Jacob's Rocket Project for Boy Scouts

The Beginning.
Glued...sanded and shaped.
Paint drying...looks like a corndog.
Finished Rocket.

So Jake had a project to do for Boy Scouts.....build a rocket. Sounds simple enough...wrong! Now I've built the cars before and I've seen the boats before but I have never even seen a rocket. The box looks simple enough and then you open it up and see the directions...or at least what THEY call directions. Very poor....they jump around...the only pictures are very poorly drawn sketches. So they give you these two blocks of wood and you have to glue them together. After the glue is dry you have to sand the block into the shape you want...no knifes allowed. So after 3 hours of sanding Jake and I agreed that the sanding was done and that's the shape he wanted. Next step...paint. We put three coats of paint (Same color paint as his car from last year) which by the time they dried and repainted, dried and repainted it took another 3 hours. Next comes the cutting of the wings. Now the wings are much smaller than the ones shown on the box. So after cutting the grooves in the wood for the wings you have to glue them in place. All of it up to this point was not too bad. Stickers and painting the cockpit...not too bad. Now comes the part where you have to adjust the propeller.....decide if you need 1,2,3 or 4 rubberbands to turn the propeller.....bad. I ended up cutting one of the wires too short and had to go to Lowes to get more...but they didn't have the same size so I had to improvise. Well...anyways it's done. I hope it's right. They have to be turned in tonight and the race is tomorrow night. I wish I could see some other rockets to see if I'm doing it right but I can't so cross your fingers I got it right. You have to wind up the rubberbands approx. 150 turns each time you race. I rigged up something that attatches to the rubberbands and then to the cordless drill and I wind it up that way....much quicker! Well....wish us (Jake) luck tomorrow night and we'll give an update on how he did and hopefully have pictures too.