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Old 11-14-2017, 01:54 AM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stefanj
I found one of those spin-fin units on a beach on July 5th . . . in 1971 or so.

Any item which it simply not made any more, I suspect. If one could be found, it could be 3D printed and reproduced.
That's true, and even flexible plastics can be and are used for 3D printing. Even an "eyeballed" one recreated from the catalog drawing or a photograph (I think I saw one in an online scan of another old Estes publication, not necessarily a catalog) would be "good enough," particularly since the fins' shape is so simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stefanj
I have been hoping to find a source of the other delta-fin firework fin cans, but the supply of those seems to have dried up as well. (FireFox no longer carries them.)
Like Roy (I loved your AS-501/Apollo 4 school project posting, by the way! I couldn't add anything, but I also enjoyed your linked-to articles on that pivotal mission!), the only "Bastille"-style (like on the catalog-illustrated version of Centuri's Sky Devil, see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...2/772cen10.html ) firework missile fin units that I've seen in recent years have very thick fins, which taper downward from their fin can attachment points. In the 1970s, the fins of the ~0.75" diameter firework missiles were 1/16" thick (or just a hair thicker), and they were of constant thickness. There were also smaller, quite similar ones (often made in Macao) that were about 0.6" in diameter, whose fins each had a molded-in "stiffening rib" along the trailing edge. ALSO:

In the 1980s or 1990s, one of the consumer fireworks companies that I ordered from (Blue Angel Fireworks or Neptune Fireworks) offered a large--about 1" diameter--missile that looked very much like the Centuri Payloader II (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...2/772cen12.html ); its fin planform was virtually identical to the kit's, and its nose cone was a long cone with a radiused tip, which fit into the body tube like a model rocket nose cone. It even used a rod-type launcher and launch lugs (it came on a plastic base with two 1/8" [or maybe 3 mm, being made in China] diameter rods that fit through lugs on either side of the missile; the rods were slightly shorter than the ~15" - ~20" long missile).
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