A Hot Knife thru Butter

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues...

You may have heard that there is a world-wide shortage of balsa that has been impacting the rocketry kit community.

It's my understanding that to combat this, several of the major manufacturers have switched to either blown plastic nosecones or 3-D printed nosecones.  I can't comment on 3-D, cause I've only run into one so far, but the point I joined in making rockets seemed to be the transition between balsa to blown plastic.


May be an image of food

In some of these kits, the plastic made sense, especially as you got to larger sizes, where a wooden block might be extremely difficult to ship, let alone whittle down.

Recently, I saw a tip from another rocketeer that I thought I would pass along 

(even though it is not my own).No photo description available.

When slicing a blown plastic nosecone free from its tail section, or from an unused transition, I typically have used an Exacto knife... very sharp, and firmly held... it will slice the white blown plastic with precision.  However, if your knife is no longer sharp, it can be a problem.  In those times, I have used a snap-off blade knife or a new box-cutter or linoleum knife.

But the tip that I heard was this:  Use a heated knife, and the cutting will be much easier.  The light-bulb went off in my head, as the plastic is likely to soften for the knife blade.

Then I got to thinking, why not soak the blown plastic nosecone in warm-to-hot water first, and soften the plastic.

...BECAUSE IT MIGHT MELT, if your water is too hot.

But the heated blade of an Exacto knife might still do the trick.

I have yet to try this suggestion, but I thought I'd pass it along.

Tell me if it works for you, or if it is a dead end.

This has been the Thrifty Rocketeer, saying "Save your balsa wood scraps!"

 

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