I've been wanting to try this for a while, the work I did on my Dyna-soar/Titan II got me motiviated. I do a lot of depron RC airplane construction, my thought was to do a model that typically needs lots of nose weight or is very heavy, and see if using stringers/centering rings and 1mm depron skin I could make a large light model to fly on E-15's......
The only wood in this model are two centering rings in the upper portion that are lite ply, and the balsa coupler I used for my BT-70 upper tube since it was handy at the hobby shop, the rest is depron sheet, cardboard motor tubes and some .04 styrene sheet.
For drawing centering rings I've been simply using a strip of cardboard, put a thumbtack in one end, and measure to the needed radius, poke a hole and insert my fine sharpe and draw it directly on whatever I need to cut, no need for a compass. This can be used for drawing cones or transition shrouds as well where you need a very long radius.
I cut a 7" by 2" triangle out of 6mm depron, grooved and glued in a 1/8" carbon rod which will take the brunt of the nose cone landing force....I then added perpendicular triangles, and took turns gluing in triangle filler pieces and carving those to match the original triangle pieces a quarter at a time...eventually I had nose cone shape. I left one quadrant unfinished so I could add weight if needed, then finish it. I added a few gradually increasing centering rings to get the needed outer diameter.
I cut off a
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