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Posted

Made a vacuum pot to de-gas resins today! Yippee! I've always wanted one.

 

It's just a discarded R-22 cylinder, a piece of 3/8" Lexan, and a gasket of closed-cell PE foam.

 

It took a bit of grinding and filing to make the top edge of the cut flat enough to engage the gasket well, but it took -25" Hg without collapsing, and boiled water at room-temp!

 

Lloyd

Posted (edited)
Unwrapped Santa's early delivery. Thanks for having a sale (and a girl) Caleb. Edited by PeteyPyro
Posted

Thanks for giving us a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

 

I pressed up a baby 4oz. rocket this evening.

 

  • Like 2
Posted
Fused and attached the sticks to my NYE rockets
Posted

Mixing a few pounds each of several glitters and colored stars. I have a bud coming over tomorrow to help me get them pressed up. I'm going to try ¼" Win39J bound with phenolic resin in a 4" shell and hope they don't burn too long since the resin slows them a bit. If they do burn too long I'll upsize my glitter stars to ½" to give them a similar burn time and just lift it a bit higher. New territory for me!

Posted
Synthetised barium nitrate from ba carbonate and hno3, to make more of yus' strobestars. I do love these ones..
Posted
Made 8-4" variegated cyl shells today. Made using the rinfasciature method but used a final pasted wrap for flame protection.

post-20510-0-03694100-1512943245_thumb.jpg

Posted

good looking shells, I cant; keep mine looking that clean

Posted
Thanks memo, I get OCD with the appearance of my shells but the ugly ones still look the same in the sky. It's what's inside that counts.
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Posted

Those are nice and slick!

 

made some baby stinger tooling here

 

20171210_213843.jpg

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Posted
I think the price of aluminum is gonna go up if you make any more of those.
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Posted

Those are nice and slick!

 

made some baby stinger tooling here

 

20171210_213843.jpg

 

Sooo... Where did you get the child size pop can?

 

 

Tooling looks good.

  • Like 1
Posted
post-21112-0-79990000-1513023671_thumb.jpg Tried out my new fancy star gun with 1/2" & 3/4" stars. Of course it worked, but Caleb's lathe work is beautiful to behold too.
  • Like 2
Posted

That star gun also makes an awesome spacer for my press (caught that in one of Caleb's videos) so now I like mine even more!

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Rider,

 

If I may -- I think that will be a pretty shell, with the outer petal and two inner rings. But I see a problem that might cause you to be less pleased with it than you can be.

 

Any particular shape of the inner petals or shapes is 'amplified' by the burst as those petals spread. Even the slightest asymmetry of those rings in the shell will result in a larger asymmetry in the air. To that end, note that the two rings are neither exactly centered, nor precisely round.

 

One way to help solve that is to take all the stars of a ring, and wrap them in a lightly-applied tube of tissue (straight line, like a 'hose' full of stars). Glue or paste the tube shut, so it won't unravel during manipulations. If you choose, you can form the tube into a ring outside the shell, carefully gluing the ring shut so that the end-most stars just touch. Then carefully form that ring exactly round as you center it on the burst.

 

Do the same for the other ring.

 

Another means to the same end is to glue the ring stars to a sheet of tissue that's been pre-marked with the two concentric rings (use a compass for best accuracy and centering). After the glue dries, just lay the sheet - centered - on top of the burst.

 

One or the other of those tricks will help you keep all the ring stars perfectly aligned in the desired shape, and will allow easier 'centering', as well.

 

Either way, you're going to get a nice shell; but I thought you might want to know about the techniques some makers use to help with 'shape shells'.

 

Lloyd

  • Like 3
Posted

thanks its not closed yet so ill try that , i had actually moved everything around a lil bit after i took that picture and then gently tapped the rings down into the bp to seat them in place. ill pull them out and wrap them and put them back in

Posted

How were they made? Seemed to not be consolidated very well.

Posted
Unwrapped Santa's early delivery from Caleb's lathe. A 2 & 3/4" comet/crossette pump with all the trimmings, and a FREE side order consisting of a jar of phenolic binder to help those big comets harden before NYE.post-21112-0-69763500-1514079207_thumb.jpgpost-21112-0-12943100-1514079329_thumb.jpg
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Posted
That's a beast!
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Posted

Woohoo o!

Get some good video!

Hope it all works well for you and THANKS for the work!

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Posted (edited)

How were they made? Seemed to not be consolidated very well.

They where rammed. But i used granulated black powder to make it less messy to make but that was probaby not a good idea so i did not get them compact enough i think. Because i made many with screen mix and they all worked.

Edited by Sondre
Posted
I discovered that 10% silicon metal added to a hybrid BP/F fuel is quite good at clogging the nozzle halfway through flight. LoL!!!
  • Like 1
Posted
As for why... Im out of FeTi and had a random thought that Silicon Metal might make some good sparks, haha... Very dim!
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