Vintage Estes Star Blazer build
 

This is a pretty old kit but all parts appear to be in good condition minus the old rubber shock cord. Should be interesting when I go to use the decals. I did a search here for others that built this rocket and I pulled up some nice old vintage pictures. Some of the pictures I pulled up came from the 70s. So I was wondering, has there been a thread on vintage rocket pictures from the 70s and early 80s? I could not find one but will keep searching. If there are no thread on old pictures maybe I will get one started. Personally I don't have pictures that old but I want to see what people have.

I have this one. It's been a long time since I flew it.

I built this scratch version a couple of years ago. It had an 18mm mount and a Space Racer nose cone. Flew pretty good. Lost it in the woods when I tried a C motor.

I cloned mine in 2008, gee eight years ago! :rolleyes:

It uses the 1/2A motors and streamer recovery.

I want to up-size it to use B/C motors in BT-55 and maybe the Shuttle Express N/C!

I've bought a few Shuttle Express kits just for the nose cone. If you want to paint, I've found a great way to keep the canopy blue while repainting the rest. I use Micro Scale Liquid Mask. It's slightly thick, so it does not run. I use a small brush and paint the canopy. Let it dry, then spray paint the nose cone. After about a day I use the point of an X-acto knife blade to lift an edge of the mask. It peels up very cleanly.

The build was pretty simple but had to take my time with the old canopy paper. I still have to add fillets then 3 coats of Aerogloss balsa sealer. I used my old school measuring device to get the correct fin angles.

Very nice. I like the " old school measuring device".

If I ever did this build again, I would eliminate the payload section and make it a single body tube to the nose cone. A CMASS member did this with his clone and it looked good!

I did something like that on my Xarconian Cruiser, only backwards -- sprayed the nose cone, then used liquid mask around the canopy and sprayed the canopy. Worked pretty well. For whatever reason it looks better in person than in the photo.

This little rocket I finally done after a not so fun build. The actual build went fine, then brushed on balsa sealer and primed. I shot my final coat of Rustoleum gloss white and it began spattering on my rocket.....again...... So I waited for her to dry, sanded the paint back and shot another coat from a new can of Rusto. Once again I noticed spatter again....That was it I was done with Rusto...again. I ordered some old formula Krylon but can not use it over Enamel on this so I used Krylon Short Cuts I bought at Michaels with my 50 percent off coupon. Short Cuts are Testors size Enamel paints that actually go on pretty nice. It is thinner than Rusto so you have to be careful not to get any runs. The good thing about these paints is Krylon makes a full line of touch up pens and paints that match the Short Cuts. Also my favorite thing is they have the old style spray tips.:) The down side is they are in small cans.....Oh well cant have it all. Any way with all that going on, my house had a water leak inside the walls, so my house is torn up. Also my Black Lab of 11 years had was put to peace after 3 months of being diagnosed with Bone Cancer.....all and all a tough month....Then I find out Midwest has no more balsa sealer:( I called Midwest and they could not give me answer if they are DC the product. So I hear Brodak Balsa sealer is pretty close so I will give that a try.

Sorry about your black Lab. Ours is almost two years old and still a pain and joy. We have two mutts, golden lab mixes that are going on 9 years now. I worry that one of them will need something I can't afford to pay the vet to fix.

The Star Blazer is looking great. I have a soft spot for that rocket since it was the first one I ever built.

The one below I cloned about five years ago.