dstone
Active Member
Hello, everyone,
Just wanted to share a little bit of the build process for my comic book version of the Rocketeer rocket pack. I'd like to start by thanking The Rock-a-who for the wonderful idea of using a large PVC pipe for the rocket body and posting details of his comic build. I mimiced several aspects of my build after his and tweaked a number of things for my own build.
I started off by ordering a number of PVC pieces from eBay, Amazon and Home Depot. I picked up a two foot section of schedule 40 8" well casing, an 8" cap, a 6" cap, a 2" union and a generic PVC shower drain cover.
I cut the well casing down, cut some cardboard into the shape of the nose cone and filled the area with Great Stuff expanding foam.
Once the foam dried, I used a multi-tool to trim the foam down. Then I applied Bondo. And sanded. Wash-rinse-repead a dozen or so times. I have a love-hate relationship going with Bondo.
I used my drill press to cut a 3" hole out of the 8" cap (to fit my hand through later) and used a jigsaw to cut the scallops. I also trimmed down the 6" cap, glued on a part of the 2" union and shower drain cover with some E6000 glue and hit everything with some black primer.
I took the excess PVC from the well casing and cut it into fourths for the fins. I popped them into a convection oven and baked them until they were rather pliable, then pressed them in between two old network switches I had to produce some nice, flat slabs of PVC. I was able to fit two fins per slab (which gave me five extra) and cut them out with my band saw. The edges were rounded over using a combination of my oscillating spindle sander, belt sander and a handheld sander. I used a one-minute epoxy to glue them in place then ran the seams with some of the E6000 glue.

Just wanted to share a little bit of the build process for my comic book version of the Rocketeer rocket pack. I'd like to start by thanking The Rock-a-who for the wonderful idea of using a large PVC pipe for the rocket body and posting details of his comic build. I mimiced several aspects of my build after his and tweaked a number of things for my own build.
I started off by ordering a number of PVC pieces from eBay, Amazon and Home Depot. I picked up a two foot section of schedule 40 8" well casing, an 8" cap, a 6" cap, a 2" union and a generic PVC shower drain cover.
I cut the well casing down, cut some cardboard into the shape of the nose cone and filled the area with Great Stuff expanding foam.


Once the foam dried, I used a multi-tool to trim the foam down. Then I applied Bondo. And sanded. Wash-rinse-repead a dozen or so times. I have a love-hate relationship going with Bondo.



I used my drill press to cut a 3" hole out of the 8" cap (to fit my hand through later) and used a jigsaw to cut the scallops. I also trimmed down the 6" cap, glued on a part of the 2" union and shower drain cover with some E6000 glue and hit everything with some black primer.


I took the excess PVC from the well casing and cut it into fourths for the fins. I popped them into a convection oven and baked them until they were rather pliable, then pressed them in between two old network switches I had to produce some nice, flat slabs of PVC. I was able to fit two fins per slab (which gave me five extra) and cut them out with my band saw. The edges were rounded over using a combination of my oscillating spindle sander, belt sander and a handheld sander. I used a one-minute epoxy to glue them in place then ran the seams with some of the E6000 glue.

