Working on three rockets at a time - waiting for stuff to dry - live and learn

[brockrwood]

Let's face it: Most of model rocket building is waiting. You sand fins and then fill them with wood filler. Then you wait for it to dry before you sand it. You glue stuff together. Then you wait for it to dry. You put on primer. You wait for it to dry. You wet sand. You wait for it to dry. You put on a coat of paint. You wait for it to dry.

So, most of rocket building is "waiting for stuff to dry". The actual gluing, wood filling, tube spiral filling, priming, painting, and even sanding, does not take that long to accomplish. The long duration part of model rocket building is the waiting for stuff to dry. When I set aside an afternoon to "work on rockets", what I find is that most of the afternoon is spent waiting for stuff to dry.

Building a model rocket is basically project management. Certain things can be done in a certain order and some steps have to wait until the previous steps, including drying time, are complete. This is the "critical path" in a flow chart. You cannot "speed up" certain steps, or do them out of order, by adding more labor to the process. There is a name for that phenomenon in project management but I don't know what it is.

When I set aside time to "work on model rockets", this is time I set aside for fun, for enjoyment. I don't want to waste that precious time. The solution? I have found, totally by accident, that the solution is to work on three rockets simultaneously. Experienced model rocketeers probably already know this, but I am just discovering it. Doh!

When I work on three rockets at the same time, there is always another step to work on, on a different rocket, while the first or second rocket is in a "wait for stuff to dry" phase. By working on three rockets at a time, the entire afternoon I set aside for model rocket building actually gets used for model rocket building.

 

[BEC]

Well put!

 

[MidOH]

Option 1: Unplug the cable and put a Pulaski Axe through your Tv. You'll be startled how much more time and freedom you'll have. You don't need morons on Tv brainwashing you, AND wasting your time.

Option 2: Mow the lawn while your paint dries. Sure I build multiple rockets at the same time. But then I just have multiple rockets drying. I do it mostly so that I can fly through my paint cans before the nozzles get messed up. I do all of my chores while my glue is drying. Having multiple rockets in paint and sanding at the same time, stinks.

Option 3: Sleep. I do a little building before bed. Glue dries overnight. Rocketry is therapeutic. Building and tuning RC cars isn't. No idea why one relaxes me, but the other doesn't.

Option 4: You need fiberglass and carbon rockets to really appreciate paper rockets. And vice versa. It sucks watching three paper rockets dry at the same time. FG rockets don't have that issue. Motor mount dries in 30minutes. Fins: 1 hour tops. Epoxy cures in the time it takes to eat a burrito, or chase a Charter Cable salesman off my property (with the same Pulaski axe). My paper stuff needs to cure overnight. Having a FG rocket on the build table breaks up the monotony of the others. Because it's always going to be in a completely different step than the others.

Option 5: Cut back on the wet sanding. You really don't need a glass smooth finish if you're only going to weathercock your rocket into the side of a barn somewhere. Identify which rockets get wrecked the most per launch, and cut back on paint time on those. My LPR, single deployment, paper rockets, are generally less refined than my FG builds. Since they're flying on smaller fields with trees and cows.

 

[brockrwood]

or chase a Charter Cable salesman off my property (with the same Pulaski axe)

Ha ha!

 

[brockrwood]

Option 5: Cut back on the wet sanding. You really don't need a glass smooth finish if you're only going to weathercock your rocket into the side of a barn somewhere.

I have to second this sentiment. I want my rockets to look great, but, again, I have to be realistic. It is saddening to watch the model rocket you have slaved to create, for hours and hours, smash up on the first launch because the parachute did not fully open up. What is the point of the museum quality paint job if the tube will be bent and the fins snapped off within a few launches? I am definitely going for the "looks pretty good from 10 feet away" paint job at this point.

I actually read somewhere that a particular model rocketeer built each of his rockets with no paint or sanding or priming of any sort and then launched them one time. If he got the rocket back, in one piece, THEN he would bother to fill and sand the fins, fill in tube spirals, prime, paint, et cetera. I guess he wanted to see if each rocket had the right "spiritual energy" in it and was a "keeper" before he bothered to spend hours making it look good.

 

[brockrwood]

Option 3: Sleep. I do a little building before bed. Glue dries overnight. Rocketry is therapeutic. Building and tuning RC cars isn't. No idea why one relaxes me, but the other doesn't.

This is something I have also started to do. If I know the rocket has a "has to dry overnight" step coming up, I try to schedule the model rocket construction activity for an hour or two before bedtime. Problem: I have no lit area, inside or outside, at night, to use to do priming and painting. I need light to see where the heck the paint is going. So laying down primer and paint has to happen during daytime hours outside.

 

[neil_w]

I actually read somewhere that a particular model rocketeer built each of his rockets with no paint or sanding or priming of any sort and then launched them one time. If he got the rocket back, in one piece, THEN he would bother to fill and sand the fins, fill in tube spirals, prime, paint, et cetera. I guess he wanted to see if each rocket had the right "spiritual energy" in it and was a "keeper" before he bothered to spend hours making it look good.

That's not an uncommon approach around here: it's called making a rocket "earn its paint".

I do not adhere to this philosophy.

 

[MidOH]

I'd at least put down the base color, with no wet sanding. Bare or primer seems to be bad luck.

Like if I don't paint it at all, it's because my subconscious knows that rocket was built poorly.

 

[brockrwood]

Sure I build multiple rockets at the same time. But then I just have multiple rockets drying.

I hear you. Still, by building three rockets at one time, even if you do have the "I have to wait now while stuff dries" issue, at least, at the end of the process that would normally result in one finished rocket, you have three finished rockets, no?

The current set of three rockets I am working on is sort of a unique situation.

The first rocket is a brand new mini-engine cluster, scratch build. I am trying out the "self-etching" automotive primer to see if I like it.

The second rocket is a rebuild of a Semroc Goliath three engine cluster rocket that lost its payload section and nose cone. I am replacing the payload tube and nose cone with new parts. For the replacement payload section and nose cone, I have to fill and sand, primer, and paint all the way from bare balsa and paper tube to painted and finished. The rest of rocket was fully finished years ago.

The third rocket is a "salvage" job. I bought a partially completed Estes Bull Pup-D at a yard sale. The previous owner had glued it together but he/she did not sand, shape, or fill the fins and did not fill the tube spirals. The previous owner had started to paint the rocket white but stopped with about half of the rocket covered with the first coat of white paint. I guess the previous owner got bored at that point. Or bought a skateboard... At any rate, I filled the the fins and tube spirals and sanded them. I am currently in the process of priming the rocket with white primer.

So, each rocket is in a different state of completion. After I wet sand one rocket, I can put primer on the second rocket, and then sand the wood filler off of the third rocket, and so forth. I can just keep shifting my attention from rocket to rocket.

 

[brockrwood]

Option 2: Mow the lawn while your paint dries.

I find myself posting in the Rocketry Forum while the paint dries. It makes me think I am still engaging in my hobby life! ;-)

 

[Jeff Lassahn]

I find I don't need more than two rockets to keep myself adequately busy.

I also believe wasting time while thing dry is the true purpose of this forum.

 

[les]

I will typically keep multiple builds in process at the same time. Yes, as one stap on Rocket A needs to dry, I work B. As it needs to dry I work on C. Then back to A as C dries.

 

[brockrwood]

I also believe wasting time while thing dry is the true purpose of this forum.

Ha! Ha!

 

[teepot]

Around here at this time of year you either get up at 5am and paint or at 2am. I have flood lights on poles for night putting er painting. I also use a head lamp. I regularly have multiple rockets waiting for paint. In the winter it's wait till it's above 45 and now below 85. I stopped filling spirals and plywood after watching a rocket I spent a lot of time on get dragged across the lake bed for several hundred yards. Took the paint off the leading edge of the tube and then ate it's way through the cardboard, Ground down one of the fins about 1/4". The whole rocket was scratched up. So now I'm not that worried about the paint anymore.

 

[caveduck]

I hate waiting and changed my build tactics to suit. For LPR it's CA (thin and medium) plus good 5-min epoxy (West G10); pretty much zero waiting until it gets to primer. Even then I use 2-part primer that is absolutely positively cured and ready to sand in 8 hrs regardless of weather. Balsa fins get coated with thin CA. For fillers I'll use either a really thin layer of spot putty or some 2-part Bondo, both are sandable in under 30 mins if you use them right. Glass HPR rockets mostly don't get painted anymore b/c as teepot observed, the western deserts are hell on finishes generally, and it's hard to prevent landsharking after touchdown. Those do have some waiting since you want to use stronger epoxy.

 

[Back_at_it]

Let's face it: Most of model rocket building is waiting. You sand fins and then fill them with wood filler. Then you wait for it to dry before you sand it. You glue stuff together. Then you wait for it to dry. You put on primer. You wait for it to dry. You wet sand. You wait for it to dry. You put on a coat of paint. You wait for it to dry.

So, most of rocket building is "waiting for stuff to dry". The actual gluing, wood filling, tube spiral filling, priming, painting, and even sanding, does not take that long to accomplish. The long duration part of model rocket building is the waiting for stuff to dry. When I set aside an afternoon to "work on rockets", what I find is that most of the afternoon is spent waiting for stuff to dry.

Building a model rocket is basically project management. Certain things can be done in a certain order and some steps have to wait until the previous steps, including drying time, are complete. This is the "critical path" in a flow chart. You cannot "speed up" certain steps, or do them out of order, by adding more labor to the process. There is a name for that phenomenon in project management but I don't know what it is.

When I set aside time to "work on model rockets", this is time I set aside for fun, for enjoyment. I don't want to waste that precious time. The solution? I have found, totally by accident, that the solution is to work on three rockets simultaneously. Experienced model rocketeers probably already know this, but I am just discovering it. Doh!

When I work on three rockets at the same time, there is always another step to work on, on a different rocket, while the first or second rocket is in a "wait for stuff to dry" phase. By working on three rockets at a time, the entire afternoon I set aside for model rocket building actually gets used for model rocket building.

Interestingly, I find that the way I balance my hobbies and my girlfriend is to utilize that drying time between steps. I can run down to the shop or 10 or 15 minutes and do what I need to do than come back up and spend time with her and do other things. I feel like this is the biggest reason she tolerates my hobbies as I do have a bunch of them

When she is away I tend to to spend a bit more time in the shop working on stuff but I really try not to have more than one or two rockets going at a time. I got to a point where I had almost a dozen in various stages of completion and the shop was a mess. I took a step back and picked one project and went start to finish and it took me almost a month to get through them all.

The exception to this rule is repairs after a flight day. Sometimes I have 5 or 6 rockets going but most repairs these days are paint touch up or the occasional broken fin.

 

[MidOH]

I hang my rocket bags on the wall and just slit the top of them. Any rocket without fins goes back in the bag. That keeps all the parts organized as well. When an Apogee parts order comes in, each chute or whatever goes into those rockets bags before I forget who is supposed to have what.

With fins it goes in the rafters of my basement. Usually rocket is complete by then, and ready for primer.

 

[DaHabes]

My LPR, single deployment, paper rockets, are generally less refined than my FG builds. Since they're flying on smaller fields with trees and cows.

To this I would add my MPR rockets, anything not HPR. Generally I try to get a decent primer coat on before I fly them. Paint comes after - IF I have the time and weather, IF I have the paint. I do a lot of building in winter (who doesn't), so I can usually get a coat of primer on a warmish winter day. Then I do all the painting in summer, multiple rockets at a time, one color at a time. Sometimes I get all the colors on sometimes not. Building is fun, flying is fun, painting and sanding is a pain. My motto is sand less, paint less, fly more.

My only issue is gray primed rockets against a gray cloudy sky. So easy to lose sight of them. Such is life.

 

[brockrwood]

Even then I use 2-part primer that is absolutely positively cured and ready to sand in 8 hrs regardless of weather.

Any particular brand? I would love a primer that is dry and ready to go faster.

- Brock

 

[brockrwood]

To this I would add my MPR rockets, anything not HPR. Generally I try to get a decent primer coat on before I fly them. Paint comes after - IF I have the time and weather, IF I have the paint. I do a lot of building in winter (who doesn't), so I can usually get a coat of primer on a warmish winter day. Then I do all the painting in summer, multiple rockets at a time, one color at a time. Sometimes I get all the colors on sometimes not. Building is fun, flying is fun, painting and sanding is a pain. My motto is sand less, paint less, fly more.

My only issue is gray primed rockets against a gray cloudy sky. So easy to lose sight of them. Such is life.

For low power rockets, I wonder why there aren't more pre-colored body tubes and nose cones sold by the model rocket manufacturers? What a time saver. Also, how about some pre-colored plastic fins that come with a little packet of epoxy to glue them onto the body tubes? I am sensing an entrepreneurial opportunity here...

 

[Back_at_it]

Any particular brand? I would love a primer that is dry and ready to go faster.

- Brock

This is what I use. Designed to be used in Body shops where time is money. Ready to go in about an hour.

It's expensive but you don't have to wait days for something to cure then deal with the headaches of the crap Rustoleum sells.

https://www.semproducts.com/product/high-build-primer-surfacer/42013

 

[caveduck]

Any particular brand? I would love a primer that is dry and ready to go faster.

- Brock

I use KlassKote epoxy primer shot thru a cheap detail gun. Not cheap but it is wonderfully easy to sand and does not load up your sandpaper. You can go around the model several times with a couple of minutes flash time in between and build up a thick enough coat to obliterate tube spirals all at one sitting. Even if you get runs you can sand them off with very little effort. Actually any automotive 2-part primer will be just as good, some of them cure even faster but are yet more expensive. The SEM cans are pretty decent too but it will not be fun trying to put on enough to kill spirals. In my experience, all of the big box store 1-part rattlecan primers are awful except maybe Duplicolor.

 

[katinthebox]

I have to second this sentiment. I want my rockets to look great, but, again, I have to be realistic. It is saddening to watch the model rocket you have slaved to create, for hours and hours, smash up on the first launch because the parachute did not fully open up. What is the point of the museum quality paint job if the tube will be bent and the fins snapped off within a few launches? I am definitely going for the "looks pretty good from 10 feet away" paint job at this point.

I actually read somewhere that a particular model rocketeer built each of his rockets with no paint or sanding or priming of any sort and then launched them one time. If he got the rocket back, in one piece, THEN he would bother to fill and sand the fins, fill in tube spirals, prime, paint, et cetera. I guess he wanted to see if each rocket had the right "spiritual energy" in it and was a "keeper" before he bothered to spend hours making it look good.

This is one of two different interpretations of a sentiment I- as someone now suffering from chronic LRS (lost rocket syndrome)- have to say is incredibly pertinent to model rocketry- If you love it, let it go!
What if I loved the hell out of any of the rockets I've lost over the past year, but never bothered painting them? Frankly, I love what I'm doing so much that even if I only have a finished rocket for a couple days and then lose it, it feels better than losing one I didn't finish.
After spending almost 45 minutes hiking through knee+ high weeds and dense brambles- after two separate launches launches- a couple weeks ago- I can honestly say I felt worse about giving up on the unpainted one!

 

[brockrwood]

This is one of two different interpretations of a sentiment I- as someone now suffering from chronic LRS (lost rocket syndrome)- have to say is incredibly pertinent to model rocketry- If you love it, let it go!
What if I loved the hell out of any of the rockets I've lost over the past year, but never bothered painting them? Frankly, I love what I'm doing so much that even if I only have a finished rocket for a couple days and then lose it, it feels better than losing one I didn't finish.
After spending almost 45 minutes hiking through knee+ high weeds and dense brambles- after two separate launches launches- a couple weeks ago- I can honestly say I felt worse about giving up on the unpainted one!

Strangely enough, some of my "beater" rockets, that have "taken a beating but keep on ticking", are some of my favorites. It is though they are survivors and the "battle scars" are a mark of distinction. I have an old Estes Blue Ninja, ARTF rocket, with dents and creases in the tube, with the blue, metallic foil held on with scotch tape, and with 3 of the 4 fins glued back on with obvious glue lines right in the middle of the fins. But this warrior rocket refuses to get lost in the weeds and refuses to get so broken that it cannot be repaired. It is one of my favorites.

I love "sturdy" rockets that can take my unintended abuse and keep on flying.

 

[BEC]

For low power rockets, I wonder why there aren't more pre-colored body tubes and nose cones sold by the model rocket manufacturers? What a time saver. Also, how about some pre-colored plastic fins that come with a little packet of epoxy to glue them onto the body tubes? I am sensing an entrepreneurial opportunity here...

Find a set of the now discontinued Mix-N-Match-50, -55, or -60 parts sets for lots of colored nose cones, fin cans and body tubes.....
(no glue included though)

 

[brockrwood]

Find a set of the now discontinued Mix-N-Match-50, -55, or -60 parts sets for lots of colored nose cones, fin cans and body tubes.....
(no glue included though)

I like it! Who made these parts?

 

[BEC]

I like it! Who made these parts?

The were Estes sets that used the same collection of parts that are used in their ARF kits and some of the other Level 1/E2X kits. They all have the same interface for the fins so you can mix and match. But Estes blew them out on clearance some time ago and I don't know who, if anyone still has them. AC Supply and Hobblinc don't any more.

The parts themselves and some new ones (like the fin/legs for the MAV and the fin can with a built-in launch lug in the recent AstroCam and Ghost Chaser) are still around, but it will take some digging to find the parts sets, I expect.

 

[Pappy]

..When I work on three rockets at the same time, there is always another step to work on...

i'm currently working on the antar, minotaur, outlander, space shuttle, and finishing up the 1b... life is good

 

[brockrwood]

The were Estes sets that used the same collection of parts that are used in their ARF kits and some of the other Level 1/E2X kits. They all have the same interface for the fins so you can mix and match. But Estes blew them out on clearance some time ago and I don't know who, if anyone still has them. AC Supply and Hobblinc don't any more.

The parts themselves and some new ones (like the fin/legs for the MAV) and the fin can with a built-in launch lug in the recent AstroCam and Ghost Chaser are still around, but it will take some digging to find the parts sets, I expect.

Hmm. If Estes had to blow these kits out on clearance, maybe my entrepreneurial idea isn't so appealing to the market after all!

All I know is, after spending days with priming, sanding, priming, sanding, putting on first coat of paint, waiting, putting on second coat of paint, waiting, et cetera, anything that speeds up the process would seem like a blessing.

I know some modelers love carefully crafting a rocket to fly, day after day, until it is perfect and ready to go. I enjoy making the model but the time involved is horrendous, especially the "overnight" and "24 hours" waiting periods between certain steps. Gosh, I just want to get the darned rocket finished and fly it!

I know that lacquer type paints dry much faster than enamel or acrylic type paints. I wonder if there is a line of lacquer type paints I could find to speed up the process?

 

[Jeff Lassahn]

I do a lot of painting with brushed artist acrylics. They dry much faster than spraypaint, you can often get as much as one coat per hour. So if your goal is to build quickly they're something to check out.