Model Rocket Building Blog
Estes Guardian Build, Part 1, PartsI've never built an Estes Guardian. Somewhere in the Ebay buys I ended up with two. Both kits had white tubes. You can see the bent tube on the right. I have some extra BT-55 and will cut a new one. The 50/55 adapter is the same one used for the Bullpup kit tail cone. The shock cord is ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 2, Plastic Parts PrepBefore gluing in the nose cone shoulder, sand the base of the nose cone flat. Square the nose cone base now for a better fit against the body tube end. Also sand the end of the body tube square. Apply plastic glue and set the shoulder in place. Before the glue dries, slide the nose cone into ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 3, Plastic Parts PrepAfter sanding down the molding seams on the adapter, some white Squadron Putty was set in the remaining seam. It dries quickly. 400 grit was used to sand to surface. The wall thickness at the base of the nose cone was inconsistent. In the picture you can see how much thicker the right ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 4, Tube Marking GuidesI'm building two Guardians at the same time. One kit had a rough white body tube with wide seams. The other kit had the standard brown tubes. On the left is the rougher white tube after it was sprayed with primer/filler. If you enlarge the picture you can see the raised fibers from the sanding ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 5, Rear Fin GluingThe smaller rear fins were glued on first. After the first fin was glued on a thin masking tape strip was set down to line up the leading edges of the other two. The large front fins were glued on with the rear trailing edge at the top of the tape strip. Two craft strips (Popsicle sticks) were ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 6, Fillet SmoothingI've been asked how to get fillets smooth and even. On the right are the Titebond M&TG fillets after spraying with the white undercoat. There is some roughness and ridges. This is a white undercoat I can now wet (actually damp sand) the fillets. 400 grit was wrapped around a Q-tip end for ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 7, Upper Black Trim MonokoteI didn't want to mask and spray this one. For the average builder getting the model to look like the face card would be very hard. I decided to use Trim Monokote. Looking at the face card, it looks like the Estes people did too. Paper was pressed and creased into two of the root edges of ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 8, Blue Trim MonokoteThe back end of the black trim was trimmed off a new razor blade. Be very careful when getting near the rounded fillet corners. It's easy to round off the corners if the Monokote isn't all the way into the fillet joint. The blue piece is cut by simply flipping over the original template ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 9, Lower Body Silver and Black PaintI tried to paint the fins with Rustoleum Metallic but with the heat and humidity it dried dull. I went with Rusto aluminum. The body tube is to be painted black. Here's how I masked off the fins. First the root edges got a mask with Scotch tape. You can see the black marker line at the root ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 10, Re-Spray and Lower Trim TemplateI ended up masking respraying the fin that had the black on it. Most of the fin would be covered with trim Monokote but when I tried to remove the black over spray it dulled the aluminum paint. A piece of copier paper was cut to the size of the black piece. I should be able to use the ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 11, Lower Trim PlacementThe black trim pieces overlapped the root edge fillet slightly. All the trim pieces were hard to set down. There are too many edges and tips to line up. The pieces were set down, lifted, aligned and set down again. This took too long to get close. The forward blue pieces went down easier, ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian Build, Part 12, Payload Section?I built two Guardians, one was normal with the closed adapter and small payload section. The upper section of the second Guardian is shown at the left. The base was removed from the adapter. This gave me a functioning larger payload section, something I could fit an altimeter in. The regular ...[Read More]
Estes Guardian FinishedEstes does show this decor as the suggested "Paint Scheme" but doesn't tell you much information on how to pull it off. The average builder probably wouldn't take the time for all the complex masking. I thought the Monokote trim would be the way to go, that's what it ...[Read More]
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