Constructing a John-Henry Class Rocketship: Stage Two

I began building this massive rocketship model in 2015. As with any big project, it can get put aside when more pressing matters come to bear. A couple of months ago a good friend of mine decided they wanted it once it’s complete, so I’ve been working hard to finish it up.

An earlier post documents the first chapter of the construction. The rocket is made from a couple of steel scuba tanks – one with the top cut off, the other with the bottom cut off. The fins are made from plasma cut steel, and the spire is made from some sort of huge mandrel.

Here’s a shot of the the bottom of the ship, showing off it’s drive cones. As a sculptor I think it’s important to have your work look great at every angle, even the angles that no one typically sees.

Adding the Accent Lights

The rocketship will be illuminated with LEDs mounted inside vintage control panel lights that I’m very excited to use, as I’ve been saving them for about a decade for just the right project. In order to install these lights I needed to make some fairly large holes in the hull. The steel is of high quality, but it’s three-sixteenths of an inch thick, so drilling is labor-intensive. I’m unable to fit this on my tabletop drill press, but hand drilling justifies eating extra burritos, so it works out just fine for me. The little 12-volt drill I’m using in this picture was surprisingly able to to the job, but whenever the bit caught the burr at the end of the cut it would torque the drill enough to hurt my wrist, so I eventually borrowed a larger hand drill with a side handle to keep from injuring myself.

Fortunately I’ve got a bit almost large enough to get the hole I need. I use a hand file to finish it out and to deburr the metal.

The light I’m installing above the canopy window is very unusual – it has a mechanical dimmer – twist the housing to close the holes. I’ve never come across anything like this before, and I’m very curious about it’s original application. Please ignore the cobwebs on the shop light.

Here’s the special light installed. I’m still welding so the electronics will have to wait for now.

There’s about ten of these beautiful vintage lights on the rocket.

The Pilot, the Explorer and the Command Module

This starship needs a crew. I’m creating a pilot and an explorer. The pilot will sit at the helm of the ship and will be visible through a domed canopy window. The explorer will be able to leave the ship.

Here is another couple of parts I’ve been saving for a decade or so – they were found in the recycle bin at Seven Cycles, and I believe they were custom made fixture parts. I think they look a lot like astronaut helmets. You could say they look like Boba Fett from Star Wars.

You can see that my notes are not that sophisticated, but they are somewhat helpful.

The command module is a room made from this antique coffee can. The material is too thin for me to weld to and have it be strong enough for space travel. Fortunately I found a steel ring that fits perfectly along the inside edge. Sometimes hoarding steel can be a good thing to do.

I wanted to give a sense of having several decks in the ship, so I made a portal that will have a ladder going up and down. The portal flange is made from a coaster brake hub – the holes are reminiscent of rivets, which I can’t get enough of.

I cut this piece of steel from a plate I used to hold cable stops in place for tacking when I welded for Seven Cycles. I’ve proud to say this shape was made with a hack saw and a file.

The pilot will be sitting at the controls in the command module. I need to figure out how to make the pilot look like it’s separate from the chair and not visually confuse the observer. I may try polishing the pilot if I feel like it’s needed, but I like the finish as is so I will try to avoid it.

Here’s the part of the module that will be facing the canopy portal window. My weld guru Tim Delaney showed me how to take care of sharp edges on sheet metal – you cut little notches and fold them over with pliers. Note: This can is NEW – it says right on it!

I used two bicycle quick release skewers for the ladder sides, and cut the heads off some bolts to make the rungs. I’m using the vise and a piece of steel to help hold things in place while I tack it all together, then once I’m happy I weld it with some Si Bronze.

Things are starting to come together here. I wound up not using the headset part in the bottom of this image, even though I was sure I was going to.

An amazing stroke of luck happened to me – the command module perfectly fits through the cargo bay hole I plasma cut years before I acquired the coffee can. Some things are meant to be, and I’m very grateful. This is very much like building a ship in a bottle, since there’s no room to get a TIG torch inside the rocket. I was filled with joy to see the pilot at the helm for the very first time. Even though he didn’t have arms yet I could see that this was going to work out very well.

The ladder wasn’t long enough to look like it was going to the upper and lower decks, so I doubled the length. The next trick is being able to mount it and still fit the command module into the cargo bay. It’s fun to come up with solutions to problems like this.

I used a couple of inside plates from a bicycle chain to make a clasp of sorts. I used a washer as a spacer to keep them from closing too far when I welded them, as molten metal will contract on itself.

With two of these makeshift clamps welded to the halfway point of the ladder, it can mount to the top of the coffee can.

Here’s the ladder installed. I think it’s going to work well. The rocket is weighing in at 90 pounds, and therefore is very stable; so the ladder won’t need a lot of pinching force in order to stay in place.

It can take a long time and lots of organization to be able to come up with just the right parts. These tiny pawls from a three-speed bicycle hub are perfect for the hands of the crew.

Welding the controls, the arms, and the hands was particularly delicate work, as everything is on a scale that’s small for welding and I don’t work with jigs, only needle-nose pliers and my occasionally smoldering fingertips. This is the focal point of the entire piece, so I need to get things just so. I’m very pleased with the results so far.

The portal in the command module on the left side of the above image has a working flap with a spring. I doubt it’ll be used much as the command module isn’t meant to be interactive. However, if someone does maintenance on it in the distant future they will be rewarded with this nice touch.

The Cargo Bay Hatch

The cargo bay hatch was cut open with a plasma torch years ago, and the outer flange was made with dulled hacksaw blades. The hinge and the clasp were recently added.

The hinge was trimmed down from a longer and wider one. It’s made of stainless and was pleasant to file and weld. I was concerned out it being too conspicuous but once I added the welds it fit with the rest of the aesthetic.

The home-made latch was a tricky project. I didn’t want to use a regular hook and eyelet style clasp as it wouldn’t look like it would be used to secure anything on the outside of a rocketship. My solution was to drill and tap a threaded hole in the ship’s hull, and use a wing-bolt with a loose washer and a washer welded to keep it from coming off the bolt, which is very delicate work. I then welded two curved flooring nails to the loose washer and then welded the nails to the cargo bay hatch. It took some troubleshooting but I got everything working nicely. The cargo bay hatch will be used to service the electronics, make any necessary adjustments to the command module, and to access cargo bay space, a.k.a. secret compartment.

The Outside Ladder

It’s hard getting things straight, even if you have a fixture to hold things in place. Welding tends to pull metal around, and junk metal is particularly tricky to work with due to it’s unpredictability. My outside ladder was started years ago, and my tolerances have tightened since then, so I broke off the pieces that didn’t fall in line.

I often put off doing rework by focusing on other parts of the project, but once I commit I realize it doesn’t take as much time as I think to make things right.

Often I can use something simple to act as a guide. This piece of angle iron from a cheap bed frame made for the perfect fixture. I was having trouble getting the parts to go back on straight, but once I reheated the old tacks so they were flush to the rocket, things went more smoothly.

I have these huge copper rivets which I bought new almost twenty years ago. Before I could weld I was planning on making a giant robot out of sheet steel and these rivets, but life took me in a slightly different direction once I learned the ways of the TIG plasma arc. They will find their new use here as obscure ladder accents to help hide the fact that the rungs are indeed big wing nuts. It’s important for people to see the object I’m creating first, in this case a ladder, before what the object is made from. At this stage it’s still more wingnut than ladder, so there’s more to do.