Why have I never thought of this...

Funnels. The cheap plastic kind you use with your car, lawn mower, etc. Nearly any airframe piece will fit and balance readily. Perfect for letting painted parts cure as the funnel only touches the inside edge of the opening. All of a sudden my paint throughput is going up!

That's fantastic!

great find!!now I have to get some funnels.

Not a bad idea that!


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Great idea!

for those of us that paint outside, I wonder if the wind would be able to topple the rocket off of the funnel. I usually just stab appropriately sized dowel rods into the ground.

You're kind of a genius...

etoyoc said:

for those of us that paint outside, I wonder if the wind would be able to topple the rocket off of the funnel. I usually just stab appropriately sized dowel rods into the ground.

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+1.

etoyoc said:

for those of us that paint outside, I wonder if the wind would be able to topple the rocket off of the funnel. I usually just stab appropriately sized dowel rods into the ground.

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No this is not for painting at all. I use rebar staked into the ground and "special" plywood to prop up the item of interest so you can get down and below to achieve full coverage. The funnels are stands for drying only. Before I tried to hang things, prop them on sticks, worry about keeping pieces together to take the least space (as they jutted out horizontally all over my workshop), but now with everything vertical and with its own stand they can just be set safely in the corner until fully dry.

dixontj93060 said:

Funnels. The cheap plastic kind you use with your car, lawn mower, etc. Nearly any airframe piece will fit and balance readily. Perfect for letting painted parts cure as the funnel only touches the inside edge of the opening. All of a sudden my paint throughput is going up!

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Great idea!

I use dowels stuck into different things that will hold them steady, and beer bottles filled with sand or concrete. A garage sale Lazy Susan is a great help, too.

On a totally different, but still tied-in topic, I used a funnel to add a base-drag cone made from paper mache onto a piece of BT50 tubing. The funnel looked like it had the right shape and since it was plastic, the glue from the paper mache did not stick; popped right off. Rocket was straight as an arrow stable. It was a lot of fun to fly on 24mm D reloads (very quiet, low power).

sooner.boomer said:

I use dowels stuck into different things that will hold them steady, and beer bottles filled with sand or concrete.

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A beer bottle might work on rockets up to 2" dia., but not much more than that as the bigger airframes will surround the bottle and the bottom edge of the airframe would touch the ground screwing up the paint. The key to the funnels is that the bottom airframe edge and it's fresh paint don't touch anything. You can get large funnels up to nearly two feet in diameter for large airframes.

Very good idea. I am going to start using it.

Looks like a good way to repurpose funnels.

dont you have to handle the part before putting it on the funnel? What if you are painting an airframe and you can touch it?

AfterBurners said:

dont you have to handle the part before putting it on the funnel? What if you are painting an airframe and you can touch it?

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I reach inside the airframe with one or both hands/arms and push out with fingers or hands (depending on size of airframe) then move it over to and place on the funnel. I have found I don't want to leave any painted part outside (where I have to paint too long) either due to wind, bugs, direct sunlight or humidity. The quicker I can get it back into my air conditioned workshop the better.

What a great idea!

Just picked up a set of 5 funnels at the dollar store. $0.20 per paint stand cant be beat! Thanks for the idea.

Could even make a decent display stand