Hey, you know what would bring this hobby to it's knees overnight?

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Are you kidding? If there ever were a global sandpaper shortage it would be us that caused it! Then we could be all high and mighty as we supply the world by sharing from our stockpiles. We'd finally get the respect we deserve but we'd keep it a secret that we caused it in the first place. 😜
 
I'm beginning to follow the lead of some others on the forum and flying naked until I feel like painting them. Besides, in the Midwest you can only paint from roughly May through October. If you follow the normal pattern you build in winter, paint in summer, then can't fly until the fall when the crops are down. That cycle blows. I want to fly year around and I'm not getting any younger, so paint is becoming more of an option than a necessity...
 
I hate hand sanding.

But, after years of feeling like hand sanding was an unfortunate hobby in itself, discovering machine sanding has been a huge win.

Get a Dremel Multi-Maxx, a good 5" orbital, a soft foam interface pad so it will conform to body tubes and nose cones better, and practically never hand sand again!

Also John Boren turned me on to using fine steel wool for sanding primer on smaller models. It's great because you can mush it into smaller fillets and irregular spots.

I fly naked fiberglass all the time.
 
Yup, air orbital sander is a huge step up from anything else.
 
Sanding...It's an option, and is prioritized by what you want anything to look like in the end.
You can build a rocket with no sanding and paint it without primer.
20' away on the pad who is going know?
But since I was an Auto Body Tech and Custom Painter, I just can't build that way.
My DNA is built out of 36, 80, 150, 220, 320, 400 & 1200 grit sandpaper...
 
Funkworks said:
Plato's sculpture here says it isn't convinced.

View attachment 449771
Click to expand...
Given appropriate venue, I can teach you how to make a BP motor in a day, including making the BP. If you want to make and dry paper tubes to press or ram the fuel in, I'll need 2 days. I prefer buying tubes which happen to look a lot like the ones Estes uses. Of course that involves making wheat paste which is technically a glue, so maybe glue is easier to make than a motor.
 
NateB said:
Given appropriate venue, I can teach you how to make a BP motor in a day, including making the BP. If you want to make and dry paper tubes to press or ram the fuel in, I'll need 2 days. I prefer buying tubes which happen to look a lot like the ones Estes uses. Of course that involves making wheat paste which is technically a glue, so maybe glue is easier to make than a motor.
Click to expand...

If the ingredients are in hand and the processes are known, I agree. But people have been making sculptures long before BP, so in that sense, an antiquity person alone in the wilderness who does't yet know what materials are required, where to find them, and how to use them, would probably figure out sanding before BP. Overall, a shortage of either is impossible.
 
Mike Haberer said:
I'm beginning to follow the lead of some others on the forum and flying naked until I feel like painting them. Besides, in the Midwest you can only paint from roughly May through October. If you follow the normal pattern you build in winter, paint in summer, then can't fly until the fall when the crops are down. That cycle blows. I want to fly year around and I'm not getting any younger, so paint is becoming more of an option than a necessity...
Click to expand...
You can paint all year long in your basement (if you have one) if inside/basement temps are above 55F. In winter, I stockpile newly made rockets and prime/paint in a few sessions using the gadzillion Amazon shipping boxes to make a barrier to erroneous spraying. Spraying "boxes" with extra cardboard attachments so as not to paint other goods/floors that weren't targets. Works just fine. Allow sufficient drying time if you don't have the heat on down there. Actually, keep track of drying times even if the heat's on... Big drying-time differences with different paints at non-standard temperatures, some unexpected. Test, experiment, accomplish.

Sandpaper??? Could make some impromptu sandpaper quickly and easily in a pinch: Paper/cloth/cardboard + adhesive + abrasive of desired size. Thousands of years things have been getting polished. While store-bought is always easiest, I'd have zero difficulty making various functional grade sandpapers from items that already exist in my house, and would do so before paying price-gouging/profiteering prices on the black market. Kind of like they still do in probably a quarter of the nations of the world (loose estimate but not far off), tsk tsk.
 

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