It's time to start another one. With the Black Brant II in primer and waiting for a decent day to paint, I've decided to start another restoration. This time we're starting with an Estes Gray Hawk. Unlike most of my previous restorations, this kit was actually one that I bought, built, flew a lot and managed to hand onto while I bounced in and out of various hobbies.
While this kit does have some bumps and bruises and two of the wings have broken off, I managed to hang onto all of the parts. There is clear evidence of repairs on pretty much every part of the rocket so it's time to give it some much needed attention. The paint job on this one clearly shows my work at the age of 15. This was hand painted with flat white and gray. The fins are not sealed, thin and sloppy fillets and just a lack of detail on anything. Would be nice to be 15 and carefree again.
I didn't keep flight logs back in the day but I can recall launching this one at least a dozen times maybe more. It was a great flier on calm days but didn't like the wind. We only had to retrieve this one from a small tree once when it weather cocked and took off for the other side of the field. The parachute is missing and the old shock cord is rotten into pieces so that will all need to be replaced.
Pics 1 thru 3 - This is the Gray Hawk as she has sat for close to 20 yrs. Two broken fins but otherwise intact. Lets get started.
Pic 4 - After about 30 mins of pulling, scraping, and cutting, we have a mostly disassembled Gray Hawk. I was able to remove everything I wanted including the motor mount and the original shock cord mount. Just soak the shock cord mount with a damp paper towel for a few min and it peeled right up. I'll leave the main body section together as it is very strong and I don't really want to reproduce those paper pieces if I don't need to. As a kid I was clearly obsessed with glue as that stuff was everywhere.
Pic 5 - Here we see the disassembled parts all sanded and down. The excess glue on the tubes and fins came off pretty easily. The rest was carefully removed with a Dremel and/or various grits of sandpaper. From there I cleaned up the edges of the fins and prepared everything to go back together.
That is as far as I got last night. With the weekend here, I'm going to try to make this a quick resto and get through the bulk of the reassembly in the next couple of day. I'm currently looking for a warm place that I can paint indoors so I can wrap up some of the other restorations as I'm getting tired of looking at rockets in primer..
Until next time.
While this kit does have some bumps and bruises and two of the wings have broken off, I managed to hang onto all of the parts. There is clear evidence of repairs on pretty much every part of the rocket so it's time to give it some much needed attention. The paint job on this one clearly shows my work at the age of 15. This was hand painted with flat white and gray. The fins are not sealed, thin and sloppy fillets and just a lack of detail on anything. Would be nice to be 15 and carefree again.
I didn't keep flight logs back in the day but I can recall launching this one at least a dozen times maybe more. It was a great flier on calm days but didn't like the wind. We only had to retrieve this one from a small tree once when it weather cocked and took off for the other side of the field. The parachute is missing and the old shock cord is rotten into pieces so that will all need to be replaced.
Pics 1 thru 3 - This is the Gray Hawk as she has sat for close to 20 yrs. Two broken fins but otherwise intact. Lets get started.
Pic 4 - After about 30 mins of pulling, scraping, and cutting, we have a mostly disassembled Gray Hawk. I was able to remove everything I wanted including the motor mount and the original shock cord mount. Just soak the shock cord mount with a damp paper towel for a few min and it peeled right up. I'll leave the main body section together as it is very strong and I don't really want to reproduce those paper pieces if I don't need to. As a kid I was clearly obsessed with glue as that stuff was everywhere.
Pic 5 - Here we see the disassembled parts all sanded and down. The excess glue on the tubes and fins came off pretty easily. The rest was carefully removed with a Dremel and/or various grits of sandpaper. From there I cleaned up the edges of the fins and prepared everything to go back together.
That is as far as I got last night. With the weekend here, I'm going to try to make this a quick resto and get through the bulk of the reassembly in the next couple of day. I'm currently looking for a warm place that I can paint indoors so I can wrap up some of the other restorations as I'm getting tired of looking at rockets in primer..
Until next time.
Last edited:
