Premade fin units
 

BAR Dave again...................Does anybody have premade plastic fin units ready to slip on a body tube ? Might want some for Christmas kits of my own design.
Thanks, Dave in MI

Quest Aerospace has them

http://www.questaerospace.com/items...tatus=0&Tp=&Bc=

:)

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Thanks for the link, that's what I was thinking of. Do you know of any 40mm, or BT60 units ? Didn't see any in Estes catalog for their tubes.
Dave C in MI

And then there are ACME Fin Cans

Not aware of any BT60 sized plastic units, but the Quest Nike_Smoke based unit is 37mm ( 1.37" ) , sort of in between BT55 and BT60 .

Just ordered a batch of parts, including this unit, from Quest a few weeks back .

Acme fin cans, which are aluminum, are the only units that I know of in that approximate size. Their 38mm unit will fit a tube that has an outside diameter of around 1.635". Another alternative might be to use Giant Leap's Groove-Lock with your own fins. This unit, too, is sized for 38mm airframes/motor tubes. I would think that either choice would be too beefy and heavy for use with BT-60, but I have never actually seen either product, so I could be wrong about that.

Most one-piece fin cans that I know of are either made of plastic and sized for BT-55/ST-13 or smaller, or are made of fiberglass and are sized for high power rockets. There are plenty of pre-made composite fins in various sizes that you can buy (or have custom made) but the selection of unitary fin cans is more limited. The Quest Nike Smoke fin can is sized for 35mm tubes (1.38" OD), not 37mm.

MarkII

I did some searching the other day, and found the ones by Giant Leap. They are a nice unit, but overkill for what I wanted. I guess I'll just use basswood, and things will be fine. I was just looking for cheap and easy. But some of the almost ready to fly kits are a possibilty too.
Thanks to all that tried to help, I've got many more questions coming I'm sure.
BAR, DAve in MI

Now hold on a second - I may have spoken too hastily. I'm not that familiar with Estes E2X kits, so not many (and not enough) sprang to mind when I wrote my post yesterday. But now I do recall that Estes does make plastic fin cans for BT-60; two kits that have them are the Blue Ninja and the Liquidator. Estes doesn't sell either fin unit as a separate item, so the cheapest way to get one is to scavenge the unit from the Blue Ninja kit. This is a pretty popular model, so if you ask around, someone may have an unsalvageable crashed/trashed model that they can give you. ("Trashed/crashed and unsalvageable" is the ultimate fate of many model rockets, regardless of the purchase price.) In that case you would just have to figure out how to separate the bonded parts (the two fin can halves plus the 4 fins) so that you can reglue them around your tube. Otherwise you'll have to cannibalize a new BN kit.

MarkII

Well, I'm not familiar with the Blue Ninja but the Liquidator doesn't have exactly what I would call a "fin can". It has two plastic parts that are glued together and then the fins are glued into it. When I think of fin can, I think of a pre-assembled part similar to what you would find on the Eliminator. Unless, I'm doing a build where the "fin can" is assembled separately and is intended to mate up with a body tube but is not permanently afixed to said body tube, such as the OOP lift kits and OOP body kits manufactured by Mach 1 Industries.

http://www.oldrocketplans.com/mach-1.htm

But, with that said, looks like some "can" :rolleyes: action is required.

That's true; it's not a slip-on one-piece unit, but it's the closest thing that I could find in that size from any manufacturer. Let's call it a fin can assembly, then. The Blue Ninja's assembly is similar in design to the Liquidator's; it might even be the same one.

Aerotech sells a combination motor mount/Fin-Lock unit, errr, assembly for their 1.88" diameter tubing. This requires a slotted body tube, though (which can be obtained from Aerotech or BMS) and it presumably only works with AT's molded fins. (They list 7 different styles, but I don't know if all of them can be used with the 1.88" tube.)

I have only used one-piece fin can units twice, on my Alpha III and on my No. 2 Estes Sky Writer. My Lucky Seven had molded plastic fins that slid into brackets molded onto the plastic body, but apparently that doesn't qualify as a "premade" fin can. For everything else that I have ever built, I have attached the fins the old-fashioned way.

MarkII