| After you have the body tube (or tubes) selected then you'll need a nose cone. Some kits had basic nose cone shapes that are easy to replicate while others are going to require more work. A good source for nose cones is Balsa Machining Service. BMS has a wide variety of all the classic Estes cones and some Centuri ones as well. They also offer a semi-custom service. They have a wide variety of shapes to choose from in many size ranges.They can make your cone from soft or medium density balsa as well as bass wood. I suggest going to their website and downloading their catalog (in .PDF format) and taking a look. |
 |
| If you are going to require a nose cone that BMS does not have or can't make then you'll have to resort to other methods. Such as carving your own from balsa or blue foam. Or perhaps combining two other basic cones together. I used this technique on my BOMARC to make the ramjet inlet cones. These were originally made in balsa by Estes but no one does these now. What I ended up doing was sawing the top 2/3 of a cone fitting the ramjet tube then cutting the very tip of a smaller, pure conic cone and gluing that in the ceter of the sawed off area of the bigger cone. Voila!...ramjet. In other instances you'll have to make a canopy from cardstock. Sometimes these patterns will be included in the kit plans.. |
| Nose Cones |
| Here's a page from the Estes catalog on the various nose cones along with their dimensions. While not a complete listing it does go a long way in helping; |
|
| Now that we have our body tubes and nose cones we'll need all the other items that go into making the rocket. Let's head on to the next page..... |
 |