I was thinking about my next rocket project while walking through the hobby store, and came across a plastic Mason jar. I thought "Hmmm, I could make a rocket out of that! Maybe a Dixie cup nose cone, sort of a civil war theme (Mason - Dixon, Dixie, get it?) and paint one side blue and one side gray. But I decided against it.

Then I came across this piece of cone shaped foam...

I quickly realized this cone could become the basis of something. So I brought it home (they were on clearance so I got a couple) and wrapped it paper. Since I had a bunch of leftover canceled checks in my desk, and the banks do electronic deposits so I usually just have to shred them any way, I decided to recycle them by wrapping a few around the cone to stiffen it up a bit. Then I jabbed a bamboo skewer into the top of the cone and wrapped an index card around it and made it into a cone shape to cover the skewer. Once the glue dried it was still somewhat flimsy, so I coated it all in cyanoacrylic to stiffen it up a bit. More old checks will be wrapped around it to make it a little stronger, then glue, then finally some epoxy. Sand it all down and I should have a decent, cheap nose cone capable of withstanding a few flights.

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Since my wife is a teacher, she has no end of the styrofoam-cored poster boards. I figured it might make some decent fin material. And for a body tube... While cleaning out the basement, I came across a mailing tube full of photos I had developed in Germany back in the 80s. Perfect use for junk that would have otherwise been tossed. And I just happened to have some thicker walled 24mm tubing left over from a roll of clingy plastic sandwich wrappers. To make the fins have a sort of knife edge, I cut some old checks into strips and folded them into a sort of v shape and glued them to the foam board fins. Once the white glue dried, I coated this knife edge liberally with cyanoacrylic to stiffen them up. It worked better than expected.

So, it occurred to me the fin design I came up with seemed familiar to me. Then I remembered, the first Centuri kit I ever built was a Bandito, and sure enough, that's the same shape!

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I really don't know what I'm doing with these pictures. they seem a bit smallish.

They expand nicely when clicked on.

Keep on posting!

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NAR #27085 - Oregon Rocketry - SAM

The forum only adds thumbnails to the bottom of your post... you cannot embed uploaded pictures in the text of the post (as in a "how to do it" thread with pictures to help explain) like you can on some other forums using newer and more expensive software. It's okay, you just upload them one by one in the order you want them to appear (if you select them all and then hit "upload" at the very last, they will appear in a random order, not necessarily the one you selected, which makes "progression" pics display wrong (not in order).

If you want larger pics to be shown in the body of the post, you have to upload your pics to a web-based pic-hosting site (like picasa or snapfish or whatever) and then insert the link to your pics in the body of the post where you want the picture to appear-- but of course "linked" pictures are subject to not displaying properly in the future, if the link gets broken because the picture has been moved or the hosting website changes something or whatever...

Personally I prefer to just upload the pictures directly to YORF; that way they'll always be in the post no matter what. Some folks prefer the other way though. To each his own...

Later! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Coconut, your first post has the images attached as 'images' and don't expand when clicked on.

The second post is 'perfect' with the thumbnail attached. Click on the thumbnail and it expands to a larger pic.

Hope maybe that gives you a hint

Anyhow looks to be an interesting project. I am interested to see more!