Day Two

Today I have fun learning to braze the metal parts together to get a good seal. Unfortunately there weren't any cleaning brushes so I didn’t do a good job in cleaning up the parts before brazing and so it didn’t go well. But I had a lot of fun with the oxy-acetylene torch and managed to get the hang of it all okay.

The seal at the end of the rocket is crucial for the success of the thing taking off. Ideally it would be good to have a lead seal which would melt at a high temperature and then release the pent up pressure – and launch. However I could not get the lead to stick in properly and it leaked water anyway! So for a first try we used epoxy resin to seal the hole.

Tried out the first steam rocket experiments. Made up a launching system to hold the rocket upright while it is being heated. Unfortunately I found that the thing leaked and so had to go back to the drawing board. It didn’t leak at the epoxy hole though so it seems that the welding / brazing weren’t good enough.