Supporting a large diameter rocket for painting

I'm in the process of painting one of my scratch build rockets that has a 2.6 diameter airframe and is roughly 34" in length. The problem I have is how should I support the rocket while I am painting it? I know a lot you guys may stand your rocket up or perhaps take a smaller diameter body tube or wood dowel and slide it through the motor mount tube, well that would work, but I have a cluster mount, plus a baffle and I think it would be somewhat unstable. So I thought I would rig something just for painting larger diameter rockets and I got the idea from Apogee's website.

There's a video that discusses how to strengthen large and thin center rings. See below

https://www.apogeerockets.com/Rocketr...y_Video_07.asp

I applied the technique for making a secure support. Instead of using a body tube I used a 5/8" diameter wood dowel that you can purchase at Michael's for a $1 or less and I had some card stock that I bought from Apogee awhile back.

https://www.apogeerockets.com/centeri....asp#Cardstock

I went ahead and cut out two rings from the card stock and then I cut small tabs for added strength and support. It's absolutely amazing how strong this really is. Adding the tabs eliminate any flex the card stock rings would normally have. As far glue I just used Tight Bond II, but I'm sure any wood glue would work fine. When everything dried up I tested the fit and was perfect!! For me I just use an old milk crate to prop the wood dowel in and that's secure enough to hold the rocket up.

I want to purchase one of those Mercury Engineering RDR 1 kits that have a 4" diameter body tube. Now this would work great for something like that. I would probably use a 1" wood dowel and what's nice is that if you wanted more support you could always add another ring and space them maybe 2-3" apart. Also with the RDR1 kit the center rings can be reinforced using this method since it doesn't have TTWF's.

Just thought I would pass this along.

For large model and MPR rockets I've always used a Large diameter lazy susan combined with a few spent D12 motor casings, 18mm motor casings and few 1/2" dowels. Stuffer plugs built up from Duct tape for Up side down support of even very large span fin/wing models as seen in the photos below. 18mm slip nicely inside the 24mm casing making a very firm but removable slip fit. These 18mm casings can be driven onto the 1/2" dowels with different lengths for different length models. The 24mm casing bases are epoxied to wood or plastic base plates screwed securely to the center of the turntable. This allows mulitple models to be painted, transferred and others installed in the chamber without the necessity to wait for the first model to dry.