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I came up with this idea I saw on Apogee, except it was used for making motor mounts stronger and lighter, which I have used and it does work. I covered the build process under my GFORCE build thread. It consist of a wood dowel, some card stock and wood glue to put it together. You cut a couple rings and space them however you want on the wood dowel and then use the tabs to reinforce the rings. The rings are cut to whatever diameter rocket you are painting. This allows you to hold the rocket and paint without getting paint all over you or you can stand it up or what I do is wedge it in an old plastic milk container you find behind supermarkets. I have several that I made over the years and still have them. You can take it a step further and make the whole unit out of wood and disregard the tabs for support, although the wood units would work well for the really big rockets.

The unit pictured is for a 4 diameter rocket.

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This is not a jig but it serves a great purpose. It's actually made out of a laboratory dropper that was heated enough and stretched thin enough to make for a less than pin size hole. The purpose for this was to directly apply CA accelerator to the area needed rather than spraying and wasting good accelerator in a lot of unnecessary places. I usually draw some into the dropper before using CA and apply micro drops of accelerator where needed. What I don't use can go back in the bottle.

You are right about the accelerator. It is a waste to spray it, but I think I may have seen something similar to this??
 
It can be difficult to pack that stiff, uncooperative kevlar thread into those tiny MicroMaxx models

Here is my "Packing Fork". I shared this on another thread about MMX "challenges" but I think it does qualify for this gallery

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My "packing fork" is a bamboo skewer, to which the points of 2 flat toothpicks have been CA'd in place and sanded. The points of the toothpicks extend approx 1/4" (0.5cm) beyond the blunt end of the skewer.

I simply capture a section of kevlar in the fork, push it into the tube and "twirl" the fork a little (think spaghetti). I don't twirl it tight, just enough to draw in the slack. Then I remove the fork, capture another section and repeat. It sure takes the frustration out of gathering up the shock cord
 
Lawrence,

That is a pretty nifty idea. No problems with tangles?
 
The packing fork looks great. My local RC club (where I fly my rockets & RC planes) is going to raffle off a MicroMax setup for the kids attending our next flyin (free raffle just for kids). I will have to build an extra one of these to put into the setup.
 
I've already forgotten where the link was that brought me here, but I want to see more of what folks have got, so I'm committing a blatant act of thread necromancy. As penance, I submit this meager example of my own.

I used to do this regularly, and now I can't find a picture, because the things are disposable. To make a quick and dirty rocket cradle, start with a long, narrow piece of light weight cardboard, such as the face card from the rocket you're working on. I guess there are some people who always save the face cards, but to me it seems fitting to use everything in the package. I'll make a new one now out of printer paper, just for illustration.

Make six folds that let you raise two inverted Vs, then tape them closed into vertical cards.
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Then just cut in V notches with scissors.
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I messed this one up by putting the verticals too close together. But since this one is so small it would only useful for tiny rockets, maybe that's OK.
 
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