This week on Big Fred's Cosplay and Rocket Shop

ok...not really week, but who keep counts, right?

Elucidator Scabbard

After having finished Elucidator, I decided to give a try at making my own scabbard. As with any project where you make something for the first time, research is key. Thanks to our overlords at google, I found this page describing two historical, and an easy method of making scabbards.

http://www.yeoldegaffers.com/project_scabbard.asp

So, because I'm a bit lazy, I decided to go with the easy method.

First I made the rough shape.

Then I used scrap pieces to build the details. I also thinned the piece near the opening because it looked even fatter than your mom Weird Al in "Fat"

And the final result.

Now, those make it look like everything went well, but it didn't. At first, because of the thickness of the felt I lined it with, it was way toot tight, to the point where paint on the sword itself would get scrapped off. The only way I found to fix it without opening the whole thing, or sanding the whole sword ~1mm thinner, was to get a rough piece of wood, a whiff thicker than the sword was, and repeatedly insert that...implement, in the scabbard. As a result, some fiber on the felt stuck on the wood, and after a while, removed just enough for the sword to have a tight fit, without destroying the paint.

Dark Repulsor

Just a quick glimpse of what I'm working on. I'll probably be making it during the October school break, in between researching on carbon-fiber layup and CFD on rocket bodies.

Speaking of rocket bodies...


ROCKETS!

Since the FIRST robotics team I was managing doesn't exist anymore due to budgetary constraints, I decided to join a student project group once again. I was torn between Avion Cargo Laval, the  SAE Aero design group, which really need more people, Robocup, a project to make a team of robots that plays soccer, with one of my friend, or the GAUL, which I actually wanted to join since they started up again a few years ago, but thought I was too inexperienced to join.

Since it's my last year and a half of university, in theory, I decided to not help my old team, or my friend. Instead, I decided to do what I always wanted to do; what actually put me on the path to being an engineer: rocket science.

The first team activity we did was build rockets together. We had a choice to either work on a team rocket, or get our own kit. Since I like diving in the deep end on my first try, and I really like making stuff, I got my own kit. I'm cheap though, so I went with the cheaper, smaller kit, called the Screech, thinking it would be a one time thing and that it would either break, get lost, destroyed, or that i'd have my fill with that one and the competition's rocket...

The completed rocket, Thjalfi-1, pronounced Thyalfi, just like Mjollnir is pronounced Myollnir and eyjafjallajokull is pronounced eiyafyallayokul.

Boy was I wrong. We went to Ciel d'Octobre and the rocket launching community seemed just so nice compared to the RC plane community. We launched 5 rockets in total, mine and another small kit like mine, the communal DX-1, and 2 rockets made by the team's senior launchers. My launch didn't go so well: first the wind got pretty strong near the end of the day, so we angled the launch pad maybe a bit more than we should have. Then, my color choice wasn't so great. Chrome is actually hard to see against a cloud cover AND cut corn, so everyone lost sight of the rocket at it's apogee. Finaly, the parachute didn't deploy properly: the nose was probably a bit too tight. I was afraid that was going to happen, because it was really tight...but since it was my first rocket, I really didn't know how tight it had to be. In any case, that is only conjecture because we didn't find the rocket in the end; maybe the chute did deploy and we just didn't see it; maybe it deployed but was burned by the explosive charge maybe...

I didn't see any cows, that's proof right?

In any case, that was fun. It reminded me of my youth, launching model rockets in the sand quarry in my hometown. I'm not satisfied with my launch though. I'm going to build a bigger rocket for next year, and get the certifications needed to launch it.

Welp, add rocketry to my infinite list of hobbies...which really could mostly be summed up as:

My wallet ._.;

AND IN THE NEXT EPISODE! WILL ROCKET CFD BE AN ACTUAL THING? WILL FRED BE ABLE TO FINISH HIS COSPLAY ON TIME? OR WILL HE BE KILLED BY THE OVERWHELMING COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN CLASS?? FIND OUT...SOMEDAY.