Estes Wizard w/Classic Paint Scheme (part 1 of 2)

This was a pretty quick build of an Estes Wizard. I've wanted to build one of these for some time and give it the classic purple & white paint scheme. I had the kit but not the classic decals so I picked up a set from Excelsior.

Here is the classic Estes kit panel showing the paint and decal scheme I want to use. The newer kit also has the thicker self-adhesive decals which I am not a fan of...even if I had liked the color scheme. So anyway, enough intro, lets get to the building!

Since this is your basic 3FNC (3 fins and a nose cone) kit, I did the standard filling of fins and body tube spirals using Elmers wood filler diluted with water. You know, I'm really starting to like this stuff. I actually found an unused can of "Hobby Poxy Stuff" which is what I used to use, but I've gotten used to the Elmers and I like the fact that it's water clean-up. My only knock on it is that it's kind of soft and I sometimes leave a fingernail mark during the sanding process. But after a couple of coats of primer and the finished enamel paint coat, it toughens up pretty good.

When filling the fins, I had to use a much thinner wire as a handle due to the fact that these fins were pretty of pretty thin stock. This made brushing on the thick filler a challenge as the wire would bend alot. I'm thinking of getting some 1/8" thin brass strip material that I could shape to a knife point to use as a fin holder during filling...More on that later.

When the filler is completely dry (I wait at least 24hrs), the tube and fins can be sanded to a smooth finish. I usually start out with a medium grit (200 or so) oaper and dry sand all of the "bumpiness" out of the filler. When I finish with the medium grit I have a very thin, almost transparent layer of filler left on the fin. I then finish it up with a much higer grit (say 600 - still dry sanding though) to really smooth it out. At this point there may still be a few small grain marks (or fingernail marks) left but that's not a concern since the filler primer is "high build" and will take care of those and also any small amount of spiral lines left on the body tube.

After sanding fins and tube, it was time to bring out my new Estes tube marking guide. This is an extremely handy accessory and worth every cent I paid for it. I've always hated trying to line up a long body tube on those paper marking guides and get it marked all around without moving the damn tube. These guides make tube marking a snap. If they would have included BT-70 that would have made them even nicer, but for some odd reason they didn't.

After marking the tube, I use a piece of aluminum angle to make the fin alignment lines. I used to use a door jam for this but the angle is much handier and I think it makes a straighter line. The tube marking guides I mentioned above also come with a plastic angled "jig tool" that can be used for this purpose as well...another reason to pick one of those up.

As I've described in previous posts, my technique for attaching fins (sorry no pics) is to apply a thin layer of 5min epoxy on the root edge, and then place the fin on the tube and align it as the epoxy cures. I find I can get smaller fins like this almost perfectly aligned using this method without having to use an alignment guide. For larger fins, however, some type of guide might be preferable.

After attaching the fins and laying down the epoxy fillets, my Wizard is ready for the finishing stage.