Build Log Part 1:
On Friday, July 5th, 2024, I took all the printed parts and moved them to the dining room table. First, I started with the body tube. I have alluded to the body tube in a couple of posts, but I want to point out here that if you have no other option, than the OfficeMax mailing tubes, I can say they work. Not well, but they work. They are half the price of a LOC tube and the quality shows. LOC tubes are the bomb where the OfficeMax tubes are 1/2 step away from garbage. You will see why shortly. I slipped the cutting guide onto the body tube. The guide's slots or off-center, shifted more to one end than the other. the end with more meet is the aft end. I used the guide to cut out the slots and it worked great.
I started to peel the skin off the tube but this didn't work. I tried to sand it. No workie. This ended up causing me all sorts of issues. Again, this was from using a cheap tube.
Moving on to the nosecone, I taped off the sections that I did not want laminating epoxy on, then mixed up some TotalBoat. I gave the three parts a fair amount of epoxy, but not so much that it would run around. It did a pretty good job of staying in place. Once the epoxy kicked off, I took off the tape and prepped the joints with 120 grit sandpaper, then whipped up a batch of my 15min System3 epoxy and joined them all together, finally tipping the nosecone upside down and letting it cure. There was no warping from the epoxy kicking off.
I weighed the nosecone (with the AVBay) and it came in at a whopping 531g. OUCH. I need to rethink this. In the meantime, I moved on to the MMT.
I dry-fit the parts and the centering rings were a bit looser than I liked. I got the aft and middle rings tacked into place with CA. Then I noticed that the forward ring's eyebolt hole just wasn't going to cut it on a 54mm - 3" interface. I redesigned the forward CR to accept a 13mm x 4mm tubular nylon shock cord and printed it out. It is a much better solution. I got the forward ring tacked in and started to epoxy each ring leaving the area with the fins alone, to prevent interference, and left the aft end of the aft ring for later. Once everything had cured enough, I fished the first of 15 feet of shock cord through the notch in the forward ring. Its length was from the forward ring to the mid ring then doubled over on itself halfway back. It was slathered in epoxy, then taped down to make sure it stayed put. Once everything was good, I test-fit the MMT with the tube and then used my highly calibrated epoxy deployment device to provide a generous amount of epoxy into the tube just before the resting point of the forward centering ring. Once the MMT was fully placed, this created a great fillet on the forward end of the forward CR. After sliding the forward ring into the body tube, I scooped up epoxy with my popsicle stick and ate some... wait.. no. I applied it to the inside of the body tube between the fin slots. I repeated this as I slid the final CR into place. I checked my alignment to the fin slot's forward and aft boundaries using a fin on all 4 slots. and let it sit. After the epoxy set up, I checked the fillet on the forward CR and it was good. I flipped the tube over and flooded the aft end, making sure to get good coverage. Using a popsicle stick, I pulled some epoxy up onto the end of the motor tube and then slipped the retainer ring on. Again set everything to dry.