Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Estes Kit Fin Stock Thicknesses

In a recent post I made a judgement about the thickness of the Estes Black Brant III kit fin thickness.
I was building a semi-scale model using the Estes instructions and information from Rocket Of The World by Peter Alway.
In ROTW, the fin thickness was thin so I went with 1/16" thick basswood.

RichRockets made a comment after the blog post referring to the Estes fin thickness numbering system, shown at the right.

TRIVIA: Most all current kit fins are now a standard 3/32" thick.

I've used this chart in the past. to see the entire chart, CLICK HERE
It lists almost all the body tubes and fins stock thicknesses from the Estes and Centuri kits.kits. John Garza put the list together back in 1995. It's a handy reference when you are cloning rockets.

The Centuri body tube lengths were easy enough to figure out. An ST-718 was ST-7 tubing, 18" long.
An ST-108 was a ST-10 tube, 8" long.
The Estes lettering system (BT-20B at 8.65" long, etc.) wasn't consistent. I only remember that a BT-20J was a 2.75" long engine mount tube.  

On the recent Black Brant III build, the Estes BT-50N tube length wasn't on this list or in the Custom Parts Catalog - CLICK HERE

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