Originally Posted by blackshire

I can see in the 1971 Centuri catalog citation (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...d/71dcen30.html )--from the illustration, and from the text mentioning "hollow core" and "clear molded" fins--that their Saturn V kit (by that time, if not from the very beginning) had slightly-over-sized molded plastic fins (theirs were more subtly "nudged" out of scale than the Estes kit's fins, in its later releases). Also:

I had always thought that Centuri's Saturn IB had plastic fins too, and their use of the term "pre-shaped fins" in their Saturn V kit description--as well as in their Saturn IB's kit description--does indeed suggest that their Saturn IB also had plastic fins from the start. (In those days, plastic parts in model rockets were still something of a novelty [even plastic nose cones in 3FNC and 4FNC kits were touted as special features back then], so I can see how they could have used "pre-shaped fins" to denote detailed, high-fidelity molded scale--or very nearly so, in the case of their Saturn V kit--plastic fins.)