Well, I first made an attempt to just sand the area (lightly!!!) and then paint. Didn't look as good as I wanted, so, after much internal dialog, I tried to do a little with the Tamiya white. That did not go well at all; as soon as I started I could see it was not going well. As feared, the repair area grew, and I'm not sure if I even improved any of the parts I was trying to fix.

At this point I will just repaint and call it done, whatever it looks like. I will have to practice this technique off-line so I'll be ready when needed in the future.

Ugh
 

Well, I had a little... incident. It was hard enough to write up once, and I'm not up for doing it twice, so for those interested I'll just point you to the relevant posting on TRF: https://www.rocketryforum.com/threa...-6#post-1806473.

Enjoy (?).

I continue to lurch towards the end of this build.

Today I installed a new laundry shelf, and was able to get it in about 7.5" from the tip of the BT, which I think should just be enough. I then applied a patch on the inside of the body tube where I punctured it. See picture 1.

Then, in order to get the flap of BT to lay flat(-ish), I carefully trimmed the "inner" layers of it, corresponding to the inner layers of the rolled BT. Then I put a dab of TBII into the hole, and pressed down the flap. Because the hole was only about 3" from the end of the BT, I was able to squeeze it between my fingers (index finger inside the tube, thumb on the outside). Once the glue had set up, the flap was pretty flat. It's not beautiful but honestly it's less bad than I thought it would be. See picture 2.

Tomorrow I will apply a wee bit of touch-up paint onto the damaged area, and another coat around the base of my repaired fin (which does not look as good as I would like, to say the least). Then we're almost there.

Finished fixes
 

The paint fixes to my fin (with replacement decal) and the BT hole are now complete. A more skilled and/or dedicated craftsman could no doubt have done better, but I'll take it. I can at least say they look better than before.

Down to the last couple of tasks.

Just call it battle fatigue/weathering.
Now you just need to find an actual IRIS, and mangle the side of it with a small wart matching your model.

Nose weight and eyelet
 

Finished up the nose cone today.

Previously I had hand-drilled a good sized and very rough hole in the shoulder. After wrapping the nose cone to protect it, I laid it gently in a vice. [picture 1]

After some fiddling I settled on about 2/3 oz nose weight to get the CG where I wanted it. This was achieved with a heavy eyelet (.17 oz) and two 1.25" washers (.25 oz each). I scuffed up the washers with some 50 grit and then cross-hatched with a hobby knife. I hope this is enough to give the epoxy some grip. [picture 2]

I filled the hole with epoxy (BSI 30 minutes) and put a layer on the nose cone shoulder. [picture 3]

I put on the first washer, than coated it with epoxy, laid on the second one, and then stuck in the eyelet. I finished things off by pouring a bit more epoxy in to the opening around the top of the eyelet. My objective is for all the pieces to be well-glued to each other, so the whole thing is one big mass and unlikely to come apart at ejection. I would prefer not to lose this particular nose cone. :)

Final result is picture 4.

NOW it's starting to look...dangerous (the same way an AIM-9L, or any pit viper does!). :-)

The discard pile
 

I once read an interview with a guy who built live steam locomotives from scratch. He recounted how someone from the town (or maybe it was the IRS, I can't remember) asked him what was the primary product of his metal shop. He replied "Scrap."

This build reminded me of that. Attached picture shows (most of) the discards from this build.
1) Full decal sheet ruined by contaminants in the clear coat
2) Tests of fabricating the body bands
3) Test piece for the final wing skirt construction technique, plus actuator fairing experiment and tail cone
4) Full set of wing cores, discarded because I realized I didn't need to use basswood and wanted to save the weight.
5) Two imperfect balsa wing cores.
6) First two experiments at fabricating the control fins with bulges.
7) Complete set of control fins, discarded because I decided I still hadn't gotten the shape of the bulge quite right. This set took a while to make, it hurt to chuck them, but the final set I used in the rocket is *so* much better so it was worth it.
8) Just another imperfect control fin
9) First test sanding an actuator fairing to shape.
10) Initial experiments fabricating the wing skirts with balsa. It came out OK but was a *huge* effort. Once it occurred to me to make the skirts from cardstock, I immediately abandoned this approach, and the end result is much much better as a result.

This rocket is about a hundred times better than it would have been had I not worked out some of the techniques first.

Sounds like WAYYYY too much work on a HOBBY rocket that could be destroyed on the first flight due to a cato, bonus delay, shotgun ejection charge, powr-prang, or failure to deploy.
I can understand if one is planning to compete in a scale contest or produce a kit.
Otherwise, nah.

Finished. Full photo set posted under Projects.

Thanks for following along.