Dr. Zooch Vanguard Eagle Build Part 23 SRBs - Gluing Plugs

The instructions have you trim the rear corners before gluing the stiffeners and nose in place. I chose to cut the rear corners after building the SRBs and sanding the contours.


The lowest stiffener is glued 3/16" from the bottom of the half round tube.

Earlier, I filled the balsa grain in the round nose cone and the flat rear of the plug. You can see I marked the top rear (filled) stiffener piece with an "X" to identify it.

The rear stiffener was glued in place first with thin CYA glue.

The nose piece was next. I only lightly glued the nose piece to the tube, along the back, inside edge of the seam. I wanted to be able to easily remove the nose piece for painting a little later.

The two inside stiffeners were spaced out between the nose and rear stiffener and glued in place with thin CYA.


220 grit sandpaper was first wrapped around the T-60 tube and the bulk of the assembly contour was removed.

I switched over to 400 grit and finished the fit.




The SRB on the right is how it looked before sanding to the T-60 tube contour. On the left is a shaped SRB assembly.



I've broken the nose cones free from their respective assemblies.

Each was marked so I could match up each correct fitting nose to it's SRB assembly later.

To make for easier, cleaner color separations, the nose cones will be painted gray separately from the SRBs. The nose cones will be glued into place after the SRB tubes are finished white on the main T-60 tube.

I always try to plan ahead and try to get the best color separations, without tight masking, if possible.