Tuesday 25 January 2011

the nose cone

making a nose cone for the rocket from chemiwood on the lathe, using a really dense block becuse i want a
really smooth finish on it and i want it to blend in to the pipe that its going to sit on top of.
started with a cuboid block of chemiwood and drew a circle with a radius of 60mm so that i would have 5mm of room between the actual shape needed and the outside of the working block.

i cut the corners off so that it would be easier on the tool on the lathe.


made a block of wood and screwed and glued it to the base of the block for the chuck to hold on to.
the block in the chuck ready to go, need to round it off untill fully circular first, then il zero it off and take layers of 0.5mm at a time unitll i get to the required size.


the block after about half an our to 45 minutes of lathing, its at the same diameter as the pipe now, ready for tomorrow, when i'll make the steps and round off the cone shape.
started to step out the curve.

finished making the curve with the facing off tool, time to smooth the curve with sand paper, then glass paper
much smoother than before, looks great and i can imagine it on the top of the tube now, still needs more sanding yet though,

almost done sanding now, have gone through the grades of glass paper to 1200 grain, using water too, when it was spinning on the lathe i could almost see my reflection in the cone.
after cutting the block off the bottom the nose cone was complete, still need to paint it obviously but have finished making it now, placed it ontop of the tube to see how it fit, there is a small difference in size but the tube is bigger than the cone so when i glue it on i'll just sand the tube untill they're both flush against each other. quite happy with the nose cone, has only taken me a day really do design and make it, one of the major things ticked off the list.

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