Estes Silver Comet refurb

I started getting crazy with the whole model rocketry thing again in July of 2016. One of the catalysts of my purchase frenzy was looking on Craigslist to buy up anything rocket related. This included kits, pads, controllers, engines, wood, stickers... etc. 

My latest score at the end of August 2017, included a #2141 Estes Silver Comet. This kit is an old favorite for many of my rocker peers. When I noticed it in the pile, I didn't say anything. It was one of those things where you figure, you would just roll with it and not say anything. However, the excitement that I was actually going through at the time of seeing it with everything was that of a little child getting ready to drink Mountain Dew for the first time. I had thought that maybe if the person who was selling me the items may have seen my excitement, they would have considered not selling me the stuff.

Anyway so I have this awesome rocket now. I found myself looking at this wondering if it is able to fly. It's not.

Looking in at the bottom of the tube I see that it's most likely suffered a CATO (blown engine). The motor that most likely caused the damage is gone, but there is a bit of "rolled" tube on the inside that needs to have some work done.

I'm thinking I need to remove this tube. This picture is from the nose cone side, you can see below where the engine had it's problem and the pieces of tube hanging down from this CATO issue.

What made me decide to work on this model instead of getting a new kit or scratch building it is the fact that its OOP (Out of Production).  Having the core of this kit in hand was a good basis for its reburbishment. I did note the decals are available out on the web, so I should have no issues trying to print those on the work's laser printer.  Yeah, the printer at work, don't tell anyone.  

One thing I will try with the decals first is to use the originals as much as possible.  I tried peeling the originals off, as these are peel and stick decals.  The adhesive created a blemish in the original sticker, so I attached them to clear white paper and I will try to photo copy them onto slide decal paper. On another note, the link I provided will also have the decals that are scanned.  They turn out to print almost perfect, so if you have a project similar, you could use those as well!

Allow me to start laying out the process of what happens next:

I cut a small hole under the launch lug and cut out the bad part of the tube.  I wasn't able to take pics of the process as I got excited.  In the pic below, I used a green motor mount spacer on a 24mm tube from Apogee Components as shown.

The soot on the green spacer is from the dry fit, which means "test" fitting.

In the above photo, you can see the joint without glue on how it connects.  

I hate engine hooks.  Like, I HATE them.  As a result, I decided to redo this mount with a 24mm motor retainer from Estes.  This is a dry "test" fit and shows how this will look.  Most newer kits will contain this instead of an engine mount, and to honest, its simply better and IMO, looks way cooler.  You'll see more on this when I show you the aft end of the kit.

Since the bottom centering ring got damaged as I was taking out the original tube, I decided to cut it in half and re-glue it into place.  

Before the tube was inserted as I posted initially, this was the end result of the aft centering ring.  Below is a photo of the completed assembly.

As an extra measure, I have used wood glue to reinforce the joints with the tube.

Below is the motor retainer now put in place with epoxy. 

The picture does appear as if its off center, which if you have installed a motor mount tube incorrectly, could be a major issue.  This tube was glued in place correctly after the dry fit, which totally is a reason to do the dry fit to begin with.  Always dry fit your steps!

This part is done.  The next part is the finishing of the kit itself.  

The wood grain on a rocket drives me nuts.  
For the purposes of this kit, I feel that it should look like metal.
I have decided to start redoing the bottom fin can,
which included sealing, filling and sanding the wood.

I decided initially to try and tape off the original decals.
This turned out to be a bad idea as the decals just got ruined anyway from sanding.



This view is before the Engine retainer is installed.

Below is a view of the installed motor retainer and the fins/can sanded down to be ready for primer and paint.

This is a view of the primed fin can below.
I taped the threads to the motor retainer so that paint and primer stay off the connection.



I was thinking, that I would try to save the original decals and just tape off the area that needed paint.  After looking at the blemishes from the original build and the tapered lines between my primer and the silver on the kit itself, I decided to peel off the original decals and prime and repaint the whole kit.  

This will require me to print new decals.

From this link provided, and also the same link from the beginning of the article, you'll see the nearly perfect scan of the original decals!

Stay tuned for paint, decals and the finished refurb!