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Old 09-05-2018, 08:51 PM
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neil_w neil_w is offline
Mr. Cut-by-hand
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 439
Default The discard pile

I once read an interview with a guy who built live steam locomotives from scratch. He recounted how someone from the town (or maybe it was the IRS, I can't remember) asked him what was the primary product of his metal shop. He replied "Scrap."

This build reminded me of that. Attached picture shows (most of) the discards from this build.
1) Full decal sheet ruined by contaminants in the clear coat
2) Tests of fabricating the body bands
3) Test piece for the final wing skirt construction technique, plus actuator fairing experiment and tail cone
4) Full set of wing cores, discarded because I realized I didn't need to use basswood and wanted to save the weight.
5) Two imperfect balsa wing cores.
6) First two experiments at fabricating the control fins with bulges.
7) Complete set of control fins, discarded because I decided I still hadn't gotten the shape of the bulge quite right. This set took a while to make, it hurt to chuck them, but the final set I used in the rocket is *so* much better so it was worth it.
8) Just another imperfect control fin
9) First test sanding an actuator fairing to shape.
10) Initial experiments fabricating the wing skirts with balsa. It came out OK but was a *huge* effort. Once it occurred to me to make the skirts from cardstock, I immediately abandoned this approach, and the end result is much much better as a result.

This rocket is about a hundred times better than it would have been had I not worked out some of the techniques first.
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