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Old 12-30-2011, 04:28 PM
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Gus Gus is offline
7/21/61
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: North of Detroit
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Default Applying Sticky-Paper Body Tube Wraps

Applying wraps to body tubes is fairly easy to do if you remember one guiding principle: Start from the middle, not from the edge!

I am going to try to make this photo essay as generic as possible, but I am going to use as my example the full tube body wrap included in the new Falcon 9 kit being sold by SpaceX.

The wrap in this kit is beautiful (pic below), very high quality paper, great detail in the printing. But the otherwise outstanding instructions suggest you line up the wrap beginning at its edge. In my experience, trying to wrap a tube starting at one edge and working your way around almost never results in a good wrap. Not only is any tiny imperfection in alignment on the starting side hugely magnified by the time you get around to the back, but rocket body tubes are fairly pliable and trying to run a wrap all the way around a tube often results in bubbles or wrinkles.

So, instead, you need to apply the wrap from its middle. That immediately cuts in half both the magnitude of any alignment error and the likeliehood of getting bubbles or wrinkles.

But how do you apply a sticky-paper wrap from its middle?
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