Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Big Big Rocket

I finished the big rocket tonight.

The humidity has been really high for the last week, so everything is taking forever to dry enough for carving.

On Saturday, Stephanie and I drove down to the Shore, Long Beach Island. She played in the waves for about six hours, with a break for a late lunch. We went to a nice sea food restaurant, where she had mako shark, and I had fresh scallops (harvested from the bay), which were in a pesto sauce with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatos, and mozarella cheese. Steph had a side of onion rings, and I had diced tomatos in basalmic vinegar.

At dusk, we learned to beach comb for sea glass.

Today, I had spent a few minutes at work on my whiteboard, sketching fin configurations until I found something that I liked. I kept trying to force a pair of stubby rectangular fins onto the mid body (I've only made one rocket where it looked good, which promptly blew up in the firing because I forgot to put a hole to the sealed center cavity..... uh, wait a minute.....needle tool through rear of rocket. The Big Rocket made a sucking noise as the pressure equalized.)

Three engine bells and fins. The cockpit windows are two rows of three rectangles. I carved two sets of intake vents between the top and side fins.

Its almost too tall to fit in its chuck in the damp box. I have it wrapped in plastic to slow down the drying. Tomorrow, I'll do the smaller rocket, and trim the closed forms and little vase.

1 Comments:

Blogger SquidgePa said...

Interesting.

I remember an article from about thirty-five years ago in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics about the vortex tube. There was a picture of someone in one of those aluminum covered fireproof suits, where they were using the vortex tube to provide chilled air. I seem to recall the other vent in the tube spitting out hot air, but that was not released into the suit.

There was detailed plans on how to fabricate one. Maybe I'll track down the article at the library.

Thanks for all of the links.

8:26 AM  

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