Estes Baby Bertha Build 1

Hello gang, me again. As mentioned in my last post, I'm building Estes' Baby Bertha now. My "master plan" is to build this, then the Big Bertha, then the Super Big Bertha, followed finally by the Boosted Bertha. I want to become better at the fundamentals by building these few relatively (IMHO) simple kits before moving on to my Estes Master Series Jayhawk, the Semroc Saturn 1B and finally an Estes Saturn V (2157). To be honest it's highly likely I'll deviate from this little scheme in favor of some random kit that catches my eye - but so it goes.

Here's the kit panel for the Baby Bertha:

And here are its components:

This time I followed the instructions a little more in order. The first step was to prepare the engine mount by marking the motor mount tube at the places where the engine hook and centering rings belong. Next you cut a 1/8" slit into the tube and  insert the engine hook. Then you make a ring of glue around the tube 1-1/4" from the aft end and slide a little mylar retaining ring down onto the glue:

Finally, the centering rings are glued into place:

Then after drying, the motor mount tube is glued into the main body tube, then a glue fillet is applied to the centering ring-body tube junction:

Next, I lightly sanded all the fins and removed them from the laser-cut sheet. Then I mixed up some more CWF, quite thick this time. I coated all the fins, let it dry and then sanded the fins. Somewhere along the line I marked the tube with pencil lines for the fin and launch lug placements. Then I decided to give the Estes fin alignment guide one more chance. This time I just put one fin on at a time, let it dry, then moved on to the next. Looking good so far:

We'll see how it looks after everything is dry and I remove it from the guide.

I forgot to mention that I rounded the leading edges of the fins before gluing them on. I used my new North Coast Rocketry fin airfoil sanding blocks. Here's how they look:

You fold a piece of sandpaper and insert it into the block. Then you sand the edge of the fin with it and I t shapes a perfect airfoil - nice!