By Manny Trotta

2012-10-23

Manufacturer:Estes
Diameter:1.3300 inches
Length:19.1300 inches
Style:Sport

This project is a build of the Estes Guardian kit. The Guardian is a pretty cool looking missile. It has a lot of fins and will fly to 700 feet on a C motor.

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The kits features die-cut fins, plastic nose cone and reducer, parachute and decal sheet.

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To ensure the main and trailing fins were aligned with each other I used a piece of Aluminum Angle Bar as a guide.

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Here is a closeup of the Epoxy fillets.

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I use Duplicolor filler primer to start with, this helps to fill in and even out the surface. After a light sanding I will coat the rocket with Kilz primer sealer as a last treatment before painting.

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Pyksidust

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I masked the shapes on nose cone one at a time and airbrushed the color on. It took a while because I wanted to pattern to look symetrical around the whole cone.

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Here is how it it looked as it progressed

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For the fins I first sparyed the entire lower part of the rocket blue.

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I then put tape in the shape of triangles where I wanted the blue to remain and then hit the fins with a grey. Once that was dry I left the blue covered and put some more tape over the gray just to ensure the blue and gray shapes were masked off good. I then sprayed the entire body black. After removing the tape the results are below.

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Here it is with the decal.

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