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Turning cap-sized nose cones
With a lathe it is easy to make your own nose cones. Even
without a lathe, you can make your own: Find a way to glue a
screw into a cut off bottle neck - the screw must sit as good as
possible on-axis. The screw needs to stick out of the non-cap side
- the cap side needs to be unobstructed for a cap to be screwed
on. Then put this screw into your drilling machine and proceed as
shown below.
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As material, I used a special sort of
styropor called Styrodur. It is widely used in Germany
to insulate houses. It is considerably harder than styropor.
It can be cut easily with a knife.
Lacking styrodur, any hard kind of styropor,
which is usually white and often used for packaging, can be
used as well.
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Next, the raw form is cut. |
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Styrodur and Styropor can only be glued
with special glues. I use UHU por, which smells like
the rubber vulcanizing fluid used to repair bike tubes.
The bottle cap is sanded, both surfaces are covered
with a thin layer of glue. Wait a few minutes until
dry, then press both parts forcefully. |
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A cut-off bottle neck is tightened in
the three-jaw-chuck, the cap is screwed upon. Turning
the styrodur with the cutting knife from above did not
work well. Much better is coarse sanding paper - the
Styrodur appears as soft as butter. |
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This animated gif shows the turning process.
Fine sanding paper is used in the final step - this
gives a nice smooth surface. |
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The first set of nose cones for bottle
caps. |
You want to know how this nosecones perform? Click
here!
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