Estes Nose Cone Weight (NCW-4)

[Viggen]

First rocket I ever built was the mini-brute Screamer, so I am piecing together one from scratch now. question on that one is it shows having a Nose Cone Weight part (NCW-4) which my searches have found to weight like .35oz/10grams. That seems awfully heavy and a lot of lead to me. Anyone know if that’s right?

has anyone ever seen the NCW-4 ?

 

[Pinetree]

 

[kuririn]

.354 oz.
http://ninfinger.org/rockets/custom_estes/weights.html

 

[Viggen]

Thanks for the info. I have seen those old docs and I just think they are wrong. Look at the pic in the bag and see the actual NCW-4 washer. Note it’s a half inch OD. I bought lead sinkers that are 3/8 of an ounce and mashed them to be about the same thickness. That sinker is in the pic below next to a ruler with a 1/2 inch zinc washer. I think the actual weight is like .035 not .35oz. Just trying to figure this out. Right now I may just try 2 zinc washers.

 

[kuririn]

Thanks for the info. I have seen those old docs and I just think they are wrong. Look at the pic in the bag and see the actual NCW-4 washer. Note it’s a half inch OD. I bought lead sinkers that are 3/8 of an ounce and mashed them to be about the same thickness. That sinker is in the pic below next to a ruler with a 1/2 inch zinc washer. I think the actual weight is like .035 not .35oz. Just trying to figure this out. Right now I may just try 2 zinc washers.

View attachment 591763

3/8 of an ounce is .375 oz.
A steel washer is heavier than zinc.
One standard Estes clay pat is .25 oz.
So .035 oz. would be 14% of a standard pat of clay nose weight.
So .35 oz. sounds about right to me.

 

[Viggen]

3/8 of an ounce is .375 oz.
A steel washer is heavier than zinc.
One standard Estes clay pat is .25 oz.
So .035 oz. would be 14% of a standard pat of clay nose weight.
So .35 oz. sounds about right to me.

I appreciate your thoughts but I still struggle with this.

Do you see the amount of lead in the picture? That’s .375 of an ounce of lead, which weighs more than steel. That bit of lead is multiple times larger than the zinc washer. The .5in diameter washer is the size it needs to be. I can’t physically get that much lead in the washer space.

It’s a balsa nose cone so there’s no way to use clay.

Again I appreciate your attention, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

 

[Pinetree]

You could drill a hole in the nosecone and insert some Lead I suppose.

I can't honestly remember any of the Estes kits I built as a kid in the '70's ever having any sort of weights.

 

[MarkB.]

The NCW-1 weight and the NCW-4 weight were different items. But I have a very hard time believing the zinc washer (NCW-4) weighs 3X as much as a lead disk (NCW-1) of slightly larger diameter and thickness.

If you go back and look at the Estes listing snippet, it says each NCW-1 lead disk weighs .12 Oz or 3.4 grams. Those lead disks were in a number of Estes kits including K-49 Sprint and K-41 Mercury Redstone which came with two that you stacked under the screw eye. They were approximately the same diameter as the shoulder on a BT-50 nose cone.

So with that said, an Estes disk is about 1/8 ounce, which really isn't much. I'd drill a couple of inches into the bottom of your balsa cone and add that length of 1/2" dowel. The glue and the dowel will easily make up the weight and the harder wood of the dowel will prevent the screw eye from pulling out. I do that to all my balsa nose rockets, new-builds and restorations. If you need a bunch of weight you can drill deeper, use epoxy and trap a fishing weight under the dowel.

Once you've done this once you'll do it always.

 

[tsmith1315]

It was a single washer, nothing special.

Catalog page shows rocket weight of 0.255 oz:

 

[Viggen]

Thanks, that does help!