Saturday, January 8, 2011

U.S.S. Atlantis - Step 9, Attaching pylon supports and fin





In this step will finally start glueing things together to make a rocket! Although the pylon supports and tail fin are different shapes the design calls for them to be equally spaced around the main body tube in the same way standard fins would be on a conventional rocket.





Above you can see that we have the main fin and 1 pylon support attached and are getting ready to attach the 2nd pylon support. I used a three step glueing process here. First I used epoxy to tack the fin on and get it precisely positioned.





Next, I applied a thin fillet of CA glue using an accellator to set the CA instantly. In the above picture you see that the pylon support has the CA fillet applied.





After sanding the CA fillet reasonable smooth (it doesn't have to be perfect) I apply an Epoxy fillet over the CA fillet. The epoxy fillet is smooth and will look better and be more aerodynamic than the CA fillet.





Here you can see the difference between the CA fillet (left) and the epoxy fillet (right) when held up to the light.





Finally, we "scuff up" the epoxy fillet with a coarse grade sandpaper so that it will better accept the final primer coat(s).





So here we have the pylon supports and the main fin firmly attached and the fillets applied and sanded (scuffed). Note that we did not apply epoxy fillets to one side of the pylon supports due to the fact that there is a dowel that sits flush against them. In our next step we will continue glueing detail parts onto the main body tube.

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