Sunday, April 12, 2020

Estes MRN Orbital Transport Laboratory Build, Part 7, Hatch Windows

The MRN picture shows hatch windows carved into the Gemini style nose cone. I'd bet they grabbed an already finished nose cone off the catalog Gemini Titan catalog model an used it for the picture.

Here's the illustration from the Estes Gemini Titan kit showing the hatch carving measurements.


After drawing some guide lines, the 3/16" spacing from the center line seemed too wide. I drew the hatches closer together.

Those pencil circles to the right of the windows are there to remind me those areas need more CWF filler. 



The backs are cut first, straight down.




Chip cuts are made to the back cut lines.


Some 220 grit sandpaper is wrapped around a dowel to round out and smooth the bottom of the hatch cavity.



Some additional round forming to the back edge was done by pressing the smooth dowel into the cavity.

1 comment:

  1. Those "indents" are notoriously difficult to get accurate. I do remember seeing somewhere some information somewhere that describes the shape. It turns out that they're not a cylindrical cutout of the nosecone (as one might be apt to assume), but rather a conical one (i.e. an intersection of a conical frustum with the nosecone).

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