SO, after cutting out the teeny tiny triangle and grabbing some wax paper from the kitchen, I started trying to do the tower legs per the instructions. A few minutes of foul-ups and cussing soon reminded me why I hate that teeny tiny triangle, as it gave me NO END of fits when I did the "Freedom 7 Mercury Redstone" in the same scale... it finally came together well, but it was a hard journey! The instructions call for you to cut the tiny triangle from the balsa, trim the corners off to make tiny flats, and then CA glue the thing upright to a pair of the matchstick tower legs at the points, setting the thing on wax paper to dry... problem is, the CA doesn't want to dry-- it wants to soak into the wood... then you put more CA, and it STILL doesn't want to dry-- it wants to puddle on the wax paper, and if and when it DOES dry it wants to leave crusty crap all over the tower legs... Once the two legs are cured to the triangle, the thing is to be flipped over and the last leg CA'd to the remaining flattened point of the triangle, then the whole 'tripod' assembly glued to the little dowel LES tower rocket motor...
SO, after a couple failed attempts with CA and the triangle, I started looking around for an alternative. Here's what I came up with. It's not like the instructions, and it's not been "evaluated or approved by Dr. Zooch Rockets, its parent company, or any of its affiliates" so I'm just throwing this out there because it worked for me and seems easier than the "teeny-tiny triangle" method in the instructions... so proceed at yer own risk! Took me a little experimentation to arrive at a method that would work, but it makes the whole process more accurate and easier IMHO...
First, after a quick search of the supplies box, I turned up a long piece of wood dowel the same diameter as the tiny escape rocket motor made from the bit-o-doweling and paper hatbands. This forms the basis of the "jig" that we'll make to hold the legs together temporarily while we glue them to the escape rocket motor. Start by cutting a piece about 1.5 inches long off the long dowel... this is plenty long for the jig... Then roll a strip of printer paper around the spare dowel, and mark the overlap.
Remove it and measure the circumference of the dowel, which in this case was 25 millimeters... divide that by 3 (8.33 mm) and measure out and mark the paper strip for three evenly spaced tower legs. Re-wrap the paper around the spare dowel, and mark the leg placement marks onto the dowel.
I used a foot of brass angle I picked up at the hobby shop for marking lines down the length of very small tubes (and dowels) and made the lines go the length of the doweling.
Next, using a small hobby file (or 220 grit folded in half if you don't have a small hobby file) sand a notch into the wood dowel at a slight angle, about 1/16 inch deep or so, tapering back to the surface of the dowel about halfway back... these notches allow the tower leg "matchsticks" to drop down into the jig dowel a bit, which serves two purposes: 1) it helps keep them aligned properly and evenly spaced in an equilateral triangle pattern, and 2) it points them slightly inward at the top ends, which allows them slightly clamp the back end of the escape rocket motor piece when we glue it together, ensuring everything stays put and gets a good, straight, solid bond.
Next, we measure each of the tower leg matchsticks and mark them at precisely 1 centimeter in length-- you can use any measurement, so long as they are ALL IDENTICAL... 1 cm works very well though.
More to come! OL JR
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