Monday, September 16, 2024

Bad Tubes?

If you ever built a vintage kit from the 1970s, 80s or 1990s -
You probably noticed the body tubes were of higher quality than what you find in kits now.
Tubes felt stronger and the diagonal wrapped seams were narrower and tighter.

Euclid Spiral Paper Tube company is now under the Paramount Tube name. The older, experienced tube maker employees have probably retired.
Some of the newer tubes have more than one outer seam to fill. 
Layers underneath bulge at overlaps. The outer glassine layer sometimes shrinks into the wide seams underneath. On some tubes, the glassine layers didn't get enough glue and look like they can easily be peeled off. 

I've heard stories of vendors refusing orders of bad tubes.
Some of the crap tubes have showed up in kits.
 



Here's an example - 
The clear outer glassine was sucked into a seam gap underneath.
It was wide and deep and would have shown under final paint. A coat of filler primer won't fill this spiral recess. I ended up cutting through and removing the glassine strip. 




On the left you can see the layer removed over the seam gap.
On the right, the tube has been lightly sanded and the usual joint seam marked with pencil.
Both seams have been filled with CWF.

On the right is after sanding the CWF to surface. Notice the irregular tube surface that shows when the tube is sanded.

I followed up with a coat of filler/primer and sanding to get the tube smooth for color coats.

This is not the fault of Estes or other vendors. The quality of some Paramount Tubes is just poor.

4 comments:

  1. Making paper tubes is as much art as science. As hobbyists we have been so fortunate that Euclid made such excellent tubing for our use.

    Euclid was bought out by Paramount which proceeded to let the Euclid staff go.

    The tubing coming from Paramount now is terrible. As much as 30% of a tubing order may be defective. Euclid seldom had any issues. Paramount does not take returns or issue credit over defective tubing. The rocket company has to eat the cost/loss.

    Paramount raised prices three times during 2023. What was once an inexpensive and quality component of our hobby is now an expensive random quality item.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your input Bob,
      I stand corrected, I heard the experienced employees had retired.
      Your 30% estimate seems right. about 1/3 of my heavy walled BT-20 tubes can't be sold. Those were made in 2018. Rick at New Way had a bad order of square tubes. Aerotech has had some tubes with overlaps and wide gaps.

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  2. The sucked-in glassine layer is all too common now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous,
      Yep, I'm seeing bad glassine wraps on too many tubes.

      Delete