For this project I’m going to show you how to make your own fire resistant rocket wadding,
at home. This specially treated material prevents your parachutes from melting during the ejection
charge, which is a must-have, if you actually plan on getting your rocket back, in one piece.
But rather than dropping fistfuls of money on commercial recovery wadding, save your
cash and make your own, with a pinch of household baking soda.
For this project we’re going to need a roll of paper towels, a box of pure baking soda, and a little bit of water.
Chances are you already have a box somewhere around the house, and if you look on the side,
you’ll see that all baking soda is, is Sodium Bicarbonate.
When Sodium Bicarbonate is heated up, it releases CO2 gas. And you may remember that Carbon
Dioxide, puts out fires, which is exactly what we want.
Let’s get busy making our fire-retarding solution by adding 1 Teaspoon of baking soda, to 1/4 cup of water.
Give it a good stir for around 10-20 seconds, then just let it sit for a bit, until everything settles down.
When the water turns clear again it’ll be a super-saturated solution, and you might
see a little white powder at the bottom of the glass.
We don’t need that, so carefully pour the clear liquid into another bowl slowly enough,
that it leaves the undissolved powder behind.
Now all you need to do is find a single sheet of paper-towel and toss it into the bowl for about 30 seconds.
Flip it over and double-check the liquid’s soaked all the way through, and if it has,
then find a place where you can hang the wet paper towel for a few hours to drip-dry. Preferably
at room temperature, or warmer.
This amount of solution should be enough to treat two full-size paper towels, and will
take somewhere between 4 - 24 hours to dry out completely.
Now check this out. If your paper towel is 2-ply like mine, you can grab one of the corners,
and pull the two layers apart.
Just like that, you’ve got twice as much wadding, with hardly any extra effort.
To finish up, simply layer the sheets together, and cut them into squares roughly the same
size, as a square of toilet paper. And that’s it.
You just made 36 squares of fire-resistant recovery wadding, for a few minutes of effort,
and a pinch of baking soda.
The best part is, you can make your batches as big as you want, and it’ll only cost
you a few pennies. Which is way better than the price you’ll pay at the hobby stores.
Now just for fun, I went ahead and bought some commercial wadding as well, so we could
open the packs up and see how they compare.
Commercial wadding kinds of look like flattened rolls of toilet paper, and funny enough, it’s
even perforated to tear into little squares as well.
The packaging says the “material protects recovery systems from hot ejection gasses”
so let’s see what they do, when we touch them with a flame.
Surprisingly, the sheet actually catches fire and burns up in just a few seconds.
Let’s compare that to the make-shift wadding we just made, with baking soda.
You can see it scorches the fabric and turns it black, as expected, but the tissue doesn’t
actually catch fire, and won’t sustain a flame. Instead, it just smolders slowly until
all the wadding is spent, or until the Carbon Dioxide chokes out the embers.
Now baking soda isn’t the only option for rocket wadding. In-fact, there are all kinds
of other fire-resistant materials all around you, perfect for the job.
I just pulled a couple handfuls of cellulose insulation out of the attic of my house, and
flame-testing this material, you can see it doesn’t catch fire at all, and surprisingly, it won’t even smolder.
Attic insulation is another cheap and easily accessible option, and is the same stuff I
used for capping the ejection charges of my “Screw-Lock” Sugar Motors in a previous
project. Look for how to make those from scratch in another project video.
Now just for fun, I got a 4 pack of toilet paper rolls from the dollar store, and placed
each one in a container, filled with the baking soda solution.
A good rule of thumb for mixing your solution is that for every 1/4 cup of water, add 1 Teaspoon of baking soda.
And if you let your toilet paper roll soak for a minute, it’ll expand enough that you
can reach in and pull out the cardboard tube with hardly any effort at all.
Now to make sure the paper soaks up the solution evenly, try putting a lid on your container
and flipping the whole thing upside down for about a minute.
Save the excess liquid so you can re-use it with your with other rolls, then go ahead
and lay the sopping wet roll on a plate, where it can air-dry for a couple of weeks.
You could speed the process by putting it in the oven on low heat, but that’ll increase
your energy costs, and might convert it into Sodium Carbonate, which will make the wadding a little less effective.
After about 4 weeks of patiently waiting, you can see my roll has dried out completely.
And if you look closely, you might be able to see how the outer layer has crusted over
with baking soda crystals. Which isn’t really a good thing, but watch this.
If we simply peel off the crusty outer layer, we’re instantly left with a soft and smooth interior.
Impressively, this homemade material looks and feels a lot like the name brand stuff
from the hobby store, and even tears into smalls sheets the exact same way.
The difference is, our homemade version seems to be a lot more resistant to open flames,
and is only a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction of the price.
Now if you’re planning to use homemade recovery wadding for the “Randomizer” Rocket, made
in another video, I recommend using 6 sheets of wadding per launch.
Push the first 4 sheets into the rocket body, one at a time, then wrap 2 more sheets around
the bottom of the parachute bundle, and nestle it gently on top of the others.
Tuck any of the loose elastic cording into the nose-cone, then push it into position on top of the rocket.
Your recovery system is now protected and ready to spring into action, so it can safely
bring your rocket back, for another flight.
And by the way, if you want to go green and help minimize your impact on the environment,
try using a head of lettuce for parachute wadding instead.
The moisture in lettuce leaves make them a surprisingly effective alternative, and the
best part is, they’re bio-degradable.
Well now you know how to use ordinary household baking soda, to make a bundle of flame-proof
recovery wadding that’s 300 times cheaper to make yourself.
That’s it for now. If you liked this project, perhaps you’ll like some of my others.
Check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com