Estes Apollo Little Joe II Build, Part 16, Fin Support

I used a new #11 blade in my X-Acto. You'll be cutting through the body tube and wrap plastic. My usual break-off blade knife wasn't used for these cuts.

Note the knife tip position set into the corners. I punched through all eight corners and then cut through the centers. This way the back of the knife worked like a "stop" and prevented me from cutting outside the square.


I cut a little inside the drawn square and then trimmed it to a friction fit of the stick.

After cutting one square I checked the fit of the fin position. All was good so the back edge was measured. Using the 3/16" square stick, the rear of the cut square was 9/32" from the back edge. The other three squares were marked and cut.

Note the engine mount was slid in to support the tube during the square cutting.

The inset shows some of the tube pushing in around the stick. I wanted a fairly tight fit around the support stick.
On the left is a pencil mark where the stick will be cut to glue to the engine mount tube. This will be cut slightly long and trimmed to fit.