Building a Giant Wooden Rocket in 5 Days

hey everyone zailey here welcome back to my channel and i am panicking like full stop panic because like two months ago i committed to attempting my level two high power rocketry certification with some friends in the first weekend of april and it is now the last week of march i have seven days to launch and i have not even started my rocket for contacts there are three levels of high power rocket ship certification and each allows you to buy a larger motor the key to all certification flights is that the rocket needs to land in re-flyable condition start by opening all the boxes luckily i ordered materials a while ago thinking i wouldn't be so far behind okay we'll say hopefully the perk of having pre-designed this in open rocket and like doing simulations uh is that this is going to be like rocket legos where i in theory did the hard part but uh packing paranoid this is packing peanuts i hate packing peanuts why why so packing peanuts all right nose come nah and now the fun box the one that has an explosive sticker kind of idiot leaves themselves seven days six days to build a rocket and that is all the things you need to make a rocket maybe first i joined my two body tubes together against a very straight edge using regular old packing tape like the rocket scientist that i am and then it was time to fiberglass over that today's video was sponsored by kiwico but more on them later to set up for fiberglass i just taped two dowels together and slid the body tube on and then like precariously dangled that through two surfaces in my workshop i prepped the fiberglass by masking taping down one edge of it and then i headed over to mix my resin and for fiberglassing like i pretty much always do i'm using total boats high performance with slow hardener and then all you got to do is mix it up mix it up real good and then you can start your layout [Music] and i personally am a subscriber of the idea that reliable design is sexy design and for a certification flight which this is that means low and slow so i went a little heavy here with two layers of six ounce fiberglass in part because i wanted to fly a tank and in part because the four ounce fiberglass i ordered didn't arrive in time so you know and once i had fully wetted out the fiberglass with a brush i went in with a squeegee and just got out all of the excess epoxy let it cure for a couple hours and wait until it was green and then it was time to go in with the second layer and for the second layer it was a friday night and my bestie wanted to hang out and so i told her the only way we could hang out is if she did a fiberglass layout with me so here we are with the tube glassed the last steps towards rocket tube dim we're just trimming off the excess fiberglass which i forgot to do with a knife while it was still green because i fell asleep um and then sand the edges and then sand the seam down flat okay now that i have a rocket tube it's time to fuss with all the accoutrements for it so i have to laser cut some fins and some centering rings and yeah and i'm cutting this out of quarter inch birch ply uh but not the good kind you'd get from like aircraft spruce i'm using the crappy kind you get from home depot and i even had to get it cut in store hence all of that tear out because i procrastinated and bought it at 9 45 the night i had to do it if you'd like to help provide me with more rocket grade materials in the future please feel free to join my patreon and the most important part of laser cutting is to wipe all of this onto your pants but admittedly since a charred surface is not the best to epoxy to i did sand them down a little bit just to help the adhesion to the motor tube and while i was in laser cutter mode i also designed and cut out this fin jig and these will hold my fins in alignment as i glue them to the motor tube for the first time and my third centering ring was perhaps a bit of an afterthought but i looked at all my pieces and i realized that i probably wanted to put the eye bolt for my recovery system on a centering ring at the very top of the motor tube where i could reach it after assembly so i made one more and gave her a secret message that is maybe not a secret anymore because i put it on the internet but and maybe i have trust issues but the more i looked at the centering ring and the more i thought about how that eye bolt hole takes up a lot of space and this is made out of crappy home depot plywood and not the good stuff i decided to fiberglass both sides and be safe because man it would really suck if bad wood on a small centering ring is what caused a recovery system to fail and my fear here was that the eye bolt would just pull straight through the wood on parachute deployment and then once that epoxy cured i just cleaned it up with a dremel re-drilled out the hole and we were good to go and then it was time to begin the inner tube assembly this smaller tube is going to be what holds the rocket motor and by the way i will be flying a j motor specifically the cicerone j595 blue streak which is nearly 20 inches long has six grains and averages 595 newtons of thrust with a burn time of 1.65 seconds but more on that closer to launch for now let's dry fit this and then get it assembled i'm building this using through the wall fins which is a common technique that involves gluing the fins directly to the motor tube and then cutting slots in the body tube for them to pass through and this is one of the most structurally sound ways of doing it and i would 100 recommend it for like all level one and level two at least certification flights because with the certification flight it has to be reflyable after the flight so what i'm doing here is basically epoxying the fins and then the centering ring in place and letting it cure with the fin alignment jig on it and then i'll remove the jig and do real fillets which is like what actually structurally holds the fins on to make the fillets we're going to start by taping off about a quarter inch from each seam and then we go mix the epoxy i personally sold my soul to the bottle toad gods because they make the best epoxy ever so i used thixo by total boat which is not common in rocketry but it is fiberglass thick and epoxy which means that it holds its shape so you can do all of the fillets in one go which is really nice something you see me doing here is i also dye each batch of epoxy a new color and that helps me keep track of curing times but also it just looks really fun but but mostly it helps me keep track of curing and i will say another perk of through the wall fin design means that you get to practice interior fillets before you do your exterior fillets and no one is gonna see the interior fillets unless you make a video and put it on youtube this is also the point where i added the second centering ring on top of my fins and i didn't do that previously because i wanted to be able to slide the fin jig off and then when it's starting to cure but it's not all the way cured is a really good time to peel up the masking tape and you'll get these really nice crisp lines and it's worth noting that pretty much as soon as the epoxy starts going off as soon as it starts to cure you should stop filling with it and mix up a new batch because you really don't want to be filleting with a tacky epoxy and this is where dyeing that epoxy comes in really useful because as you can see here i only was able to do half of the fillets with the purple and then i did the other half with blue and now i know roughly what their their start time was and also maybe fill out your centering rings as a treat and i did not buy a welded eye bolt so i just slapped a big old gob of epoxy on there which works for like a j-motor but i will say one of my friends flew a minimum diameter l motor and his eye bolt actually did open up and straighten out and he lost his recovery system as a result so i would in hindsight maybe spring for a welded eye bolt but anyway um this is the point where i attached my top centering ring plus i bolt and that sort of completes our inner tube assembly next i slid the body tube up over the fin assembly and then i used a ruler to like trace where the fins are so i knew where to cut and then i used a combination of a dremel a box cutter some great jams and some really bad dance moves to cut out all of the slots okay i don't think it's gonna fit because i haven't sanded the phillips down on this yet but i'm impatient and i want to know how close it is so here we go narrator it did not fit do not be impatient like zella getting it to dry fit really well required a little bit of finessing on the rocket tube and getting those slots to be like a very even width but mostly it was actually sanding the fillets down in areas where they protrude out to where the rocket tube needs to slide over it if that makes sense whoa need some sanding but that's totally on there rocket it's only day three and just like that we are ready to glue the assembly into the rocket tube into the main tube um and did i add glitter to this epoxy this time yes because i'm incredibly extra uh the downside of this is it really made it look like candy like the most forbidden of candies don't eat it and then it was just a matter of sliding the tube on filling in some of those gaps at the bottom and clamping it to dry and now it's time to fill it this fish round two electric boogaloo exterior fin edition to make sure my masking tape was perfectly even i used a popsicle stick as a spacer and just traced some lines and then i put masking tape down over the lines and that worked pretty well and with everything super neatly prepped it was time to mix up some more fixo by bottle tote epoxy and am i so unbelievably extra i actually used black diamond gold pigment for epoxy that no one is ever gonna see except for the people watching this video yes yes i am but honestly it made me really happy in the moment and that's all that matters i got to play with sparkles and build rockets at the same time and who doesn't want that as you can see i think that my filleting skills have vastly improved potentially from sous chef quality to head chef quality and a couple things that i learned was using a bigger popsicle stick really helped with this part right here because it's like that perfect satisfying radius but also having the epoxy a little bit warmer so just having the room a little bit warmer while i did it helped it be smoother and so it didn't fold back on itself quite so much but but also maybe it's the sparkles magic sparkles maybe and i did run out of the copper epoxy for my first batch so i did my last fin in silver and i'm not mad about it it looks real cool and i don't know if peels are still all the asmr rage these days but here's here's a few satisfying ones for [Music] you and with those fillets fully cooked it was time to sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand some more and sand it really good and keep sanding it and then send it some more and then maybe it's good oops nope keep standing it keeps and while we're in the sand and groove it's a very good idea to chamfer the leading and trailing edges of your fins and i think the best way to do this is to put a piece of sandpaper against a block and that will give you a really nice clean crisp edge i know other rocketeers have all kinds of other ways of doing it but that's how i did it and make sure you do the leading edge and the trailing edge that will help a ton with the aerodynamics of your fins and then i fiberglass the leading edges and i don't know why i didn't fiberglass the trailing edges because it lands on the trailing edges um so if i were to do this again i would definitely fiberglass both the leading and trailing edges of my fins [Music] so i'm not sure at what point i should just rename my channel xyla fiberglass is literally everything in sight using total boat epoxy but here we go again and what i'm doing here is adding tip to tip fiberglass which will greatly increase the strength of your fin assembly [Music] and then i trimmed the fiberglass while the epoxy was green like i always do and then i masking taped off the kind of like what would be the thin can section and decided to do a flood coat of epoxy and then some peel ply and my goal with that was to get as smooth of a surface as possible without adding too much epoxy like without adding too much weight so this was my first time using peel ply like this and it definitely worked pretty well i still had to do a good amount of sanding but i might do this again in the future i don't know all right now is probably a really good time to start panicking my goal is to be driving to the launch site either late tonight or early tomorrow morning and um this is the state of my rocket so i really have my work cut out for me today especially because like there's setting times for everything so ah wish me luck oh all right let's see how this peel ply did and by the way peel ply is basically a fabric that absorbs some of the excess epoxy but also you can peel it up and you get a slightly smoother finish than just fiberglass so this is kind of a nice alternative to filling the weave like you've seen me do on boats and this works because i don't need to be cool so it's okay if i stand into the glass a little bit i don't have to get sanded off so power sanding is maybe not the number one recommended way of doing this in rocketry except i was a combination of very confident and very panicked so here you go once i had done what i could with a random orbital i did move down to a dremel for some of the detail work and then eventually down to hand sanding for the final pass [Music] and then once the sanding was satisfactory i wiped it down with acetone to get rid of any debris and it was time to move on to her livery library i'm gonna google that okay i'm back i googled it it's livery and anyway it's gonna start with me just spray painting her fins black and after this is when it gets exciting and creative and we get to do wood stuff we love wood stuff [Music] although one second thought before i get ahead of myself let's finish at least varnishing the fins so basically i'm going to measure off a distance from the bottom and then masking tape it off but you might notice it's not actually masking tape that's a hint for the future oh wait this is masking tape because i needed a straight line and then next won't be masking tape oh exciting what is that stuff so most of you guys might know that i don't know anyway then i peeled off the masking tape and it was time to do one of my other favorite tricks uh you may notice i like to mix glitter into like everything i touch so i'm gonna mix some sparkles into halcyon clear which is one of my favorite varnishes because it's water clean up and i loved a little bit everything um by the way use the code total xyla for twenty percent off all the total about products anyway then i'm going to varnish it and this is going to add so much depth and beauty to these otherwise boring black fins so i put a couple coats of varnish on it and then let it dry and while the varnish is drying let's jump in our handy dandy time machine slash magic of editing and fast backwards all the way to the first day of me working on this rocket and this is the part where i tell you that i was actually working on the livery for this the whole time that i was building the rocket because i decided to do a steam bent oak and cherry marquetry veneer and i've talked about steam bending pretty in depth in previous videos on my channel so i'm not going to get too much into it now but basically what you need to know is that lignin is the glue that holds all the cellulose fibers of wood together and when you heat lignin up it softens and so you can bend wood by heating it up but it needs to be wet when you do that otherwise it might catch on fire and and nobody wants that so i'm sort of like cheating it here where because it's veneer and it's so thin and i know i can heat it with just a heat gun i just sprayed it with a ton of water and then heat gunned it and with that i was able to slowly bend it around the rocket tube and the key was actually getting this done on the first day so that it could be sitting there drying out and forming into this shape permanently for like the four or five days that i was building the rock okay so this is some cherry veneer that was actually sent to me for the map project and it's from a fans farm in alabama actually wasn't able to use it on the map so i'm really excited to get to use it for this project and i'm going to do all of the detailing and the name fifi out of this cherry and to prevent the grain from splitting i put masking tape down over my cut lines and then i was able to just use scissors on the veneer without any issues this is the piece we're gonna cut fifi out of now the name fifi was actually picked by my patrons at patreon zoom and if you want to join those future zooms uh please feel free to join my patreon which is linked down below and i actually do rely on my patrons to pay my rent every month so i take patreon very seriously and i would love to have you join our family but the name fifi itself comes from fifi is the feather duster girlfriend of lumiere been banned by you before and lumiere was the name of my level one certification rocket but fifi also maybe or maybe does not stand for it fly it which i think is great and then for the oak piece that those letters are gonna get inset onto unfortunately the entire piece of veneer did not fit in my laser cutter so i had to cut it to a smaller size and then tape it back together for the final rocket and i backed it off with the special veneer tape which included me getting to put in the letters and kind of see how it's gonna look for the first time which was pretty exciting but before i could do the big veneer i had to do all of the trim pieces at the bottom and for that part i actually put the veneer tape directly onto the rocket and then stuck the trim onto that and this whole process was big stressful with a capital big and also a capital stressful because once you stick something to this veneer tape it doesn't come off so you gotta get like one shot to get everything lined up and straight on a round tube and when i was done singing them down i just fixed all the problem areas with ca glue and clamps just like we fix our lives okay it is now it is now time to put fifi onto fifi and i'm not gonna lie this is giving me so much anxiety it feels like there's like snakes in my tummy i decided to do this using like a variation of the hinge method that you do with vinyl cuts sometimes where i taped down two pieces and then i peeled off some of the veneer tape in the middle and stuck that down first and then i would go to the other side into the outside that way that it's always tacked down somewhere while veneer tape is being applied okay okay okay and then while doing the other side i really should have just done one strip of tape at a time and i really don't know why i didn't but it definitely gave me a heart attack like this moment right here oh my god and the rest of that clip is muted because i don't want to find out if expletives get you demonetized on youtube so you could just imagine um but a lot of patience and i was able to unpeel it and then successfully stick it down to the rest of the tube and wipe my hands clean of that terror and i didn't record it but that gap bothered me enough that i filled it in with a teeny sliver later no one is ever letting me design a rocket paint scheme ever again never don't veneer a rocket this is the stupidest thing i've ever done oh it's like that's like actual wood this is yeah this is all real wood oh yeah that's extra yeah this is gonna be the part i screw up never again never again you only have to get rocket certification once right does it expire it does not expire which is why i'm doing my level two like six years after i did my level one beefy beefy she lives sort of she stole my soul maybe a couple options here let's do like one with like a punch in fifi and i will do one and then it was time for you guessed it more sanding and i was having some issues with the letters peeling up at the corners because it's like marquetry on a round surface which is ridiculous so i just super glued them down because i was going to fiberglass over it anyway then a final pass of sanding we're ready to tie the glass and for this i'm using 1.5 oz cloth which is by quite a bit the thinnest and lightest cloth i've ever used but for this purpose it's really not for structural strength it was just to protect the veneer and so i wanted to keep the weight down as much as possible because like this thing still has to fly it's not just a beautiful piece of art you know but man do her colors pop once it's fiberglass ugh i was so happy with the way it came out there was like so much unknown but it definitely she pulled through for me at the very last minute because about two hours from this moment i jump in the car and drive to the mojave and the last thing i needed to do before getting to the airbnb with all the rocket homies was to glue in the bulkhead on the nose cone and that's just so that i can have my recovery system attached to the nose cone i kind of put it off because i wanted to do avionics and then i realized that i didn't have enough money to buy any of the parts for avionics so i just went for it and epoxied the bulkhead right in and then with my negative covered test in hand i headed to the airbnb full of vaccinated and quarantined rocketeers for a weekend of amazing shenanigans [Music] shenanigans aside i did have some last minute things to do on the rocket which was mostly adding rail buttons adding a camera mount and a motor mount and some painting oh why okay that's way enough right i think so okay it's pretty lame you see my prologue will move here oh that's a big brain yeah look at that nose cone drying stand yeah engineering right there engineering i also painted feathers on the fins because you know she's a feather duster after all and the last thing to do was the recovery system which very unfortunately involved getting this kevlar loop around the eye bolt deep inside of my rocket and i didn't do it ahead of time because i didn't want any epoxy to get on the kevlar and weaken it so just enjoy the color oh my god like the tiny corner of my elbow dude it is sweating not right now as soon as i am not waiting i'm only dramatizing just a tiny bit like i'm actually in pain just i got it my arm is wet okay okay so we're just gonna do a little one of these that video's a little dubious there's like a lot of sun on some parts of you you know i'm a sunny person okay it's never coming out again this is a permanent fixture of fifi put that in there and then that in there to pack my parachute i folded it in half so that each of the lines had a friend and then i folded it in half again so that each of the lines had a friend and i repeated until all of the lines were bundled in one spot and when i did that it was in the middle of this pizza slice so then i folded the pizza slice in half again so that all of the lines were like on the side of it and then from there i folded it into thirds and then i neatly burritoed it into my nomex taking a lot of care to make sure that none of the parachute lines could get tangled up and the nomex is going to protect the chute from the blast as it gets ejected out of the body tube your angles are very questionable sir i'll straighten up there i'll straighten up i have a little burrito dumpling it'll be culturally relevant and that nomex parachute dumpling burrito thing is going to be the first thing into the body too okay and then i took the rest of the kevlar webbing in the shoot harness and wrapped it in this figure eight pattern and that'll keep it from snagging or getting tied in any knots which could compromise the recovery system and last but certainly not least i tucked that away neatly into the body tube put the rest of the webbing neatly on top of that and added the nose cone and fifi is ready to fly well actually she needs a motor to fly but i'm going to do that at the launch site right before launch is that got the nice blur in the background yeah my left stop and on april 3rd 2021 we all drove out to the mojave to launch some rockets and i spent the morning helping my friends get their rockets off the pad first negative 22 meters a second holding steady 360 feet 360 meters touchdown latitude 35.34 so we're all headed to bunkers right now because someone's about to launch a liquid fuel rocket [Music] and around 2 p.m it was time to start working on my rocket so i started by drilling out venting holes which will help with the air pressure decrease as it skyrockets then i drilled out the delay charge to ensure the parachute comes out at the right time then reinstalled the forward closure and then integrated the entire motor load into the case nice and tight and then into the rocket going in seems good enough for government work for oh good enough for rocket science this is good enough for a bunch of crazy people out in the desert idiots on youtube and just like that it was my turn at the launch pad the uh the hair is very dramatic [Music] [Applause] [Music] so so we got this mission so [Music] hey [Music] [Music] i kept eyes on the rocket until it touched down and then i drew a line in the dirt in a direct path towards it so that i could go prep my supplies and then go on my desert hike and then armed with shades a new layer of sunscreen a literal backpack full of water two emergency radios and a buddy i set out to find my rocket i gotta say i have never just aimlessly walked out into the desert with no direction and no plans we are really to far [Music] yo this is a parachute oh my god wait oh my god this is hurt oh my god [Music] [Music] is yeah actually i mean we found it so [Music] yes and today's video is sponsored by kiwico kiwiko is a super cool company that was founded by a mom of three who happens to share the same alma mater as me i'm just saying the goal is to inspire kids to see themselves as makers engineering and creating solutions for all kinds of problems kiwi co is defining the future of play by making it engaging enriching and seriously fun they create super cool hands-on projects and toys designed to expose kids to the concepts in steam science technology engineering art and math each monthly crate is designed by experts and tested by kids and teaches a new theme through hands-on learning and fun kiwico offers eight subscription lines each catering to a different age group and topic each box comes with all the supplies needed for that month's project no extra runs to the store needed and detailed kid-friendly instructions and an educational magazine filled with content to learn even more about the creates theme kiwico believes that by learning the skills to problem-solve innovate and create kids can truly change the world tomorrow that's like this is yeah the best hydraulic demo i think i've actually ever seen and remember they may be small today but they're literally our future check out kiwicode.com to get 50 off your first month of any crate and going off script here i don't think there's anything more important than showing kids that they have the power to build and create and engineer solutions to problems in their lives i have always been a hands-on learner and i honestly never did all that well in school but it was a confidence in building things and making things and creating things with my hands that got me through engineering school and that's the kind of confidence projects and kits like kiwico can instill in a student

Channel: Xyla Foxlin

Views: 932,770

Keywords: rocket, hotnozzlesummer, rocketry, L2, level 2, HPR, high power rocketry, certification, wood, veneer, marquetry, fifi, fly it

Id: CKqrQUHYgrM

Length: 35min 56sec (2156 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021