Warning: All liability waived! Rocketry is an inherently dangerous undertaking, especially experimental rocketry. Safety and the wellness of others should be your first and most important concern. Please make your choices and take personal responsibility for the outcome of your experiment! Protect your privilege to fly rockets by not making the headlines or becoming a statistic. I will not be responsible for any misuse or misunderstood information use in these pages that results in personal injury or property damage. All Liability Waived.
Being new to experimental rocketry, especially very new at making/ building my own motors, I wanted to do lots of research before I started building my own motors. In doing research using both rocketry and Pyrotechnic news groups and asking lots of questions, I have found three books that are really good and got me started.
The first book was "How to Make Amateur Rockets" second edition by John Wickman. 2002 - 220 pages.
John is an ex NASA engineer that has worked on several rocket projects. His book focuses on mathematics of rocket motor design. He goes into very great detail mathematically that is sometimes hard to follow. This book also focuses on Ammonium Nitrate motors verses today's Ammonium Perchlorate motors. Ammonium Nitrate motors aren't as powerful as AP motors, but they are a little easier to work with when you are first starting out. It does have a lot of good information including filling out and filing an FAA waiver to fly you own rockets. The book takes you through designing, building and testing your motor and designing, building and flying your own scratch-built rocket. It is a good all around book. I did find it hard to follow at times with the math formulas, but it still has all of the information that you need to get started. The book sells for $59.95 and comes with the book, software and a video. Check out CP Technologies web page. For more information about John’s book, please visit: http://www.space-rockets.com/newbook.html.
The second book I received was "Experimental Composite Propellant" By Terry McCreary, Ph.D. 2000 - 250 pages. This book covers composite propellant very well. It is based on more of the Ammonium Perchlorate motors used today by most motor manufactures. He goes into very good detail about the chemicals themselves, and more detail on building these motors. His book is mostly about PBAN/Epoxy based binder, fuel and curing agent with some information on HTPB/MDI, IPDI binder, fuel and curing agents which is what I have chosen to use. I found this to be the best book for most people due to it ease of understanding. This book mainly focuses on the motors only. It has several good formulas with very detailed sections. It also goes into building your own motor cases. It even has a tools section for building you own tools. The book sells for $54.95 and also comes with software. I bought this book from Aerocon. For more information go to: http://www.aeroconsystems.com/literature/index.htm
The third book I bought was "Plastic Resin Bonded High Energy Rocket Fuel Systems" volume III by Gary Purrington 1989 - 150 pages. This is a great book for people who have some experience with building their own motors. This book was written by a Pyro-technician and is mostly chemicals based. It’s about building motors with more complex chemical compositions. Gary goes into detail about most chemicals used in building motors. What makes this book very good is that he details chemicals for different colors of flames like red, blue, green, yellow or white with examples. He also goes into detail about making black and white tracking smoke. I found this to be a great book. It sells for $39.95 or you can buy it with a rocket motor kit for $103.00 that comes with most of the chemicals needed to start building you own Ammonium Perchlorate motors. More info can be found at: http://www.firefox-fx.com/literature.htm or http://www.firefox-fx.com/rocketry.htm.
The next book I wanted to read was the “Strand Burner Operations Manual V2.1” by Stephen J. Holden, Mech. Eng. Sept 2004 - 70 pages. This is a great book on the theory, the need for and operation of strand burners. To better understand new propellant mixes before you just go out and try it without knowing what it will do. Stephen explains why “A” and “N” number are needed, how they can be obtained. He also describes actual use of his burn chamber including setup, results along with interpretation of those results. The manual also talks about both variable pressure and constant pressure systems and their uses. This is another great resource if you are to make your own propellant. Using this book could save you money in motor case failures due to propellant cato’s and time. Using this manual and a strand burned for data saves you money, time and help you to be more consistent in new propellant mixes and just plain SAFE! The manual sells for $29.95 and can be ordered here: http://www.australianexperimental.com.au/StrandBurnerManual.htm. To make things a bit easier, Steven also sells strand burn chambers and parts on his web site.
The Bible of rocketry would be the book “Rocket Propulsion Elements” by George P Sutton and Oscar Biblarz, 2001, 7th edition - 750 pages. This book is a college level book used in many Aerospace/Engineering classes today. It is a very detailed book containing many aspects of rocket propulsion including solid, liquid, electric and many other methods of propulsion. Reading this book can be hard due the level of detail of mathematics and engineering, but it is still useful to extract data and knowledge to practical application for you experimentation. I highly recommend this book if you plan on really getting into making your own propellant, hybrids and or liquid propulsion. The book costs around $100.00 and can be found many places. Used books are currently running around $85.00 so they hold their value.
Just a few words about books mentioned above and building your own motors: I bought all these books to help increase my knowledge about building my own rocket motors. I found that I needed the first three. The first one goes into more detail about motor pressures and the dynamics of designing for that. The second gives more detail on the chemicals used to dial in a motor to your specs. The last gives details on colored flames and tracking smoke. So I wanted to have all these options when designing my motors. I started this quest because of fire that happened at Aerotech late 2001. This little incident caused a major shortage of rocket motors. The other part of this is because I was getting ready to cert for level 3 using an M1315W. The price of $290.00 (now $350) was too high. I just want to fly rockets so I thought about building my own and saving a little money. I have heard that some people say that it costs more to build your own motors. This may be true at first because of all the tools you have to buy to do it right. A lot of the tools that are needed can easily be made rather that bought for a substantial savings. Once you have all the tools, the cost for me to build an M1315W motor is around $120.00. So, making your own motors can save you money in the long run. It can also be very rewarding. It's a great feeling to see your scratch built rocket go up on a motor you designed and built and recover on a parachute you made.
One last note: Please be safe if you decide to build your own motors. Ask lots of questions, take a class or have someone with experience that has done it before help you out. Working with these motors is very dangerous, but with the proper care and handling, can be very safe. Keep in mind what you are doing at all times. When working with these chemicals, know what you are working with and what they can do. Read the material data sheets of each chemical you work with. These sheets will tell you what each chemical can do, how it can affect your body and what it reacts with. I keep data sheets on all my current chemical stock and review the sheets from time to time to remember how to work with the chemicals safely. Respect is demanded of these chemicals. Be safe and have fun.