With Roy, Joyce, Kris, and Ken in the shop, we elected to put off work on the nosecone till next time, and concentrate on the fin can/booster section. After measuring, marking, and double-checking we got to work cutting the fin slots in the booster section. After bending a wood-carving cutter and wearing out two abrasive discs I managed to effect a total melt-down of my Dremel tool with less than a linear foot of cutting left. Roy came to the rescue with his utility knife and finished the fin slots. With the fin slots finished we next began the assembly of the fins & centering rings using some fancy new flexible epoxy I found; we’ll find out if it works in a few months. We are a bit behind at this point, but still have plenty of time to complete the project.
Saturday’s build session was a long one, but very productive and we are pretty much back on schedule, but it still looks like construction will continue through September. First order of business was doing a bit of fairing-in to smooth the transition between the nose cone and its attached body tube. That done, we quickly moved on to cutting fiberglass and glassing the nose cone. Reaching the top was a bit of a stretch, but we managed. That done, we began working on assembling the fins and centering rings with the booster section body tube. We initially noted a couple of mis-steps, like getting the lower centering ring rotated by 90 degrees when we glued it in place, but we corrected that by boring a couple of new holes for the all-thread rods. It didn’t take long to get the section together, but we then discovered we had routed the all-thread rods through the wrong holes in the e-bay’s lower bulkhead. So, we took the booster apart, re-aligned the all-thread rods, and re-assembled the booster. Next, we bored holes to pour the expanding foam through, and inserted the motor tubes. That’s when we figured out we must have squeezed the fins a little too tightly when epoxying them to the centering rings, and shrank the space for the central motor mount. So, we dis-assembled the booster section (again, but we were getting faster at taking it apart) and worked over the fin tabs with a couple of Dremel tools. Trimming done, we re-inserted the motor mount tubes and checked the fit, then re-assembled the booster section, again (we were getting pretty good at putting it together by now). So finally, with me perched (uncomfortably) on a ladder (did I mention how –tall- the booster section is?) we began mixing and pouring expanding foam into the lower section of the booster. This went fairly smoothly, with only a couple of batches “cooking off” while still in the mixing cups, and I managed to get almost all the foam in the holes and not on the floor, outside of the rocket, or me. While this was going on, Jay made the e-bay upper bulkhead stiffeners / electronics brackets; this involved a couple of false starts, until Jay figured out the wood pieces weren’t actually the same size in –any- dimension. Jay was surprised to learn that of the three 8-foot sonotubes we started with, only a single 3” piece was left over. We didn’t want it to feel left out, so we used it to reinforce the booster tube above the fin slots.
--Ken Sparks
Saturday’s build session was a long one, but very productive and we are pretty much back on schedule, but it still looks like construction will continue through September. First order of business was doing a bit of fairing-in to smooth the transition between the nose cone and its attached body tube. That done, we quickly moved on to cutting fiberglass and glassing the nose cone. Reaching the top was a bit of a stretch, but we managed. That done, we began working on assembling the fins and centering rings with the booster section body tube. We initially noted a couple of mis-steps, like getting the lower centering ring rotated by 90 degrees when we glued it in place, but we corrected that by boring a couple of new holes for the all-thread rods. It didn’t take long to get the section together, but we then discovered we had routed the all-thread rods through the wrong holes in the e-bay’s lower bulkhead. So, we took the booster apart, re-aligned the all-thread rods, and re-assembled the booster. Next, we bored holes to pour the expanding foam through, and inserted the motor tubes. That’s when we figured out we must have squeezed the fins a little too tightly when epoxying them to the centering rings, and shrank the space for the central motor mount. So, we dis-assembled the booster section (again, but we were getting faster at taking it apart) and worked over the fin tabs with a couple of Dremel tools. Trimming done, we re-inserted the motor mount tubes and checked the fit, then re-assembled the booster section, again (we were getting pretty good at putting it together by now). So finally, with me perched (uncomfortably) on a ladder (did I mention how –tall- the booster section is?) we began mixing and pouring expanding foam into the lower section of the booster. This went fairly smoothly, with only a couple of batches “cooking off” while still in the mixing cups, and I managed to get almost all the foam in the holes and not on the floor, outside of the rocket, or me. While this was going on, Jay made the e-bay upper bulkhead stiffeners / electronics brackets; this involved a couple of false starts, until Jay figured out the wood pieces weren’t actually the same size in –any- dimension. Jay was surprised to learn that of the three 8-foot sonotubes we started with, only a single 3” piece was left over. We didn’t want it to feel left out, so we used it to reinforce the booster tube above the fin slots.
--Ken Sparks
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