Building a 6 ft replica of the Higgs Farm Square Rocket

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Masked for spraying the black. The black paint will be Restoration Shop Glitter Black Metallic lacquer.

Unfortunately I will not be doing the black and white paint design on the nose like Tom's big square rocket; instead the nose will be all black. This is because the plywood corners of the nose that I built aren't quite perfect and a couple of the edges don't quite come to a point at the corners. It's barely noticeable now, but if I were to paint alternating sides black and white, it would be very noticeable. And that would drive me crazy, so I'd rather just paint the nose all black.

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How would you rate the difficulty of this build vs. other stuff you've done? Just curious for some reason.

I wouldn't use the word difficult. It was more complex and more interesting that most of the other HPR rockets that I've built. I put a lot of effort into paint but usually my rocket designs are pretty ordinary.
 
Sprayed the metallic black this morning. I will need to touch up some of the hard-to-reach surfaces with a brush, then next step will be clear coat.

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Unfreakinbelievable....

You said you'd paint my truck.....

Teddy
 
I sprayed 4 coats of clear lacquer yesterday. It was pretty humid so of course the clear coat really clouded up. You might think that that would be a big problem, but when you are going to wet sand and polish the clear coat it actually makes no difference if it is cloudy. The cloudiness is only on the surface and goes away the instant you hit it with sandpaper. I'll wet sand and polish the nose first so you can see that fogged up clear coat is not a problem. Here is how it looks now. Next step will be to wet sand with 1000 grit, then with 2000 grit.

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After polishing the nose . . .
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Pretty shiny for a piece of plywood from Hobby Lobby. . .
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This flash angle shows the metallic in the metallic black . . .
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NICE!! What did you use to polish it? What was your technique?

I do almost all my polishing by machine using a Porter Cable 7424 polisher with a Lake Country CCS white pad. I polish in two steps; first step using Meguiar's compound (a heavy cut polish) until it is pretty glossy and there are no visible 2000 grit scratches, then one or two more good passes using Blackfire finishing polish (a light cut polish) to give it a mirror finish. After that I will wax it with either carnauba wax or with a synthetic sealant wax.

This photo is from a previous build but I used the same polishes . . .
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And now on to wet sanding the rest of the rocket which will probably take about a week.
 
What do you do in the 30 minutes a day you aren’t working on rockets?

Actually I probably work on rockets an average of less than an hour a day, which is why this rocket which I started in February still isn't finished. I'm trying to get the polishing finished in the next couple of days so it will be ready to bring to MDRA sod farm this weekend. For display only.

But to answer your question, I have a big high-maintenance house and yard, a high-maintenance wife, and four high-maintenance dogs. And I play a lot of golf. When I'm not doing maintenance.
 
Wet sanded . . . polished . . . waxed . . . FINISHED!!!

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More photos soon.
 
This rocket looks so good I may just use it as a piece of modern art sculpture.

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Gorgeous! I assume you’ll be waiting to launch it in the fall at the namesake and not the sod farm?

Your photographic framing on the first drew my attention to that wood table, and the second picture blattenenly includes another table in the frame. That gorgeous dinning room table is upstaging the (mini?, sport?... no) penultimate Higgs Farm rocket. Those tables your work too?
 
It truly looked wonderful in the sun yesterday at the Sod Farm. The pearl over the white was kicking. Nathan, I forgot to ask, but now that you've done the clear, I assume there will be no lettering ?
 
Gorgeous! I assume you’ll be waiting to launch it in the fall at the namesake and not the sod farm?

Correct. I took it to the sod farm yesterday but just for display.

Your photographic framing on the first drew my attention to that wood table, and the second picture blattenenly includes another table in the frame. That gorgeous dinning room table is upstaging the (mini?, sport?... no) penultimate Higgs Farm rocket. Those tables your work too?

No that is beyond my woodworking skill level. Those tables were all made by my wife's late husband, who was a real woodworking artist. Here is another one, named the Arrowhead Table.
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It truly looked wonderful in the sun yesterday at the Sod Farm. The pearl over the white was kicking. Nathan, I forgot to ask, but now that you've done the clear, I assume there will be no lettering ?

Unfortunately that sparkly white pearl doesn't show up at all in photos. To see the pearl effect you need to see reflection of direct sunlight and when I try to capture that in a photo I just get overexposed glare.

No there won't be any lettering decals on this one. I like it better without lettering. The only rocket I ever put decals on was my Porsche DX3.
 
The job isn't complete until I post the mandatory reflection-of-some-object-in-the-mirror-finish photo . . .

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Yeah I know I've already done a golf ball, but I'm running out of ideas.
 
My kids and I circled it on Saturday, staring at our reflections. I kept yelling at them, "Don't touch it! You're too close! Back away!" They didn't touch it. :sigh:
 
Just set the table for a dinner party tomorrow night. Notice the Square Rocket which has been decorating the corner of the dining room now for five months. Was planning to have first flight at MDRA Higgs Farm this weekend but it was canceled due to wet field conditions. Hopefully next month.
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Wow. What a unique and impressive build. Very neat and clean techniques there.

I wonder if maybe you could have gotten away with not having the fiberglass tubes inside the rocket? That would have saved a bunch of weight for sure.

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to share this.

-Dave
 
Just set the table for a dinner party tomorrow night. Notice the Square Rocket which has been decorating the corner of the dining room now for five months. Was planning to have first flight at MDRA Higgs Farm this weekend but it was canceled due to wet field conditions. Hopefully next month.
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I love how all the napkins are little rockets. :D
 
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