Estes Big Bertha Fin Jig

thingiverse

My son recently built his first model rocket, an Estes Big Bertha. He shot it on a windy day and promptly lost it in the jungle. I had been making some rocket pens and decided to lathe turn a wooden Big Bertha shaped rocket to match his lost rocket. Link to the rocket pens is: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5146080 I turned the model rocket from a hardwood table leg. Body is 11.75" long and roughly 2" in diameter. The fins are 1/8" thick hardwood. A picture of the fin plan is included. Print so the dimension shown is correct and they will fit a 1 foot by 2 inch diameter rocket body nicely. You can scale to fit other sizes of bodies. I glue the fins on with wood glue. I then use a small clip to clip the fin onto the jig tab and rubber bands around the fins to provide clamping pressure further up while the glue is drying. I added a glue filet after the fin dried to add more strength. I finished the rocket with shellac.. If you desire flames, you can download a flame model from my rocket pens model. The flames can be printed from orange or red filament and then trimmed to suit. They are a friction fit into a 7mm hole at the bottom, but if you desire larger flames you can scale up and drill a hole in your rocket to suit. If you are using this as a jig to glue the fins on an actual Big Bertha rocket, you may have to carefully center on the top of the jig as I no longer had the rocket to model the correct diameter for. Enjoy, this is an easy toy to make on a lathe on an afternoon.