Sanded & Square Body Tube Ends TIP

From TRF, Hooked On Rockets Posted his tip for sanding the ends flat on a cut tube.

"So if you are talking about making true edges to match up with each other, you could do this:

Glue up some sandpaper to a FACTORY EDGE body tube with CA and then cut out the sand paper inside the tube with an exacto...
Then use a body tube coupler inserted in the rig to true up the cut edge.
And of course, since it looks like you have cut a BT shorter than factory, you should have a factory edge on your "cutoff"....that's the edge you wanna glue up to the sand paper."
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Neil W got to work and put together this series of pictures to better explain the process:

OK, here we go.
I glued the tube to 220 grit sandpaper (seemed like a good choice for this) by applying a nice bead of medium CA around the joint. Pro tip: give it plenty of time to fully cure.





I then carved the hole out with a #11 Xacto. Turned out to be pretty easy job, only took a minute. The hardening of the tube/paper joint from the CA made it pretty easy to remove only sandpaper and not damage the tube (not that small nicks will make any difference).

Of course I had to test it out. Insert coupler halfway...





Then insert tube to be sanded...

Then twist the two tubes against each other. Worked great! Will need to knock the lip off the edge of the tube when finished, but that's super easy.

I made a BT55 and BT60 so far, with a BT50 in progress. Bonus: they nest nicely for storage!

I rate this as an A+ tip.

Now if only I had ordered a BT-70 coupler in my last order ...

Neil adds:
I have two followups:
1) It does really produce a lip on the tube that must be sanded off afterwards. I'm going to experiment further and see if wrapping the tube can prevent that.
2) It's *really* good for squaring off the shoulders of nose cones. When applying CWF to a balsa nose, it takes but a second to clean up the edge after it's dry, no need to do the tube twist while it's still wet.

Thanks to Hooked On Rockets and Neil W - 

I'll have to give this a try -