The Rocket is Complete!

The fins are finished! They were cut from solid cherry boards with my radial arm saw and trimmed up with my bandsaw. The blade on that could use some replacing.... Cherry is so hard that mostly the bandsaw blade just burns it while it's trying to cut. Funny, burned cherry wood smells exactly like popcorn. Now I'm hungry!

Anyways, the fins were roughed out with the saws, but then mostly hand carved to shape on a flat belt sander. I often use the end of the sander to do curves and ripples, so used that to get the curve on the underside of each fin to match each other.

They are just loosely propped in place in the photo. I have a lot of work to do on the rocket body before I can finally attach the fins. In fact, since I've taken this photo, the rocket is now cut into its 10 pieces along the guidelines you can see above. Each little piece will then get a slight channel on each end for the bearing that goes between, and then will get a hole bored through the center to accept the guide tube. When they're all cut, the tubes will nest inside each other and rotate on the bearings, hopefully centered on each other .....

I can't yet cut the channels and bore the holes, as my bearings have not yet arrived. So I move on to another section of the project - the motor drive!

Peace,
Joy