January 2000 Review

Giant Leap Rocketry's Fiberglass & Kevlar™ composite-laminated tubing

Before I get to the review I would just like to say that since I became a Born Again Rocketeer back in 1995 I have never found another company like Giant Leap Rocketry. As a rule the owner of Giant Leap, Ed Shihadeh does his best to send us what we need when we need it, at a price we can afford. There are a lot of flaky people in this hobby who do not say what they mean or mean what they say, Ed at giant leap is not one of them. I encourage all of you to patronize Giant Leap Rocketry, you will not be sorry.
With that being said, on to the review;

We all have our least favorite part of this hobby. For some it is the drudgery of sanding, sanding, sanding until our fingers bleed. For others it is the Misery of painting our rocket and finding out later that the paint ran, a fly landed on the wet paint, or the color just isn't what we were looking for. For me the most hated part of building a big project is fiberglassing the air frame.

If you have never tried it, you are missing out on quite an experience. Wet goopy resin that sets up too fast and sticks to every thing. Fiberglass threads that stick to your paint brushes and end up every where except where you want them. And worst of all the fumes and that itchy scratchy feeling when sanding down all the lumps and runs and seams and so on.

There are alternatives. You can take your tubes to a fiberglasser. After scratching his head and saying "You need this for what?" he will quote you a price that NASA would pay and return to you a product that looks like the same old lumpy, bumpy mess that you could have done yourself for a fraction of the cost.
You could buy Filament-Wound Fiberglass Airframes if you can afford them. Or you can call Giant Leap Rocketry.

Giant leap sells Pre-Glassed Fiberglass & Kevlar™ composite-laminated tubing. I will elaborate on Pre-Glassed later in this review. He makes it available in most popular sizes. His tubes are Non-brittle phenolic airframe tubes covered with two layers of 3 Oz. Fiberglass cloth. They are available Unfinished, Partially finished or Partially Finished with Kevlar™. The tubes I purchased are the 7.5-Inch tubes partially finished fiberglass only.

The term Pre-Glassed actually does not apply in the case of Giant Leap's tubes. Ed does not stock any Pre-Glassed Tubes. Every order is a custom order. Ed sends out the tubes from his store in Louisiana to a fiberglasser in Georgia (good fiberglassers ARE hard to find). They are then shipped back to Ed for slotting or can be drop shipped from the fiberglasser to the customer. Ed informed me this whole process would take three weeks.

Well as is the case in most of my endeavors, something went wrong. Ed informed me that the fiberglass did not set up properly and in addition he was out of the 7.5-Inch tubes. Ed would have to order more tubes and send them to the fiberglasser. This whole process took over two months. I do not entirely fault Ed for this because I realize that Murphy's Law runs rampant in this hobby and anything can happen with a custom order.

Having finally received the big brown cardboard box I was shocked at what I found. Neatly packaged and wrapped in paper were two primered 7.5-Inch tubes. I was immediately concerned about the wall thickness of the tubes. In all of my past efforts in fiberglassing I always wound up with such a thick tube that I always had to build up the base of my nosecones to match the diameter. Not so in this case. The tubes must have been vacuum bagged because the lay-up is much thinner than anything I have ever seen before. I will not have to make any modifications to my PML nose cone whatsoever.

After close examination of the tubes I did find some problems though. The vacuum bagging seems to have squeezed out so much of the resin that there appear to be dry spots where the glass did not properly adhere to the tube, especially at the ends. I will have to flow resin into the ends of the tubes to ensure that high velocity air does not get between the tube and the fiberglass and cause it to delaminate.

Also the weave of the glass is readily apparent. It will take many coats of primer to fill the weave and make the tubes ready for painting. I would have liked more resin on the tube so that I could sand it without damaging the weave. Unfortunately because the tube is already primered, In cannot add any more resin to the exterior of the tube or it will react with the primer in an adverse way. Fortunately for me I work at an auto body shop where we use a high fill sanding sealer that should fill the weave enough that I can sand it without damaging the fiberglass.

In conclusion I wold recommend to anyone who wants to order Pre-Glassed tubes to spend some time finding out about what you will be getting. When you place a custom order make sure your needs and expectations are made clear prior to placing your order. Ed went out of his way trying to explain the whole process to me, but unfortunately this was after I had already received the tubes.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate Giant Leap's Fiberglass composite-laminated tubing a 6.

Kelly Smith