My son likes shooting off rockets, once in a while, but he’s not so big on building them. So for Christmas this year I thought I’d do some building for him.
His favorite rocket these days is his Estes PSII Ascender, so one thing I picked out for him was the PSII Booster, a 29 mm booster stage for the PSII rockets. Construction starts with the fins, which are very much like the Ascender fins. They’re plastic, and Estes recommends CA to glue them together.
Of course the tricky bit is doing this without getting CA on the outer surfaces. I was moderately successful in this. By the third fin I’d decided any CA that gets squeezed out should be left to dry, then sanded off, rather than trying to wipe it off right away.
Next the motor mount, for which the recommended adhesive is epoxy, and I dry-fit the fins partly into the centering ring slots (keeping them clear of the epoxy) to get the spacing right.
Once that’s glued into the body tube the fins get epoxied in place, and I added epoxy fillets. I don’t recommend masking for the fillets with blue tape. It pulled up the pre-finished outer layer on the body tube. Nor do I recommend using alcohol on the tube, because it attacks the finish. I’m not sure what I do recommend. Maybe not putting fillets on an E2X kit. (Estes’s instructions don’t mention fillets.)
I brush painted the affected areas black, which helped a bit. Not a lot. Well, it’ll be functional and those fins are going nowhere the body tube doesn’t go.
Rich's Rockets 