54mm Mailing Tubes Used for Motor Tubes? Do they exist?

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K'Tesh

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In checking Chinese websites, I admit... I suck at it.

Does anyone know if a 54mm Motor tube can be made from a common sized mailing tube? If so, do you have the commercial dimensions of such a tube? The more numbers I can get, the more accurately I *MIGHT* be able to track it down here. Info from America would be good, but metric using country would be even better.

I know that 4" tubes exist, as I scored a few from McDonald's here. So that's not a problem.

I finally got the blessing (and the support financially/technically) to go ahead and build the 2 meter "Stubby" pencil rocket. I might be going with the mailing tubes for the airframe instead of the PVC pipe I have/planned to use.

Thanks!
Jim
 
54mm is a weird duck of a size that ought never to have been, IMO. It's pretty rare to find parts in the wild.
 
Try a carpet store for their tubes. I've found 38 and 54 there. The only drawback is its generally thick wall tube.
 
Mailing tubes in my neck of the woods come in 1.5”, 2.5” and 3” outer diameters. I haven’t seen other sizes readily available... I’ve used all 3 but honestly, just buy good glassine tubes. The difference in cost is less than the cost of the finishing and sealing supplies you’ll go through trying to finish raw cardboard - not to mention they’re not as strong and the inner diameter is non standard so they’re useless if you’re using off the shelf rings, cones, etc...
 
From what I can tell, carpet shops and glassine tubes are kinda hard to find here in China.
 
From what I can tell, carpet shops and glassine tubes are kinda hard to find here in China.

Alibaba lists many cardboard shipping tube manufacturers such as this one:
Bella Guo Hebei Wenfukeda Paper Product Co., Ltd.

The problem of course is that Alibaba is set up to connect people from outside China to Chinese manufacturers, for sales of minimums of a thousand pieces, but there must be something that’s available there. When I worked in Taiwan (admittedly not necessarily the same) I would ask one of my Taiwanese co-workers where I could get something and he would take me to a special block in Taiwan where there were hundreds of stalls selling similar things. Maybe one of your students?
 
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