Cool New Equipment

I built the guillotine fin jig today, which was very easy, and I can't wait to use it on my next build.

Easy and quick to build, and well worth the money,
if you're serious about crafting nice rockets

I tried wet sanding the paint dams (marks left from masking tape) on my Hi Flier, with 2000 grit paper - that's pretty fine. But, while it didn't really remove the dams, it did remove a touch of the blue color, and at the edge of the dams you could see a bit of gold peaking through (I'll post all the pictures later). I thought enough of this wet sanding nonsense - it's not working for me! and did a quick mask of the gold parts on one side, and retouched the rocket with blue in a few places. Fortunately, I hadn't done the whole rocket when I changed my mind.

I do wish I could get less texture on my rockets. I'm told that surface prep is the key, but even when I spray a really smooth surface - a perfectly primed and sanded plastic nose cone, for example, I still get some texture. You would only know close up, by looking closely or touching it. It's not the "orange peel" people talk about with bad spray paint jobs. It's just a bit of texture. I'm looking for smooth - perfectly smooth. Perhaps I'm doing a fine job with what I have, and I'm simply expecting too much from a can of spray paint. But I suspect I can do better. I just need to crack the secret.

I also masked off one of the fins and the whole body of my Cosmic Explorer so I could do the vertical fin roll stripe. It was pretty humid today - raining like crazy right now - but, I decided that for one 1/8 inch stripe, I could risk it and paint anyway. It turned out beautiful.

I also masked off the red ring about halfway up the rocket, just below where the black starts. I was going to paint this tonight, but it started raining pretty hard.

Anyway, I'll post more pictures of this rocket when I'm done documenting the whole build. But it's turning out really nicely.