Rocket Builds On Hold Temporarily

This past week I have had to take a hiatus from continuing work on the Protostar as well as a couple of other parallel builds,  The main reason is I am trying to shake off a very severe "cough due to cold".

While loading up on cough syrup, cough drops, and my wife's wonderful Korean medicinal tea, I have not  done much venturing into the basement la-BOR-atory to execute balsa butchering and to slop glue on model rockets. 

Instead, this period of relative rest and recoop has been devoted to sorting and giving some organization to the vast collection of model rocket written material which I have been accumulating over the past two years and a half.  This includes rocket  plans, instructions, fin templates, downloaded how-to articles, printouts of Model Rocketry Magazine issues, printouts of vintage catalogs, letters, photos, design doodles...the list goes on.

Armed with a stack of binders, labels, sheet protectors, page dividers, and a page-corner-rounder clipping tool, a have made substantial progress in converting this mish-mash of paper material into a well-sorted and efficiently organized model rocket reference library.

This upcoming month I have requests for a few Christmas gifts to be completed in the woodshop. Much of my time and energy will be diverted to these projects. 

Also, the Christmas season is always a time of increased demand for my musical prowess on electric violin, so there will be a definite spike in the amount of time devoted to practice, group rehearsals, and music presentations.

The 'Steampunkery' just might have to wait until the New Year....

Cheers!

Back In The Day, Part 15 - A Photo Of Bill Roe

I have this old photo which I took in April, 1978 of none other than NAR pioneer Bill Roe (NAR #13).

Sorry for the bad image – at the time, I had a really cheap camera, and did not possess much in the way of photography skills.

The club I belonged to – Skywatchers / ROMAR, held an annual Spring demonstration launch at a shopping center at one of the busiest intersections in Colorado Springs.  The demos were sponsored by the Ru-Jan Party and Hobby Shop, located in the strip mall.

Bill would occasionally make a rare appearance at some of our club launches, but we were particularly delighted when he showed up at this public demo.

Sporting his familiar grey jumpsuit and red NAR cap, Bill had a great time, hanging around and enjoying watching the model rocket demo flights.

For this photo, I caught Bill being Bill – kneeling down and helping a young club member with prepping one of the demo birds.  Mr. Roe was all about that – making sure that rocketeers young and old alike, did things the proper way.  He was such a great guy to know and be around, as he exuded such a huge love for the hobby and sport of model rocketry.

I never saw Bill again after this demo event.  In fact, I am reasonably sure that this demo launch may have been the very last rocketry event Bill attended before he passed in 1980.

I feel very privileged at having been there.

And, I’m very glad I still possess an old blurry photograph of Bill to share with the model rocket community….

Steampunk Protostar #24 - First Fin Attachment!

This morning, I managed to glue the first completed fin on to the Protostar body tube.

With this done it gives the appearance that I'm building an actual model rocket rather than a collection of random parts and paper panels scattered across the workbench. 

Aside from applying the glue fillet to the joint, it will be back to making riveted panels for the next couple of weeks.

Cheers!

Steampunk Protostar #23 - More Fin Detail

Today's build post centers around making details that will simulate riveted metal strips on the fin leading edges.

The first step is to make a template to be used to trace the required six curved strips.  The lead edge is traced on card stock using one of the fins as a guide, after which a second line is drawn defining the strip.  I arbitrarily chose a 4mm width for the template.

The template is carefully cut out from the card stock sheet.

It is then taped down to the back side of the Avery label sheet and the part is traced out.

At this point, I want to 'emboss' the rivet detail while the strip is still part of the sheet.  Things would get messy if I attempted making the rivets on such a thin cutout.

The rivets for this detail part are substantially larger than the ones on the previously made fin panels.  The process is significantly different, as well. 

Here I am using a dried up ball point pen to poke the rivets form the backside of the label sheet.

Instead of a hard backing board, I am using a piece of soft mat material, the kind that is used on electronic workbenches.  The cardboard backing from a notepad would work equally well.

Here, I am not using any reference lines or marks for placing and spacing the rivets.

Just winging it!

I don't really want the strips to conform to a 'factory-made' look. I prefer to give them the appearance of being done by eye on the ship's construction site.  Thus, they will be slightly uneven and not precisely spaced apart.  I'm hoping this will add to the 'Stemapunk-y charm' of the completed ship.

Again, the rivets are formed by pressing the pen with even pressure.  Since this is a larger round tool, I don't have as much danger of poking through the paper.

Here is a pic of the rivets from the show side.  These are much bigger and more prominent than the smaller ones used for the fin panels. A couple test rows of the small rivets can be seen in the upper right corner of the photo.

After the rivets are formed, the strip can now be cut from the label sheet.  Here is the first of six ready to be stuck in place to the fin....

 

This same method will be used for similar riveted strips to go on the fin trailing edges, nose cone, tail cone, body tube, pods, and around the various bits of proposed steampunk detailing.

 

I definitely see a lot of cutting and poking in my near future.....

 

 

Steampunk Protostar #22 - Detail Papering A Fin

This morning, work was begun on applying the first bit of detailing to one side of a Protostar fin.

With the riveted panels separated, the first order of business was to make the matching cutouts for the holes in the fins.  Each section was positioned on the fin and the hole pattern marked out.

A little precision work with a sharp X-Acto blade produced the cutouts.

Here is the root edge panel placed on the fin.

The remaining two panels are formed and applied in the same manner.  I tried to leave a little more space between the panel edges to exaggerate the seam line so that it would be more visible. 

Back in the planning stages for this model, the original intent had been to paper the fins with one continuous sheet of label material, then scribe the seam lines with a blade.  That would have produced too thin of a line featuring raised edges.  The separate panel method I chose here seems to work better, even though it requires a lot more labor.

For this part of the build, I thank my many years of experience with stamp collecting in which I learned to carefully precision-align thousands of small pieces of paper in an album. 

Once all three panels are in place, any excess label material is trimmed from the edges.

Since the hand-cut holes in the label material are somewhat uneven and ragged, a light application of a Dremel tool with a rounded sanding stone is used to make things pretty.

Here is the completed side of one fin.

Now, it's rinse and repeat five more times. 
Phew!