Art Applewhite Rockets - Scimitar (13mm)
Contributed by John Lee  Brief: Construction: Construction is easy. The first step is to locate some suitably heavy cardstock. Art recommends 110lb. I used some of the heavy gloss paper I am using to clone the old Centuri Vulcan. It is not measured in the standard way and is given as 12lb. The paper industry has a very eccentric way of measuring these things but it is slightly heavier than 110lb cardstock.
The motor mount is folded into a triangular prism and set apart to dry. The upper body is folded to form a corner. This is easily apparent when you have the thing in front of you, prose does not do it justice. The lower body is then glued into place. It forms an after bulkhead and stiffens the "scimitar blades." After that, it is just a matter of sliding the motor mount into place and gluing it. Care should be taken when installing the lower body to ensure that the launch rod holes line up. Other than that, there are no real gotchas. PROs: very easy CONs: cutting curves freehand stinks.  Finishing: I looked on the Internet and found some scimitar images I...appropriated. I finally settled on one of a fantasy sword within an oval of clouds. I thought that I would print three of them on decal paper and have the curve of the sword match the curve of the rocket on each side. That was the idea, anyway. I right clicked the file and saved the JPG. I then loaded it into Photoshop, sized it the way I wanted, and copied it twice to give me a total of three images. I put a piece of clear decal paper in the color laser printer and sent the job off. I got a nice decal sheet out of it. I then applied a sword to each of the three "fins" of the rocket. The idea sounded good but I am less than thrilled with the result. Still, it looks better than plain old white! Construction Rating: 4 out of 5  Flight and Recovery: PROs: impressive flight CONs: Only one suitable motor Flight Rating: 5 out of 5 Summary: CONs: None Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 Flight Log
What You Can Do
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After printing, the holes for the engine mount and launch rod are cut out with a razor
knife. The motor mount, upper body and lower body are then cut out. It pays to use a straightedge where possible to
guide the razor knife. The instructions say to use "good scissors" but I like the X-Acto. Unfortunately, the
curves of the shroud mean that a lot of it was cut freehand. I hate doing that!