Back around Memorial Day weekend in 2010, I decided to break out of my shell a little bit. One of the people who I work with got into building model rockets as a hobby, and went more than a little gangbusters for it. There are a multitude of launches throughout the year, but the primary launch for the club he belongs to (and really in the Pacific NW in general) happens over Memorial Day weekend in Eastern Washington in a tiny little place named Mansfield (it's somewhat near Chelan). Regardless, as this got closer in 2010 he tried to introduce some interest in some co-workers to get them to show up and watch. Seeing as how I had no plans, I decided to go. And it was really quite fun! I knew I'd want to go again the following year, but I didn't want to just be an observer, I wanted to participate. So, I shopped around and found a couple small rockets that I liked looking at and decided to pick them up, put them together, and then launch them into the skies! Tally ho!
The first rocket I built is named the Baby Bertha. Here's a picture of it and its unbuilt buddy sitting in my dad's garage!
And thus, the game was afoot, and now it's time for some pic spam of the work in progress, starting with the engine mount.
This is the launch tube that you slide onto the rail.
This is the completed engine mount.
This is the nose cone, with the dings and dips covered with some Bondo spot filler. Once it's dry, it gets sanded off to be smooth.
With the launch tube secured properly, it was time for some sweet fin action. Mmm, fins.
See? Bondo all gone, leaving only a smooth nose cone. Yay!
All the fins are on, resting gently in the vice to keep everyting aligned properly.
Here's the nose cone ready for filler primer while hanging out in my newly-made paint booth (post on that later on).
Oh look, filler primer.
With several layers of filler primer applied, it's time to do some wet-sanding! All you have to do is get some really high-grit sandpaper and apply a light amount of water to whatever you're wet sanding, and then lightly sand it. It will make the object incredibly smooth, and the mess is cleaned quickly and easily with a paper towel!
Look at the nice shiny nose cone!
With the nose cone done for the moment, it was time to put some filler primer on the body.
Oh look, the spraypaint did what it was supposed to do and attached properly!
And with plenty of filler primer layered onto the body, it was time to wet-sand that part too. Look, super shiny!
With wet-sanding finished on both parts of the rocket, it was time to move on to the next phase of the painting process. I used some basic paint I had from various Nerf projects, nice and simple Krylon Fusion Gloss Black.
And here's the whole rocket painted black and assembled! Look at that shine!
With the black base coat finished and dried, it was time to move on to the next phase of painting: the pattern! The original paint scheme for the Baby Bertha is all-black with decals applied on top. Since I was trying to impress people, I decided to throw that plan out the window and go crazy instead. With flourescent orange spraypaint!
More and more spray paint.
By the time I got to this point in the spray painting process I decided I hated the flourescent spray paint. I had to basically empty an entire can of the stuff in order for it to actually cover up the black base coat, plus it took freaking forever to dry, had a horrible application process (blows out in a big cloud), got on everything (due to the big cloud), and probably killed off some brain cells even through my use of the respirator.
You can't even see the blue tape points anymore.
Oh look, it's drying now, stinking up the inside of my dad's house (oops).
On the plus side, once the tape comes off and you use a UV flashlight in a dark room, it looks pretty damn sweet! Oh, and I didn't go with any particular pattern, I just went as random as possible.
Here it is, everything dried, taken apart once again in preparation for the clearcoating process. Final step in painting is protection, kids.
Look at how shiny it is! It's shiny, you know you love it.
With the body assembled and gone through the entirety of the painting process, it was time to move on to some of the internal pieces. The friend of mine who got me into this hobby recommended I use a product called a "baffle" inside the rocket. Basically, what it does is prevent sparks or excessive heat from the engine from being spit up into the body and potentially damaging it or, even worse, ruining the parachute.
Oh look, nose cone is super shiny, and attached to the parachute. I like landing safely. Preferably not far from the launch site, because let's be honest, I'm lazy.
Here's some shots of the baffle being put together, and because no commentary is really necessary, I shall provide none. Unless I change my mind.
The cord coming out of the baffle is the shock cord, and it is what connects the main body to the nose cone. It's also about 5 feet long and made of kevlar, which isn't at all stretchy, which is why there needs to be so much of it.
Shock cord attached to the nose cone. It's all one piece now, kind of.
The Baby Bertha is somewhat short vertically, and with the addition of the baffle taking up internal space it was a tad too crowded for the parachute, so I had to put the excess shock cord length coiled around the internal diameter of the body tube so that there was room for the parachute.
After a fair bit of fiddling, I finally got everything to fit together snugly and securely. Look, it's a rocket! A shiny, shiny rocket!
Now, what would this post be like without having a video of the launch itself? It would be a hollow shell, that's what. But just before that, here are a few shots of the rocket while I was at the launch. In case it's not painfully obvious, mine is the fourth one in from the right.
Here's a video I took of the launch itself. It's notoriously difficult to get rockets in frame for something like this, so mine disappears somewhat quickly and returns later. Enjoy!
Oh look, a safe landing. Sweet!
Thanks to all that clearcoating, there wasn't a scratch on her!
And that concludes this post about the first rocket I ever made. Up next, the Big Bertha!
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