So I marked an engine so I can shove the engine block in to the correct depth after adding a ring of glue to the inside of the motor tube.




In this picture you can see the extra long clip next to the supplied clip, and you can see how it will be able to reach the top of the engine block ring next to the engine.




After letting the engine block glue dry a while, but not completely, I cut a slot into the body tube and taped the clip in place with blue electrical tape.



From here on I'll try and stick to the instructions better.

Well, maybe just one more... but it's a small deviation. More of an addition than deviation. I sanded all the glassine off the main body tube. I did this mainly because I'll be drawing lines on the tube and it's easier to draw if the glassine is removed. Also I did it because it reduces the diameter of the tube slightly, and I remember the last time I built a Spitfire I couldn't get the wraps to quite fit around the tube and perhaps this would help. Or maybe my cutting would be more improved.

Either way, the markings would be easier to make. And since I didn't think it would make a difference I sanded it off. But that's the absolute last time I deviate from the instructions.

Mushtang said:

But that's the absolute last time I deviate from the instructions.

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Somehow, just maybe .... I'm pretty sure there will be more! Keep 'em coming!

Or... maybe one more deviation. Surely nobody is even reading this thread anyway. But if you are, don't tell Jim Flis what I'm doing.

The instructions have you mark a red and black line on the main body tube using the first wrap. As I mentioned before I didn't have much luck getting the wraps to fit correctly so I used another way that was more likely to result in correct placement of lines. As it turns out I was much more successful getting the wraps to fit this time so this was proof that it was my fault the last time - but since this didn't really change anything it doesn't matter.

I cut a strip of copy paper across the short end that was the width of my metal ruler.



Then I wrapped it around the tube and taped it to itself. It would slide, but not easily.



I slid it off the tube and pressed it flat, and creased the ends heavily. These creases would now be exactly opposite each other when I put it back on the tube.



Getting this back on the tube is NOT easy, but possible. Once it was there I moved it near an end and put a tic mark above and below the crease on each side.



I used a long aluminum angle to extend the tic marks down the length of the tube. On one side I used a black pencil.



Here you can see the line all the way down. It's straight. Mostly.



The instructions say to draw a black line on one side and a red line on the other. On the printed portion of the wraps it also gives you the option of using a dashed line instead of red. Because I'm colorblind, and it wouldn't really matter what colors I used, the dashed option seemed better.

So I used a regular mechanical pencil for the second line and went back with the eraser to create the dashes.

There are a few printed sheets of cardstock with cutting guides that you cut out and use to mark the tube for cutting. They're all wavy and tricky to cut but I went as carefully as I could in hopes that they'd fit. They did! They were printed with glue tabs on them but I sliced those right off (on purpose) because I knew I'd be using tape to temporarily hold them on the tube.

Here's the first section taped in place. I was very happy to see that it matched so well to the tube and fit as close to perfect as could be expected.



After making sure the bottom was flush with the end of the tube I drew a pencil line around the top of the guide and slid it off again. You can see the line below after the guide is barely slid away from it.



Cutting a tube with an Xacto knife is pretty easy if you go SLOW. No, slower than that. I laid the tube flat on the table and with my right hand holding the knife I turned the tube with my left hand. I'd scratch along the line and keep turning, round and round, and after about 4 full rotations I was breaking through the tube wall. It's very tempting to start sawing through the tube to hurry it up, but if you don't you'll get a much better cut.

I marked the tube section per the instructions (following them to the letter, I swear) so I wouldn't get mixed up.



As I cut each section I needed to sand the new cut flat. I laid a piece of sandpaper face up on the table and moved the tube section around it in a big circle for a while to make sure any little wiggles or bumps in the cut would be removed. After about 30 seconds I'd look at the tube end and it would look like it had been cut by a laser cutting CNC machine. So sweet.



After I sanded the top of the section I'd just cut off I also sanded the fresh end of the tube. This would be the bottom of the next section. I cut the next piece of card stock, wrap it, tape it, mark the tube, remove the guide, cut the tube, and sand some more. Eventually I had all 4 sections cut out of the tube. Here they are stacked up.



I'm not sure if you can tell in this pic how the ends of each tube section are angled.

The next step is to label the centering rings. There's 7 of those suckers on this sheet.



When I was test fitting the engine into the engine tube I noticed that I'd forgotten to do something that I normally do, and that is to strengthen the end of the engine tube where the engine is inserted. As I was sliding the engine in and out a few times testing the clip I realized what was missing, but luckily there was time to do it at this stage. Here's the engine tube before.



I grabbed a sandwich bag and a bottle of CA - also known as Superglue.



I ran a bead of CA around the inside of the tube wall.



With the sandwich bag over my finger I smeared it around the inside of the tube and let it dry. It really soaked into the tube which is a good thing.



This will help the end of the tube withstand the engine being banged into the edge of the tube a little easier.

The centering rings are laser cut and made out of the black picture frame matte material and not the usual cardboard. Maybe because these are a little thicker? Jim Flis, if you ever read this I'd love to know the reason for the black material.

The first thing you'll want to do when you remove a ring is to wipe off the laser cut edges. If you don't then as you handle the rings this mess will get everywhere, all over your hands and all over your rocket. I just slid the ring along a napkin over and over as I rotated it, and when that was all gone I went around the inside of the ring too.



You also get to cut out the engine clip notch. I went to great lengths to ensure this was done as close to opposite from the notches on the other side as possible, but realized later it doesn't really matter. Your hook will end up somewhere and it doesn't matter where. It's all up inside the lower section and the orientation won't change anything.



Once that was done I glued it onto the motor tube about a half inch up from the end.



Did I mention that this is a REALLY long motor tube????

Great tips and info - I have a Spitfire in the (growing) build pile so this is good stuff.

Now that the first section is dry on the motor tube a larger ring will be added to the bottom. This will give the tail cone something to glue to along the bottom edge. It's Centering Ring 06.



It was put onto the bottom of the lower section and a glue fillet added all around.



And now I will digress a little from the instructions for I think the first time. I'm sure I've been faithful to them so far. The next step is to put on the lower shroud to make the tail cone, but I am having issues with the beer can printing so I have to skip that step for now. The step after that is to glue Section 2 on top of Section 1 and the centering ring that's slightly sticking out. I don't want to do that because it will get in the way when I do get the tail cone printed and ready to install, so I will do something a little different and hopefully it will be okay.

Centering ring 03 is going to go in the top of Section 2. The instructions say that after the tail cone is in place you're to glue section 2 on and then insert CR 03 halfway into the section that's had glue added. These rings are tight and some sanding would make that easier, but to give me something to do I went ahead and glued the CR into the top of Section 2 before that section was installed. The CR was pushed into place, lining up the notch as described in the instructions, and the CR was pushed about halfway out. Each section has the CR halfway out to give the next section something to glue onto.



Glue was added on the inside of the Section around the edge of the CR.



Now that this is dry I'll be able to slide it down over the long motor tube and into place, after the tail cone is in place.

In theory.

WOW!! there is a heck of a lot of centering rings with this kit! she is looking awesome so far Mushtang! I love your build threads...lots and lots of pictures! I did take notice that you indicated to follow these instructions to the tee....and then your first step was to immediately deviated from them..LOL..I thought that was funny.

can't wait to see your progress!

This kit always creeped me out for some reason, but now that I see how it is constructed, with the long MMT and such, it is actually quite impressive.

Mushtang, i'm so glad you hit me on email. I'd totally missed this thread and you are QUITE welcome! And yes indeed, thanks to you, I did purchase one as well; just haven't started it yet. Now as for the labels; when I got done studying last night I sat down and figured out the initial templates were the issue as well as when printed to PDF. That's why each was less than 7" by 1/2". I got the one with Duff Beer figured out very late last night; so now I know what to do. I'm hoping to take a break later tonight after studying and get the others knocked out quickly so I can get these to you. Sure don't want you waiting on me to complete you build...nor to hold up this awesome thread!

NJRick said:

WOW!! there is a heck of a lot of centering rings with this kit! she is looking awesome so far Mushtang! I love your build threads...lots and lots of pictures!

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Thanks! I write em how I like to read em!!

NJRick said:

I did take notice that you indicated to follow these instructions to the tee....and then your first step was to immediately deviated from them

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WHAT?!?! No no no, I've followed the instructions carefully.

TopRamen said:

This kit always creeped me out for some reason, but now that I see how it is constructed, with the long MMT and such, it is actually quite impressive.

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I agree, it was pretty confusing to me when I first saw pictures of the rocket but when I opened the instructions I was super impressed with the way it's created. Jim Flis did a great job with this one!!

kcobbva said:

Mushtang, i'm so glad you hit me on email. I'd totally missed this thread and you are QUITE welcome! And yes indeed, thanks to you, I did purchase one as well; just haven't started it yet. Now as for the labels; when I got done studying last night I sat down and figured out the initial templates were the issue as well as when printed to PDF. That's why each was less than 7" by 1/2". I got the one with Duff Beer figured out very late last night; so now I know what to do. I'm hoping to take a break later tonight after studying and get the others knocked out quickly so I can get these to you. Sure don't want you waiting on me to complete you build...nor to hold up this awesome thread!

Click to expand...

Thanks for looking into it, but there is NO hurry on this. Your test (whatever it's for) is almost certainly way more important than a silly rocket hobby of someone across the country. Please spend your time and effort wisely, and get to the editing later. Remember how much I'm paying you for the editing and what you'll be able to buy with it.

Mushtang said:

Thanks for looking into it, but there is NO hurry on this. Your test (whatever it's for) is almost certainly way more important than a silly rocket hobby of someone across the country. Please spend your time and effort wisely, and get to the editing later. Remember how much I'm paying you for the editing and what you'll be able to buy with it.

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I needed a break! To much time studying can drain me and I take the exam tomorrow!. The labels are complete and in your inbox! And yes, your build thread will show me WHAT to do. Payment enough!

Exam done! Bring on the build! can't wait to see how it looks when you start the wraps!!!

1) I am digging this build. I've been curious about how it was constructed (though I knew about the internal body tube "core").
2) I am not going to try to sim this in OR... EVER! (Unless the program is updated considerably to allow for the odd shapes.) So, Don't Ask! :wink:

kcobbva said:

Exam done! Bring on the build! can't wait to see how it looks when you start the wraps!!!

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I had them printed tonight at FedEx. It looks like I should have found higher resolution images to send you, but they're still really good. I was hoping to get the next step done tonight so I could post more pictures but with the business card cube to finish, dinner to eat, and watching Three Amigos with my son, I was just swamped.

Hopefully your exam went well.

Mushtang said:

I had them printed tonight at FedEx. It looks like I should have found higher resolution images to send you, but they're still really good. I was hoping to get the next step done tonight so I could post more pictures but with the business card cube to finish, dinner to eat, and watching Three Amigos with my son, I was just swamped.

Hopefully your exam went well.

Click to expand...

Do you want me to try to find a few images with the same labels on the web? I can do that and it wouldn't take long to recreate!

kcobbva said:

Do you want me to try to find a few images with the same labels on the web? I can do that and it wouldn't take long to recreate!

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No no no. They look good enough. From 5' away nobody could tell the difference anyway.

But thanks for the offer!

No worries. I should have caught the DPI and didn't think about it. I'll resize the templates to 200dpi and next time you have another spitfire; they'll be right!

Neat ; now do a MACME Shrew!

dhbarr said:

Neat ; now do a MACME Shrew!

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Now? I'm not even halfway done with this one.

Err, soon?

I finally got to spend more time with this build tonight. I pulled the tail cone print out of the bag and compared it to the cardstock print from the kit. The print didn't have the fin locations so I'd have to draw those, but that would be easy. But I also wanted to check the size to make sure it printed correctly.


I cut the printed tail cone out as carefully as I could (except for the bottom edge because it is trimmed after being glued on per the instructions) and then put it on the kit cone that was mostly cut out. It became obvious that the printed cone was slightly off from the size of the kit cone. I don't think it was an editing issue because the other prints seemed to be correct. I think the blank template that kcobbva got from the fliskits website is slightly different than the kit. Hard to say. But it's not a difficult thing to make correct. I slid the two back and forth until I had the edges lined up, drew a curve on the printed cone to show where I needed to cut, and removed about a quarter inch or so from the inside curve. I also transferred the fin locations onto the printed cone.


The cutting left the printed cone slightly shorter than the kit cone, but that's okay because as I mentioned before the bottom will get trimmed off in the next step.


The printed cone was then glued and set aside to dry.

I decided to finally deviate slightly from the plans. The printed tail cone is 110# card stock, but it could be a little more sturdy since there will be fins glued to it. I could have coated the inside with epoxy but since I happen to have a spare cone sitting right there...


... I thought I remembered something HCMBanjo wrote up somewhere about a super cone, or something like that, where two cones were glued together to make one that's more structurally sound. I made sure the seams were 180 degrees apart. Maybe HCMBanjo will see this and give more details about what I'm thinking of.


I also added numbers to the fin locations.


Once the double walled cone was dry I glued it in place on the bottom of the motor tube. Glue was put onto the top of the cone as well as around the bottom CR. The instructions specifically point out that the top of the tail cone will NOT be flush all around with the top of section 1 inside it. I will use a sharpie later to make the portion of tube showing black.


And a little bit of glue squeezed out the bottom so I tried to give it a bit of a fillet. Eventually the overhanging card stock will be cut flush to the CR.