wyattjgeorge113
New Member
Hello all!
I have a 3" diameter carbon fiber body tube that my rocketry team inherited from a previous, now defunct, rocketry group at my university. My team and I are looking to make some repairs/modifications to the tube to transform it into a flight-worthy rocket. One of the issues with the body tube in its current state is that there are 20 small holes that were drilled into it in seemingly random places. I'd like to get these holes patched so that when we paint the exterior later, you would never know that the holes were even there. This is less of a functional problem and more of an aesthetic issue since there aren't enough holes to significantly compromise the integrity of the body tube. Any advice on what kind of material/method we could use to patch these holes so that the patches are flush with the outer diameter of the body tube? My initial idea was to put some wax paper on the outside of a coupler, slide the coupler inside the body tube, use epoxy to fill the holes, then put tape over the holes as the epoxy dries so they shape correctly with the curvature of the tube. Thoughts?
I have a 3" diameter carbon fiber body tube that my rocketry team inherited from a previous, now defunct, rocketry group at my university. My team and I are looking to make some repairs/modifications to the tube to transform it into a flight-worthy rocket. One of the issues with the body tube in its current state is that there are 20 small holes that were drilled into it in seemingly random places. I'd like to get these holes patched so that when we paint the exterior later, you would never know that the holes were even there. This is less of a functional problem and more of an aesthetic issue since there aren't enough holes to significantly compromise the integrity of the body tube. Any advice on what kind of material/method we could use to patch these holes so that the patches are flush with the outer diameter of the body tube? My initial idea was to put some wax paper on the outside of a coupler, slide the coupler inside the body tube, use epoxy to fill the holes, then put tape over the holes as the epoxy dries so they shape correctly with the curvature of the tube. Thoughts?