Little Joe II - Rebuilding the body tube (Part 1)

Due to our painting mishap on the original body tube assembly (refer to last Little Joe II post for details) I have to re-build the main body of the rocket from scratch. This includes scatch building the corrugated body wraps. In the original kit, the body wrap was made out of embossed cardstock. The new wraps I'm makeing will be from styrene which will actually be an improvement in the overall appearance of the rocket.

The new body tube I ordered from SEMROC is of a very nice quality. The tube spiral lines are barely noticable and will likely only need a coat of primer to fill. The problem is that the SEMROC tube is about 1/16th of an inch longer than the Estes tube. Since I'm trying to replicate the Estes kit, I'm going to cut the SEMROC tube to match.

I fabricated a tube cutting jig out of 2"x 2" aluminum angle, and a single edge razor blade. And proceded to cut a 1/16th inch sliver off the end of the new tube.

The jig worked surprisingly well. It made a very smooth even cut and I'm sure it will come in handy for future cloneing projects.

Now the new tube is the correct size and we can begin reconstruction.