How I Make Clay Wax Mix For Rocket Nozzles

I don't have any ratios to give you. I set my oven to 350°F which was enough heat to break down the wax a bit but I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. It could defiantly work at a lower temperature.

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

I've done some recent testing with clay and grog nozzles in APCP motors and found that mallet ramming doesn't work very well, if you don't clobber the absolute crap out of the rammer and have something to keep the case from splitting they erode pretty badly, but I did find that adding a small amount of epoxy (clear casting resin) dissolved in acetone helps a lot with that and rams a lot more easily, it seems the epoxy helps with the flow characteristics and locks everything together. I added about 10 mils of clear epoxy resin dissolved in 10 mils of acetone to roughly thirty grams of clay/grog/paraffin nozzle mix and stirred the crap out of it, then did a few cycles of heating until the cup was hot and immediately putting it in a vacuum pot (a $60 ebay pump works fine) to remove all the acetone until the smell was gone, then rammed it with a lead mallet followed by clamping it tight in a bar clamp while it cures sitting over a heat gun. The result is a glass smooth (as smooth as your rammer anyway lol) rock hard nozzle that seems to erode a lot less with a smoother internal surface. I'm going to experiment with adding graphite to it as well, a moldable graphite composite nozzle would be amazing.

[@jsp186]

wow thats easy to make tho.
I'm just curious how are you gonna use this clay wax in a rocket?
Because its a powder and verry hydrophobic how do you get it in a nozzle form?

[@GamerPro132]

I press it into a case with a dowel and a mallet.

[@jsp186]

@@GamerPro132 yeah so I really need Rocket tools for this. You have any recommendation where to buy rocket tools?

[@GamerPro132]

@@jsp186 I wouldn't call them "rocket tools" Everything I use I got from my local hardware store. Except for the rocket casings. I got those on ebay and they're sold for use in making fireworks.

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

@@jsp186 if you're a decent woodworker or have access to a wood lathe you can make your own ramming tools, it's actually fairly easy. Getting the geometry and dimensions of your nozzle right for the size and power of your rocket is the most important thing, but there is a ton of documentation on all that online that you can source before you build it. Skylighter also sells nozzle kits for whistle, BP and something they call stinger missiles which I'm not too sure on, the BP nozzles would be a good place to start.