After finishing the cutting I moved over to my oscillating spindle sander and smoothed out all of the circles. The Ridgid OSS is a great tool and the dust collection is fine for me. I used the belt attachment to round out the circles.
The circle jig I made up the other day for the band saw works reasonably well, but the flex in the blade means the circles are not perfect. The OSS got them close enough for my rocket motors. If I need perfect circles I think I'd use the router to cut them instead. For this project perfection is not needed - it's not rocket science, it's rocket woodworking!
After the OSS it was over to the router table and a 1/4" round over bit with a guide bearing to smooth out the edges. In retrospect I probably have only done one side of the motor, but I don't think Joshua will complain.
The next thing to work on were the plywood bottoms for the rocket. These 40" diameter circles were a snap to cut on the circle jig. I first used the tablesaw to carve up two 41x41 squares, then over to the bandsaw to cut the circle out. Lastly I lined the circles up with their center holes and cleaned up the edges with the bandsaw. These two will form the base of the rocketship playouse, resting on top of the rocket motors.
Next I need 3 hollow circles to support the shell of the rocket. Two for the main body and one for the bottom of the nose cone. Rather than wasting 1.5 sheets of plywood I decided to cut quarter circles out of one sheet and glue them up to form the circles. They should be plenty strong enough for this playouse.
First I made up a template for the quarters with some scrap 3/8" plywood. I used the bandsaw circle jig to cut the quarter circle template at the same diameter as the bottoms (40"). I cut the radius by 3" to cut the inner part of the template, making the template 3" thick. The template ended up being 32" in width as I left about 3" on each side for an overlap.
I used that template to mark out blanks on a 33"x8' sheet of plywood then cut them out with a jig saw. After tacking the template to the blank with a pin nailer I cut down to within 1/8" of the line on the bandsaw.
Finally, over to the router table with a guide bit to trim the blank to the same size as the template. I was only able to finish one piece, but I've got the process down so the others should go quickly.
The last thing I did was glue up blanks for the 6" circles for the rocket motors.
Caution : OSS' bites just like the bandsaw :
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