Of Rings and Sealing Wax

Well, no sealing wax: just sealing thin CyA. The large tube (S-IC, Interstage, S-II) is done, except for touch-up, masking, and painting. It’s on to the S-IVB now. First step is to build the transition between the S-II and the S-IVB (big tube and third stage). This requires building a centering ring-couple set between the […]

Specialized Techniques, Ullage Rocket Scars

Building the Apogee Saturn V requires all these specialized techniques that I’ve not used before. Letting CyA wick to seal the edges of the thin plastic wraps, feathering epoxy clay to smooth over joints that don’t meet quite perfectly, and who-knows what else in the offing. I had to come up with one of my […]

Fin Fairing Wraps, and Manufacturing Tolerances

Finally: the fin fairing wraps are attached! Unfortunately, some of the manufacturing tolerances are a bit loose. None of the wraps seemed to extend quite as far as I’d expected. It’s just a bit of extra craftsmanship to get things looking reasonably good, but it would be nice if the parts were made to better […]

STB-1

I’m working to determine the limits of indirect staging (sometimes known as gap staging): how far apart can the booster and sustainer motors be, and still get reasonably reliable ignition? I built STB-1 (Staging Test Bed #1), pushing the first stage out to about 40 cm, staging an Estes D12 to a B4. The first […]

Peeling Warps

After all that work to get the wraps down well, it’s time to peel up a few small sections. Some of them are at the gaps between edges of a wrap, and in some of these I didn’t go nuts trying to get those edges down, knowing that a tunnel cover would run over that. […]

Time for Tunnels

Time, finally, to get the tunnel covers shaped, smoothed, primed, and glued. And the launch lugs. And, and, and. I’m glad to be back working with something other than those wraps!