matthewdlaudato
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- Nov 17, 2013
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This is a 'scratch kit' build of an upscale design of the Fliskits Flea that I'm calling 'The Tick' (my 8yr old son came up with the name, ticks are bigger than fleas was his reasoning!). Just getting started, and this will probably be a long running thread.
I say 'scratch kit' because other than some 1/2" plywood bulkheads that I'll cut with my Dremel circle cutter jig (you can see one bottom center in the first pic), and the plywood portion of the fins, I am using purchased off the shelf parts and some custom ordered components.
The rocket will use a 54mm motor mount and 4" body tube - all tubes are Blue Tube that I ordered from www.alwaysreadyrocketry.com. You can see the 27" motor mount tube already cut to size - I used my chop saw, which is always fitted with a fine finish blade. It gives a good clean cut on the Blue Tube material, which is fairly hard and doesn't fray on cutting.
I've also built the altimeter bay already. West Systems 105/205 was used on the coupler construction, and some T-88 holds the nuts on one end in place.
My plan for the fins is a laminated design. The core is the G-10 fins you see on the left, which I ordered custom from www.publicmissiles.com. (Kim in sales was great to work with - I highly recommend this vendor.) The surfaces will be 1/8 birch plywood (which you can see with the templates drawn), which I ordered from www.woodworkerssource.com, and they will be bonded to the G-10 cores with a layer of fiberglass cloth (weight TBD) and the West Systems 105/205, as in wood-cloth/epoxy-G10-cloth/epoxy-wood. The rocket could break Mach 1, so I decided to overbuild a bit and make the fins extra stiff, hence the laminated design. Once installed the entire fin can will also be glassed. I will probably also bond a rounded dowel to the fin edges.
Here is the basic look from Open Rocket:
One component I don't yet have is the nose. Jim Flis was kind enough to provide me with a scaled up drawing for a 4" version of the original nose. It's not quite what you see in the picture above, more like a conic with a rounded tip (will post it at a later date). I will be contacting some of the vendors who frequent TRF for bids on the nose job (!).
That's all for now. We are having a 50 degree day here in Boston today, so good chance I'll be out in the garage working on this. I'll do my best to post regularly, but not necessarily in gory detail. I still have quite a few construction decisions to make and will definitely ask you all for input (God help me!).
To the garage!
I say 'scratch kit' because other than some 1/2" plywood bulkheads that I'll cut with my Dremel circle cutter jig (you can see one bottom center in the first pic), and the plywood portion of the fins, I am using purchased off the shelf parts and some custom ordered components.
The rocket will use a 54mm motor mount and 4" body tube - all tubes are Blue Tube that I ordered from www.alwaysreadyrocketry.com. You can see the 27" motor mount tube already cut to size - I used my chop saw, which is always fitted with a fine finish blade. It gives a good clean cut on the Blue Tube material, which is fairly hard and doesn't fray on cutting.
I've also built the altimeter bay already. West Systems 105/205 was used on the coupler construction, and some T-88 holds the nuts on one end in place.
My plan for the fins is a laminated design. The core is the G-10 fins you see on the left, which I ordered custom from www.publicmissiles.com. (Kim in sales was great to work with - I highly recommend this vendor.) The surfaces will be 1/8 birch plywood (which you can see with the templates drawn), which I ordered from www.woodworkerssource.com, and they will be bonded to the G-10 cores with a layer of fiberglass cloth (weight TBD) and the West Systems 105/205, as in wood-cloth/epoxy-G10-cloth/epoxy-wood. The rocket could break Mach 1, so I decided to overbuild a bit and make the fins extra stiff, hence the laminated design. Once installed the entire fin can will also be glassed. I will probably also bond a rounded dowel to the fin edges.
Here is the basic look from Open Rocket:
One component I don't yet have is the nose. Jim Flis was kind enough to provide me with a scaled up drawing for a 4" version of the original nose. It's not quite what you see in the picture above, more like a conic with a rounded tip (will post it at a later date). I will be contacting some of the vendors who frequent TRF for bids on the nose job (!).
That's all for now. We are having a 50 degree day here in Boston today, so good chance I'll be out in the garage working on this. I'll do my best to post regularly, but not necessarily in gory detail. I still have quite a few construction decisions to make and will definitely ask you all for input (God help me!).
To the garage!