Greetings, Blog Followers
This past weekend I finally was given a substantial block of time to get into the shop and actually work on some rocketry projects.
First item on the agenda was to drive up to Lone Tree from Castle Rock to stop in at the Hobby Town store. There I finally picked a Little Joe II kit for which I had been saving pocket change in a coffee mug throughout the past year . While there, I picked up one each of the Estes PNC-20 and PNC-5 nose cone packs. These fulfill nose cone requirements for several of the model rocket builds currently on the bench. I'm actually taking the 'lazy man's' way out with these as the original intent had been to turn balsa cones for these models on the lathe. The plastic cones will save me a lot of time in the interest of actually getting some rockets built.
Also acquired at the hobby store was a packet of blank clear decal material.
Once I got home, out came the lap-top. After a couple of hours jimmying around with downloading decal patterns, designing custom decal patterns, attaching them all to a word document, adjusting sizes to fit the intended models, and making B&W test copies, I was ultimately able to produce a good decal sheet covering five of my current build projects.
I had hoped to get some Krylon clear seal on the decal sheet, but the excessive ambient airflow velocity of the vehicle finishing facility (wind in the back yard) was such that any spray painting was rendered out of the question. This has been a problem throughout most of February and March. All of the calm days have been too cold, and all of the warm days have been overly windy.
Frustrating, this.
I've had the Lunar Patrol model all prepped for painting all this time, but never the right conditions for spray painting. Serious consideration is going into perhaps building an indoor spray booth. The weather conditions have also prevented any hopes of getting out for a rocket launch during the past two-month span. Sigh....
Next up on the 'tuh-doo' list was to break out the container of CWF and fill seams on the multitude of body tubes for no less than six rocket projects. I see much sanding in the near future.
While puttering around in the shop, I managed to perform pretty much a complete build of an Astron Alpha. Early this morning, I got up and did final grain-fill sanding on the fins, and attached the launch lug. All that is left is applying a glue fillet to the lug, then the model goes into the painting queue to await its first coat of primer.
I also made substantial progress on grain filling and sanding the many balsa fins on the Satellite Interceptor. This one should also be primer-ready by the end of the week.
Yet another project was to fashion a 500g weight to calibrate a Magnum digital scale I acquired back in February. The weight consisted of a glass baby food jar filled with enough nickels and a few paper clips to exactly equal 500 g.
Now I can weigh my models in style!
As a final touch to the Model Rocketry Weekend, I was able to fashion a new dowel 'antenna' for the tail fin on the Lynx model. This piece had been lost on its last flight.
Phew! I'm ready to go back to my regular job this morning for a little R & R....
Cheers!