Hot times...

We were touching triple digits at Sandy Hook on Saturday. BJ, Paul and Tony were baking up in the IFC Vans giving tours to the few people who weren't in the water. There's essentially no airflow in the radar vans due to the lack of electricity. By Three in the afternoon we were all ready to pack it in. This was somewhat reminiscent of the summer my Uncle brought me to Fort Bliss to learn how to be a 16C10 Fire Control Crewman. That summer we had more than 20 days over 110 degrees (and we still bivouacked in our olive drab fatigues!).


The day started with a fairly heavy stoppage of traffic on the Garden State Parkway already at 9:30 in the morning so I knew what I was in for. I was looking forward to this day though - last week I had almost gotten at all the fasteners and bolts for Castor's nose section. This week, I started the day by removing it:

This brings both missiles to the point maximum point of dis-assembly for this project. There are still a few pieces to be removed, but the condition of these trunk sections makes further breakdown more precarious than useful.

Case in point; The Igniter switch. This is a switch connected externally by lanyard to the booster and internally to a rod going to the rocket motor. As the booster burned out and started to drop away the lanyard triggered the Missile's motor to start. As you can see, the surrounding material is rather corroded from the caustic fuels and years of deterioration:

It will be difficult enough to repair the missing material without attempting further diss-assembly. Perhaps with better core components but I will be grateful to get these looking normal. As it was, I managed to remove the switch sufficiently intact to rebuild and remount it:

I finished off by sandblasting the crap off the bolt-heads holding the fuel doors in (note - this is something that should be avoided at all costs in extremely hot weather with just a T shirt on. The blasting media instantly bonds with the sweat to cake you in an uncomfortable black wrapping). Here's one of them with ready to be stripped and refinished:

The project is moving along. Like any restoration from this level of decay the next few weeks are going to be tough.

Now the project moves into the "less glamorous" phase; all the bolts which had to be drilled out or cut off must be dealt with; some will come out with easy outs, some will refuse to cooperate at all but *all* must be accounted for or replaced in some manner to get the missiles back together. I say less glamorous since this work tends to be a veritable time-sink. You can work your ass off and at the end of the day not have it "look" like you did anything. For the mental health value alone, this is when I will intersperse some of the early refinishing. Back to visual progress!!

Til next time...

Blazing Skies

Gettin back at it...

Sunday was the tour date for the NY56 Site so I made my way down to Sandy Hook. Since I have not made the time to work on my dead-lined vehicle, I drove down with Sandy and our 10 month old Golden Retriever, Quincey in Sandy's Durango. I dropped them off on the Bay side and went to work at the A&S Building. BJ and Paul were the only guides doing the IFC tours so it was quiet in the LA (Launch Area). A good day to make up for some lost time! I started with an etching primer on the nosecone I have to reproduce for the Parrish boys down in Texas. That will allow me to cast their copies in Fiberglass and resin. This was the nosecone from Pollux - I had yet to remove the end of Castor. Today, I rectified that issue. Here's the twins' nosecones:

And for anyone following this, the reason that Castor's is longer is that I did not drill out the rivets to separate the intermediary piece.

Prior to removing the nosecone I had to remove the 4 tunnels on the nose as well as one on the main body. The tunnels are just that, aluminum fairings that provide protected channels for the electrical, hydraulic and fueling systems. They were designed to protect these systems from the atmosphere but not from manhandling. Here is one that took some abuse and will need to be repaired:

These tunnels are screwed into machined stand-offs which in turn are screwed into the missile body. After working through several dozen using a variety of dis-assembly techniques, the  best means of removal turns out to be drilling the hardened screw head out

BTW, I would like to send out a sincere Thanks to Bob Price for a really great tip on how to do this economically:

While making a knife I found a way to drill really hard steel (R60) Tungsten Carbide bits are insanely expensive and the blade had burnt up even cobalt bits. What to do? I had a cheapie masonry bit, I dressed it on a diamond stone to lower the trailing edge of the carbide so it looked like a bit for steel. Damn if it didn't drill right through!

With the  screws out, the tunnel comes off and the stand-offs can be removed with a socket and an impact gun (of course I will need to create new ones for assembly).

So at the end of the day I am getting towards the end of dis-assembly. There are two more primary pieces on this missile to remove and then it will be grinding, sandblasting and structural reconstruction for the pair.

So, 'til next time.....

Blazing Skies

No Missile work today...

The day started out out so promising! The weather was amazing; good sunshine, a few wispy clouds moved around by a gentle breeze - I was truly looking forward to a great day at the Hook.

I drive about an hour to get down to Sandy Hook (much longer in summer traffic). The time is split between a run down the Garden State Parkway and Route 36. I have been driving my 2001 Lincoln LS. Her name is Onyx and she's got 203+ thousand miles on the odometer.

Well Saturday, out of the blue, her computer screeched with a message CHECK ENGINE TEMP and she proceeded to belch a large cloud of steam from the front end. I pulled over into a Burger King parking lot and popped the hood. I was greeted by the upper radiator hose blowing just about that same time. After the steam had cleared and she had cooled  down some:

BJ called and I gave him the bad news - later Tony T called to follow up.

I tried everything I could to get her cobbled back together but the final blow was when I attempted to restart her and the battery just went click, click , click. Dejected, I called AAA and arranged for a flatbed tow truck to take us back home. The twins would have to wait for another day.

The Nose knows....

Sunday was one of those days. I got up and drove down to Sandy Hook on autopilot. I would have enjoyed sleeping in, but there are just too many loose ends on the project. One of those loose ends is the preparation of the missile nosecone for fiberglass casting. If you've been following this story, there are two fella's in Texas who are also fixing a pair of Ajax missiles - except theirs came without the nosecones. I offered to mold them a pair based on one of mine. So in preparation of that process, the part has to be stripped and cleaned and primed to be able to apply the coatings that will prevent the fiberglass from bonding to the original part. They had sent me the collar from their missile and I had a similar one on mine, but I could not separate it from the nose for love nor money.

Even the conversations with Richard in Texas had reinforced the belief that the unit was held together by the three setscrews. Well, long story short, a couple of hours of banging and prying and cussing had yielded absolutely nothing. So like any project, sometimes you just have to move it along with what you've got. I knew I could cast the entire structure and trim it to the correct size but first I had to strip it down. That's when I had my Aha! moment:

Damned if this wasn't also held together with rivets!!! (and a lot of paint). So I cleaned the rest of the unit, drilled out the rivets and behold, now I could beat the thing apart (no, it still didn't just pull apart but required some judicious pounding.

The day itself was good on many levels. Of course it's always helpful to make a breakthrough on a problem, but Sunday was a tour day in the Launch Area as well. Bill and Tony brought several groups by to see the restoration project as well as two of the National Park Service Rangers. It is always a pleasure to show the progress made and to describe the plans for the finishing of these missiles. Slowly but surely our NY56 Nike Volunteer group is moving forward. We're doing more and have more to show. It's great to be a part of it.

'til next time.... Blazing Skies!!!!

Coastal Defense Day at Sandy Hook

I was sorta lazy getting this post out, sorry. Coastal Defense Day was May 20th. This was to be the day we started folding in the Launch Area into the tours - though I was to continue working on the twins and when folks came by to be one of the exhibits. It was a great day weather-wise. I threw open the bay doors and set to work. The dis-assembly process is getting to the end. I was able to remove the arming windows and mechanisms from Pollux.

I found the ID plates and pulled them to clean up. They will go back on after the refinishing. This one is also from Pollux:

I still have to fight with some of the fillers and vents; you can see two here along with the lanyard that started the missile's motor when the booster dropped off (it is above and to the far left of the section with the data plate). The actual lanyard has rusted off but the connector remains.

You begin to get a sense of the refinishing task ahead looking at the rust and corrosion. Oh well, I knew that going in.

Around this time I got a call from an old friend Ron Ananian - he is the Car Doctor on WOR radio. He was on the air and called to talk about the passing of Carroll Shelby earlier in the week. As some of you may know I am an incurable Hot Rodder. I have owned my old Blue Shelby for 43 years and enjoyed the opportunity to talk on national radio about how Carroll's cars changed my life and the automotive world. I had just finished talking with Ron when Tony T showed up with a group touring the Launch Area. We gave them a nice presentation and folded up the tent for the weekend.

til next time...... Blazing Skies

Two steps forward, one step back...

Today's post title is a reference to an exercise in humility. I had been somewhat upset over the overall progress, wanting to be further along. In retrospect, I am much farther along than I was, and the job is moving forward. This "lesson" came about after purchasing a 14 ton shop press to separate the booster fins from their brackets. As last week's post showed, I had to remove the cross bracing from the press in order to fit the fins, the press had to erectyed on large blocks  and I was not able to use the supplied press platform steel since the fin would not fit through it. Then I went to the IFC and gave tours with Bill so I was expecting to come back this week and breeze through the fins like a hot knife through butter. Ha! During the week I used one of my lunch hours to go to a shop I had not been to in probably 30 years; Victory Iron Works. The place was just as I remembered it and though all the staff are new to me they were absolutely courteous and helpful, even after I told them I was working on missiles <grin>. They cut me some angle iron to press against and let me pick up a bunch of cut-offs for spacers. Well the first thing to greet me Saturday morning was the ugly fact that the bottle jack had no hydraulic oil. The trip to the nearest Auto Parts store came up empty (unless I wanted a 5gallon can). The second nearest store was about 12 miles away, so off I went. They had a quart and I went back and filled the jack.

The next surprise was when the fin refused to separate and bent the presses securing pins:

It turns out that I had the angle iron too far outboard. The levelling plates got the fin in place but kept the iron too far away from the centerline. Breaking out the oxy-acetylene torch I reconfigured the angle iron to get closer to the center.

That did the trick, along with a bunch of hammering, Kroil, sweat and swearing  (not necessarily in that order).

So at the end of a full day's work I have one booster's fins added to the refinishing pile:

And one more Booster waiting to be started.

That's part of the joy and aggravation on a project like this. Working alone I get to make up my own tasklists. I have always done this in a seat of the pants fashion. I can't tell you why the booster fins got to be such a burr under my saddle. The rest of the project was going along nicely and I could have had a better "visual progress" day had I just kept working on the missile body dis-assembly. But the truth is, I knew that this was a difficult part of the project and it had to be brought into a similar timeline for refinishing. Besides, I want to be in a good mood for painting the twins. So I worked on a more difficult part to move it forward. Ther will be lots more to come.

Til next time....... Blazing Skies!!

The season gets busy...

Saturday started out early and exciting. It was a hazy day on the drive down to the Hook so I was ready to get a lot of work done. I had gone shopping for tools this past week and one of the items I bought was a 12 ton hydraulic press. It came knocked down which was just as well since it will need to be modified for my purposes.

I had to remove the cross bracing support across the bottom to accommodate the booster fin's length. Next I have to modify the support cross rails. It was right about at this point  that I found that Bill and Tony were inundated with tour takers and none of the other guides had shown up. So I locked the door and went to the IFC and assisted them with the tours. For a drizzly day we sure had a *lot* of people, but it was a fun time. They were pretty engaging as a group which makes it more fun as a tour guide.

Oh, and remember I mentioned last week about the gentleman from Texas? He is also restoring a pair of Ajax missiles but he was missing the nosecones. After I measured mine up and sent the information out, I got to thinking.... which is always dangerous for a guy like me. I offered to cast him a pair of nosecones in fiberglas using my missile's as a pattern. Maybe it just the old Hot-Rodder in me, but it should be fun and it will help another restorer in need. I'll keep you all posted on the progress.

"til next time..... Blazing Skies!!