Super Alpha Nosecone Part 1, 4.6" Length

I'm taking a day off from the Scavenger build until I find a better brand of spray paint that works! So for now, here's some prep for another build coming up.

After a few years I finally figured out what was wrong with my Red Max clone.
The nose cone was too short.
This is the first blog post: HERE

I had bought a Super Alpha on Ebay with the replacement plastic nose cone. I wanted the Alpha nose cone shape. The old Red Max clone would get the plastic cone from the Super Alpha kit. To save a few dollars the old balsa Red Max cone would be shaped to the Alpha profile.

I don't have a lathe. I've made nose cones on a drill before but it's tough to center a dowel in the nose cone shoulder. I figured I'd just wing it.



At the Semroc website a search was made for the BNC-60K nose cone. Scaled up from the BNC-50K this new cone is 4.6" tall.

I marked the Red Max cone with a pencil but it'd be hard to see in a photograph. White out was used to show the area to be removed.





The nose cone was scored just above the 4.6" line around the cone top.
The cut line is less than 1/16" in. This is a "stop" for the chip cuts to follow.





Small chip cuts were made down to the scored line from picture 2.

After making chip cuts around the cone, score another horizontal circumference line and follow with more chip cuts working towards the center of the nose cone.