Back in November Bill from 3D Rocketry announced his new kit, the Nautilus III
I thought it looked like a super rocket so I contacted Bill and he was happy to post one off to Australia and it arrived within a couple of weeks.

   

First impressions is that this is a good solid kit. The 54mm body tube is solid and has a very tough nose cone. The centering rings are 4mm ply and the fins are 3mm ply. The instructions are straight forward and even describes how to do internal fillets - something that you'll want to do as externally, there's some strips of basswood that go between the body tube and the fins.  

I used an Estes 29mm motor retainer (for the price, these are great value). I swapped out the supplied launch lug for rail buttons and attached the shock cord to the forward centering ring with a screw-eye. 

The kit as it comes is designed to fly on a range of F's but with the quality of the parts supplied, there should be no reason why it won't perform just as well on G's (I'm looking forward to seeing it go up on a G64!!)

As for finishing the Nautilus III, I thought what a rocket would look like if Capt. Nemo had a rocket and looking at the Nautilus submarine, it seemed like it would be metal that was a bit old and rusted. I took some time, read through a bunch of tutorials and had a go at airbrushing the metal & rust effect. I'm happy with the end result :)

I had a lot of fun building this kit. View the full build thread on The Rocketry Forum and the photos on Flickr.