Step 62 - Drilling the Landing Spring Holes
A few corrections in the numbers:
1. There’s a total of 67 boards that have to be glued to the rocket (7 x 3 x 3 = 63. Less 3 because 3 columns have only 2 boards, so 60. And then add the 7 ones forward of the fins). The length for many of them is based on what’s visible in the comic panels. For those that aren’t visible in the comic, or that aren’t consistent across the panels, I used my best judgement for a random look. If we include the 5 boards that make up the door, there’s a total of 72 boards. ANYHOO.
2. The other number I need to correct is the spring size and hole for it.
- The spring diameter is 13/16”.
- The Forstner bit I tried is 3/4” (12/16”) diameter, but it drifts sideways, mostly because the balsa fin is too fragile for me to push hard on it.
- The hole saw that worked, after drilling a few pilot holes with increasing sizes, is 3/4”. The hole is just deep enough to hide a spring extremity.
So yeah, Grouchy succeeded in drilling the 3 shallow holes to fit the landing springs. The first one is a bit rough, but the others are fine. This was somewhat delicate because they happen to be exactly on the line where an extension is glued to the fin (see my post #1), and the spring diameter is very close to that of the fin width (3/4” vs 1”). Precise measurement with a ruler and a regular pencil was enough though. Clamped the fins a bit while drilling to prevent splitting, and rotated pretty slowly.
Now was the right time to drill these holes it because they should be painted red along with the fins and boards.
Grouchy Smurf:
I hate the first hole, but I hate the other two much less.
And at the SURFAS launch site (the other side of the fence):
Sassette:
What a smurfy-looking rocket! Hihihihi!
Laptop Smurf:
Good news Handy, I made a few flight tests using Jokey and Papa Smurf’s new propellant and my model reached an altitude of 2000 apples!
Handy:
Woah! Well if any smurf can launch Farmer’s old silo, it’s them. Papa told Jokey if he agreed to behave in the lab, he’d get to blast Astro up into the smurfosphere. So now Jokey’s serious like he’s never been before!
Laptop Smurf:
Jokey sure knows his way around ignition systems
.
Clumsy:
Uhhh… And Papa sure knows how to smurf things up!
Handy:
… and I sure don’t want to be smurfing nearby when Astro launches. It’ll smurf more than a refreshing breeze this time!
Laptop Smurf:
Breeze… right… well … umm... Clumsy? As Vice-President of Smurf X, shouldn’t you be supervising?
Clumsy:
Uhhh… Gosh! You bet I should!
... Golly! I gotta go!