looking at that old thread, there's a photo that shows the flare, and that the ridge is on the base.

https://forums.rocketshoppe.com/att...tachmentid=8446

This ebay seller has two of these crayon sharpeners listed currently. Here's one of them: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Cr...AAOSwhB9ew~p 0


$30 each plus shipping. They say they have three for sale, but one of them is not the one used as a Mark II nose cone.

Not my listing nor do I know the lister.

Earl

bluegrassrocket is Rick Randol (the New Way Spacemodels fellow) - who is also here on YORF with that same handle.

Doh.... I thought that handle sounded familiar.


Earl

Earl,

Look at the Carlisle picture on that listing. You'll see that other sharpener used as a nose cone on some of the rockets in that photo. The rocket body looks identical to the Mark II, just the different sharpener on top.

Well, Land O' Goshen! I've seen that image a number of times in the past and never noticed the 'other' nose cone shape. I have one of more blunt sharpener cones still in the package, but not this alternate, more pointed one. But, I just 'solved' that issue.... ;)

Thanks for pointing that out.

Earl

The other sharpener nosecones are shown in the photos below. They were sold by the Sterling Plastics company of Union N.J. They used the same Leeds Sweete patent as the earlier sharpeners and may have acutally been manufactured by Leeds Sweete.

Photos below show the Sterling sharpeners in their most common package, then some comparison views of the Sterling and Leeds Sweete sharpeners.

Of note, for anyone who buys one of the sharpeners, the originals used a turned wooden plug as the nosecone shoulder. But today you can download one of the 3D files (Thingiverse?) to print a plastic shoulder.

And, again, really nice thread about these sharpeners is here.

Those Atomic sharpeners are great!

I never realized those other two rockets in that photo had sharpeners for nosecones either. Who can look at those Sterling sharpeners and somehow not think that those belong on top of a rocket!

Thanks Steve for posting these additional images and Scott for pointing out that there were indeed TWO different plastic sharpeners used as nose cones. As I mentioned above, I’ve seen that one classic black and white photo of Orville with the various Mark IIs many, many times and I never noticed there were two different nose cones. Just shows there are always new things to learn!

Earl