I had a strange thing happen when I used Testor's plastic cement (orange tube) on some rocket parts lately.
I bought the tube from Hobby Lobby or some place like it and used it on the nosecone of my son's "Cosmic Cobra" (the part where the helicopter hub bonds to the nosecone shoulder) and also on the fins/launch lugs of my new Estes D-Region Tomahawk.
The surfaces were clean and that cement is what the instructions recommend, but when we got out to the launch site a few weeks later, the cement bonds completely failed. I went to put the Tomahawk on the launch rod and the lugs popped off like they'd been stuck on with icing or something. Managed to fix those with CA and then sent the rocket up. Great flight, but it dislodged two of the four fins in high, soft grass upon recovery.
I didn't think this was overly odd because of the other posts I read about reinforcing the fin bonds on that one with more of a "solvent" type plastic weld solution, but then we got ready to launch the Cosmic Cobra and had another incident.
My son pulled off the nose cone to pack the chute and the copter hub literally fell off in his hands! WTH? CA came to the rescue again, but has anyone else seen this with this type of cement? I've used this type / brand of cement for years with no problems... Am I missing something? Could it have just been old cement or something?
I bought the tube from Hobby Lobby or some place like it and used it on the nosecone of my son's "Cosmic Cobra" (the part where the helicopter hub bonds to the nosecone shoulder) and also on the fins/launch lugs of my new Estes D-Region Tomahawk.
The surfaces were clean and that cement is what the instructions recommend, but when we got out to the launch site a few weeks later, the cement bonds completely failed. I went to put the Tomahawk on the launch rod and the lugs popped off like they'd been stuck on with icing or something. Managed to fix those with CA and then sent the rocket up. Great flight, but it dislodged two of the four fins in high, soft grass upon recovery.
I didn't think this was overly odd because of the other posts I read about reinforcing the fin bonds on that one with more of a "solvent" type plastic weld solution, but then we got ready to launch the Cosmic Cobra and had another incident.
My son pulled off the nose cone to pack the chute and the copter hub literally fell off in his hands! WTH? CA came to the rescue again, but has anyone else seen this with this type of cement? I've used this type / brand of cement for years with no problems... Am I missing something? Could it have just been old cement or something?