Thursday, April 9, 2020

Ooooh! Tissue - Glue Putty!

With all the shortages and hoarding of toilet paper, I was reminded about this old Model Rocket construction technique -


This instruction step comes from the old Estes Ranger, K-06.
To see the old Estes instructions, go to Jim Z's: CLICK HERE
Tissue/Glue Putty did work well to seal the open areas around the motor mount tubes. I remember using a few squares of toilet paper instead of "facial tissue" for this step.
TIP: While the instruction step says to use "small wads" of tissue, you'll make a smoother mix by tearing the tissue into many tiny pieces.



On my Ranger clone build in 2012, I used a plywood centering ring at the top of the three tube cluster mount.
To see this step: CLICK HERE
I still glued on some thick mat board triangles and a little bit of the tissue/glue putty in the center to seal off the top. (I agree - a bit of overkill here!)




Thinking about building a 3 engine cluster Ranger?
The Semroc Ranger kit (now OOP) sold for over $30!
I went cheap - buy a Baby Bertha! The kit BT-60 body tube is 7 1/2" long. Cut that down to 7" (put that on top) and you would only have to add a 11" length of BT-60 for the lower tube.Add two BT-20 tubes for a three engine cluster, make a coupler from a split tube and you are good to go!
To see the build: CLICK HERE Scroll back to find the beginning of the build.

1 comment:

  1. I remember doing the tissue+glue technique on an Estes Scrambler as a kid.

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