Other Handy Things (Rocket Motor)

Other handy things (Figure 3-22) are oven or refrigerator racks, spoons, forks, stainless steel pots, measuring cups, sieves, a kitchen colander, plastic buckets, and those little bamboo Bar-B-Que skewers that you buy at the supermarket. A common table fork (the kind you eat with) is used to mix the solvent into the rocket propellant. During my first day of motor building. I developed a blister on one of the fingers of the hand that I used to hold the fork. I solved the problem by wrapping the handle with vinyl electrical tape as shown in the photo. If you do this before you start, you’ll save yourself some discomfort.
To separate the finished propellant from the milling pellets, you sift it through a plastic colander into a bucket. If you buy the right size colander and bucket (Figure 3-23). the two will fit together nicely.
Plastic colanders are cheap, and the work alright, but they sift slowly, and they don’t last very long. Restaurants equipment dealers sell a stainless steel tool called a french fry basket (Figure 3-24). I bought the one in the photo at Smart & Final Iris. These baskets are expensive (S17 for the one in the picture), but they are very sturdy, and because the mesh is so big. they sift very quickly.