Another Saturn IB

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
yep....you're Hi Tech!

When will you start selling these?

Again, let's see how well they stand up to the rigors of flight first :)

As to selling them, by my reckoning the total potential market for a capsule at this scale is about 2, but you already made your own!

For anyone who wants one, my designs are online. I'm not home enough to run a print service, but I could certainly print a couple to scale for those who want one.
 
Again, let's see how well they stand up to the rigors of flight first :)

As to selling them, by my reckoning the total potential market for a capsule at this scale is about 2, but you already made your own!

For anyone who wants one, my designs are online. I'm not home enough to run a print service, but I could certainly print a couple to scale for those who want one.

Love to have one...I can make a matching Little Joe II !
 
Love to have one...I can make a matching Little Joe II !

I'd be more than happy to make you one. Consider it a thank you for the inspiration. Be warned it is heavy though. The capsule itself without LES is about a half pound. I also plan on adding nose weight to mine!

You'll have to wait until July though... I still have hopes of flying this at URRF at the end of June, and lots of stuff to do.
 
Uh - oh. LOL

I think a LJ-II at this scale is quite doable.

The hard part you got done.
Of course all the corrugations on the airframe are fun.

Yes, it is. Lucky for you I have too much going on or I'd steal this idea too!

The LJII BPC is quite different though. Since it was a test program for the LES, not all of the details shown here are on the LJII BPCs. Customizing this would be doable, but each mission is different so you'd have to pick one. George Gassaway has a LOT of information on them here: https://www.georgesrockets.com/GRP/Scale/DATA/LJoeMain.htm With just the LES jettison motor, I'd originally designed it with exposed nozzles. They're covered for the Apollo 7 so I had to rework it, but they're open on the LJII. This would be a simple change. The thruster quads could also be used.

Could be a simple build, or a very detailed one depending on what you want to do. We'll talk after URRF.
 
Yes, it is. Lucky for you I have too much going on or I'd steal this idea too!

The LJII BPC is quite different though. Since it was a test program for the LES, not all of the details shown here are on the LJII BPCs. Customizing this would be doable, but each mission is different so you'd have to pick one. George Gassaway has a LOT of information on them here: https://www.georgesrockets.com/GRP/Scale/DATA/LJoeMain.htm With just the LES jettison motor, I'd originally designed it with exposed nozzles. They're covered for the Apollo 7 so I had to rework it, but they're open on the LJII. This would be a simple change. The thruster quads could also be used.

Could be a simple build, or a very detailed one depending on what you want to do. We'll talk after URRF.

yep...
I've started the build on the recent Estes rerelease of that LJ-II (can't have too many on-going projects after all) after the discussions on the kit.

The G.Gassaway/John Pursley/James Duffy "beta build" here on TRF has the bugs worked out and good tips on that plastic glue problem with the ABS parts in the kit.
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...-Modifications&highlight=estes+build+tips+joe
George weighed in on this thread with lots of info.
I'm clustering mine...with a PVC spider ignition system.

But I think this scale that we got here would be even better for that.
A roughly 6.6 to 7 inch diameter has many more motor options in those ALGOL nozzles than the 3.4 inch diameter of the 1/45 scale kit.
Yeah, let's talk! :)
 
Last edited:
Just because I'm away from home doesn't mean I stop working. Adding details to the command module has taken many, many hours (and uncovered a few bugs in the development version of FreeCAD!), but I'm liking the results. I'll still have to adjust the base size a little before the final print, but here it is:

View attachment 319841View attachment 319842

Kudos on your FreeCAD work!! All of those models are beautiful! I didn't have the patience to add the naughty bits in SolidWorks, let alone FreeCAD.

Bravo Zulu!
 
Well, high tech is biting me in the butt. I got a few small pieces printed before hitting more hardware failures, but I'm stopped again. I still have options but it involves shelling out money for a 3D print service. I can't say this has been a pleasant experience. I'll look at the printer in between other steps but for now I have to plan on contracting that out.

So, on to more conventional building. My tanks are cut to length and I've started filling spirals. The downside of using cheap mailer tubes is there's a lot of them and they're deep. This is going to require multiple passes!

IMG_1964.jpg

The small tube is for the LES, with a LPR for scale :)

I've also started cutting some carbon fiber. Tonight I tackle the fins. Hopefully I'll have the fin can complete by the end of the long weekend.
 
Help!

Trying to get my fins laminated. My plan was to wrap the carbon fiber along the leading edge down the sides of each fin. The problem is that it's seems unable to stick to the balsa enough to keep its shape. I keeps lifting off with a far too loose wrap as a result. I can still laminate a single side, but besides doubling the time required this has quite a few of its own problems. With the single LE to TE wrap, the LE is one solid piece of CF. Laminating each side independently leaves a seam on the LE. Plus there's the potential for warping.

Any suggestions? Would applying epoxy to the balsa first help at all?

At the moment, I have 2 useless fins, and 2 laminated on one side only. Good thing I made spares!

On the positive side, the seal a meal device is working great for vacuum bagging :)
 
Help!

Trying to get my fins laminated. My plan was to wrap the carbon fiber along the leading edge down the sides of each fin. The problem is that it's seems unable to stick to the balsa enough to keep its shape. I keeps lifting off with a far too loose wrap as a result. I can still laminate a single side, but besides doubling the time required this has quite a few of its own problems. With the single LE to TE wrap, the LE is one solid piece of CF. Laminating each side independently leaves a seam on the LE. Plus there's the potential for warping.

Any suggestions? Would applying epoxy to the balsa first help at all?

At the moment, I have 2 useless fins, and 2 laminated on one side only. Good thing I made spares!

On the positive side, the seal a meal device is working great for vacuum bagging :)

This is why I'm waiting for you to do it first. :wink:
Ok...Ok....I kid, I kid.

I'm looking at this CF - fin exercise soon myself.
Most articles on T to T CF are done one side at a time....but I'm sure there are some exceptions out there....
Maybe they'll chime in...help us out.
I thought I had seen some postings where they clamp a thick piece of mylar or plastic on two SEPERATE pieces of the CF on each side of the fin to compress it while it cures - and deal with cleaning up the LE overlap later.
Of course you would have to keep the overlap minimal.....that CF stuff is not the easiest stuff to trim up.
 
Last edited:
Well, today's results are in and they're not good. The ones I treated on one side overlapped wayyyy too much, so I've effectively got a shoddy CF coat on the B side. I was able to remove the CF from the messed up fins I'd done earlier, so I still have some test fins to play with.

My next plan is to pre-crease the CF at the leading edge. If it keeps its form I should be okay. I have some CF under some heavy books now to see if that will help it keep its crease. More to follow I guess.
 
Saran wrap plus sand? I use a gallon baggie of plaster of paris powder to do conformal pressing.

Need to get a vacuum rig one of these days....
 
The problem isn't holding it in place while it sets, it's getting it in place to begin with. I really think pre-creasing (folding it in half) will help. right now it keeps lifting off of the wood.

I'm using the seal a meal system as my vacuum rig and its working great. And it's cheap!
 
Well, I think that may have worked. We'll see in a few hours...

It's still tricky getting it all into place without lifting off of the surface. The vacuum bagging (or applied weight) is definitely necessary in this case.
 
Success! I guess the trick is to have the CF pre-formed so it can keep its shape.

IMG_1965.jpg


I thought I had seen some postings where they clamp a thick piece of mylar or plastic on two SEPERATE pieces of the CF on each side of the fin to compress it while it cures - and deal with cleaning up the LE overlap later.
Of course you would have to keep the overlap minimal.....that CF stuff is not the easiest stuff to trim up.

It's actually not too bad if you time it right. The key to the trimming is catching it at the "rubbery" stage before it fully cures. For me, using West Systems 105/206, this is in the 8-9 hour range. You can do a rough trim then and set it aside to fully cure before final sanding/grinding/whatever.

One down, seven plus spares to go...
 
Success! I guess the trick is to have the CF pre-formed so it can keep its shape.

View attachment 320781




It's actually not too bad if you time it right. The key to the trimming is catching it at the "rubbery" stage before it fully cures. For me, using West Systems 105/206, this is in the 8-9 hour range. You can do a rough trim then and set it aside to fully cure before final sanding/grinding/whatever.

One down, seven plus spares to go...

Catching it during the "leather" stage makes trimming a lot easier for sure, looks like this build is coming along nicely.
 
they look awesome Dave! The bad thing about the Saturn 1b is that they have eight fins....the cool thing about the Saturn 1b is that she has eight cool looking raked fins.....
 
Well, I now have a bunch of fins ready for sanding and installation. Here they are ready for the freezer

IMG_1968.jpg

For the most part they turned out pretty well. They have 2 layers of CF and one of fiberglass that will allow me to do any sanding without compromising the underlying layers. In particular, the trailing edge and the tips will have to be sanded smooth.

They didn't all turn out perfect. This one had the fiberglass shift when vacuum sealing. That's why I made extra!

IMG_1971.jpg

That's why I made extra :)

But the net result is a box full of fins ready for attachment

IMG_1970.jpg
 
with all of those extra fins...looks like you will have to build another 1b...maybe white tank version??

Well, I now have a bunch of fins ready for sanding and installation. Here they are ready for the freezer

View attachment 320855

For the most part they turned out pretty well. They have 2 layers of CF and one of fiberglass that will allow me to do any sanding without compromising the underlying layers. In particular, the trailing edge and the tips will have to be sanded smooth.

They didn't all turn out perfect. This one had the fiberglass shift when vacuum sealing. That's why I made extra!

View attachment 320853

That's why I made extra :)

But the net result is a box full of fins ready for attachment

View attachment 320854
 
Fins are in! 8 fins x 4 hours minimum set time per fin = one full weekend.

IMG_1977.jpgIMG_1975.jpg

The white plastic piece kept the shape of the engine skirt while allowing me access for gluing. All that remains are filleting, sanding, filling, sanding, priming, sanding,... whose idea was this anyways? :D

I've also got four of the tanks well along on the priming-sanding cycle.

IMG_1973.jpg

With so much high tech tooling letting me down, it was nice to be able to make a drying jig with 4 dowels and a piece of plywood.
 
Fins are in! 8 fins x 4 hours minimum set time per fin = one full weekend.

View attachment 320993View attachment 320994

The white plastic piece kept the shape of the engine skirt while allowing me access for gluing. All that remains are filleting, sanding, filling, sanding, priming, sanding,... whose idea was this anyways? :D

I've also got four of the tanks well along on the priming-sanding cycle.

View attachment 320995

With so much high tech tooling letting me down, it was nice to be able to make a drying jig with 4 dowels and a piece of plywood.

I really like that white plastic bracing in the fin can ......was that 3D printed component?
 
Just got back from my latest trip. There's just one week to URRF. I've taken the week off to do nothing but rocketry... hopefully the weather and jet lag will cooperate! It's going to be tight but I'm pretty sure I can make it flyable in time. (No 'Go Fever' though... if it's not ready, it's not ready)

When I left, I had accomplished one thing. I'd created a custom board that will allow me to do continuity checks of each of my clustered motors independently, as weell as tie two timers in there for redundancy. Basically it's just LEDs, resistors to limit current, and diodes to make sure it goes the right way. This will mount inside the rocket allowing me to do a final check before launching. I messed up a couple of details though. The original thought was to use a cell battery mounted on the back, but I can't attach that after I attach the terminal blocks, and I can't attach the terminal blocks after I attach that. Oops! So I adjusted the resistor values for a 9V battery and soldered a connector in place. When I tried putting the terminal blocks in place, the holes were too small. I tried filing the posts down to size, but one lost connection in the process and got stuck when I tried to remove it for the board. This definitely calls for a V2.0, but instead I went to one of the other boards (minimum batch was 3 and I'll solder connectors in place instead.

IMG_1981.jpgIMG_1982.jpg

Also, with all the 3D printer issues I'd been having, there was no way I was going to be able to print all the pieces I needed in time. So I used 3dhubs.com to get my capsule printed when I was away. The results aren't perfect, but they're pretty darned good and I can work with this!

IMG_2021.jpgIMG_2020.jpg

So the push begins today. I need to paint and finish the tanks and skirt before I can assemble them. Painting after assembly would be very difficult... at least for the tanks. So that's the first step.

Stay tuned folks! This could get exciting!
 
So Dave, how was your weekend? Three words: prime, sand, repeat.

I started by (finally!) attaching the base plate. The tubes shown are for alignment. The final ones won't be put in until the tanks are in place. The original plan was to make the tanks long, but that made alignment way too difficult. So plan B.

IMG_2023.jpg

When faced with the problem of keeping this upright so the glue could set, I went with a low tech standby. Tape it to the table leg!

IMG_2024.jpg

Then back to priming, sanding, and repeating.

IMG_2031.jpg

I'll add details to the tanks tonight, then one more priming and on to painting! The fin can needs more filling and sanding first.
 
In the meantime, I'm still adding details to the upper stage. Using a technique I saw in the NAR Facebook forum, I used a laser level too line up my features. I really should have thought of this before! Due to deviations in the body tubes, and compounding errors, it's hard to get everything lined up fore to aft. This works wonders!

IMG_2026.jpg

Using a full scale print out of a scan from David Week's amazing drawings, I started to mark feature locations.

IMG_2027.jpg

I started adding the upper radiators on the service module, but decided to pause at this point. This thing needs nose weight. I'd always intended to fill the space between the outer airframe and the inner blue tube core with epoxy and BBs. I figured I should do that first in case it became exothermic and started melting plastic. It's a good thing I did! Heat wasn't the issue... leaking epoxy was! It seemed to bleed through the fiberglass! Is that even possible? Thinking it was a leak, I started wrapping the joint with masking tape, but it only seemed to help a little.

IMG_2028.jpgIMG_2029.jpg

So now I have 6 Kg of nose weight and a lot of epoxy to sand off. Le sigh.
 
Where do you get your PCB prints? I have a simple staging controller made in Autodesk's Circuits.io but I haven't been able to find a ton of information about printing.
 
So Dave, how was your weekend? Three words: prime, sand, repeat.

I started by (finally!) attaching the base plate. The tubes shown are for alignment. The final ones won't be put in until the tanks are in place. The original plan was to make the tanks long, but that made alignment way too difficult. So plan B.

View attachment 322430

When faced with the problem of keeping this upright so the glue could set, I went with a low tech standby. Tape it to the table leg!

View attachment 322429

Then back to priming, sanding, and repeating.

View attachment 322428

I'll add details to the tanks tonight, then one more priming and on to painting! The fin can needs more filling and sanding first.

Looks real solid.....that's one hefty bird.
I like the build techniques.
Hope you can get it done , I'd like to see it fly, but don't burn yourself out! :)
 
Back
Top