DIY Go-Getter Tool

Having watched Ned Gorski making Go-Getters in his video, I was impressed by how the specialised
tooling made the process so quick and easy. Here’s a photo of the ‘professional’ tooling that you can
buy for $100 plus shipping from the States.

Pro tool set: sleeve, 2 x solid rammers (?), one coring rammer with interchangeable core pins

Now, I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I can afford that, so I got to thinking. It’s not much
different from making a short rocket motor minus the stick, but, since the go-getter only needs to
‘move’ in the sky, not actually take off and fly in a predictable manner, the need for precision and
accuracy is not so great. The device needs some thrust, but not so much. Based on this reasoning, I
guessed that the core taper probably wasn’t so important either; a parallel core that leaves a solid
plug of composition at one end would probably do the job.

I don’t have even a shed, much less a lathe, but I wanted one of these tools! I looked around at what
I had to hand that could be useful and found… not much!

 A length of 12mm wooden dowel

 Paper for rolling tubes
 PVA and hot-glue
 Some ‘orphan’ alloy knitting needles

Things didn’t seem very promising at first but I eventually figured out a way to mimic Ned’s go-getter
tooling using just those materials. I sketched out my ideas, just to get things straight in my mind.
 The Cunning Plan

Ned seemed to be using ½ inch tubes about 2 inches long – a bit bigger than I wanted. What you see
on the plan above are:

 On the left, an outer support tube with a smaller, 12mm ID guide tube glued into the upper
part. The inner tube shown in the lower part is supposed to represent a 12mm ID
lightweight go-getter tube with a folded-over and glued base. I left a gap of a few mm above
this, to allow for manufacturing tolerances on the go-getter tubes, since I will have to hand-
roll these myself.
 In the middle, a solid 12mm rammer (I don’t even know why I drew this…!)
 On the right, a coring rammer made from 12mm dowel and a pin.
 At the bottom, a rounded wooden cap for the hand-rammers. Because they are used with
dampened composition, there’s no need for a press or mallet with these things, apparently.

I started by mixing up some PVA glue 2:1:1 with water and alcohol. I cut a length of paper that would
give me a wall thickness of around 1.2 to 1.3mm and rolled a 100mm long guide tube directly on the
12mm dowel. I made it this long for reasons that will become clear later. The fully-pasted tube was
removed from the dowel and dried in the airing cupboard overnight.

While the guide tube was drying, I squared off the end of the dowel and drilled a hole in the centre,
in line with the long axis of the dowel and about 20mm deep. This wasn’t so easy using only a
workmate and hand drill, so it took a few attempts to get it right, because the pin must be centred
and in line with the rammer axis. If the hole is drilled slightly larger than the pin, the layer of hot glue
allows a little adjustment. The knitting needle point was cut off to a length that would leave a
6.5mm solid plug of composition in the bottom of a 35mm deep go-getter case.

I marked a line around the dowel about 2mm in from the end and filed a 30 degree-ish bevel. I cut
off the dowel around 60mm from the end and used hot-glue to fit the pin. Hint: gently heating the
pin with a lighter makes this much easier. It may be better to use a bit of brass brazing rod but, at
the moment, I don’t have any. The principle remains the same – keep it simple, cheap and non-
sparking.

Core rammer

With the extra-long guide tube now dry, I put it back on a length of dowel and rolled the support
tube tightly around it, using a strip of paper 85mm wide and taking care not to get glue between the
two tubes! The support tube was quickly removed and put aside to dry. It came out at around 2mm
wall thickness, but I’ll probably beef that up later.

When the support tube was dry, I put it back over the guide tube, on the piece of dowel, trimmed
one end and cut off a 65mm length, taking care not to damage the guide tube underneath. With the
support tube removed, I trimmed one end of the guide tube and cut off a 25mm length. The rest of
the guide tube was put aside for… something. I use a cheap adjustable pipe cutter for this job, on
dried tubes. I find it gives a nice clean cut and automatically squared-off ends with no hassle.

Tube cutter

The 25mm long guide tube was pasted with glue on the outside and pushed into the 65mm long
support tube until the ends were flush. The assembly was returned to the airing cupboard for final
drying.

Support tube and guide tube liner (partially assembled)

I cut a 60mm length of dowel to use as a solid rammer and tidied up the cut ends. It is best to just
very lightly sand the leading cut edge, to remove roughness. If you make a significant bevel, the
rammer may not properly compress composition right next to the go-getter tube wall. This fault
could potentially leave a layer of relatively loose composition and cause the device to explode from
its casing, rather than burn correctly from the core outwards.

I allowed 10mm of the rammer lengths for fitting and gluing into wooden cushion-handles. Apart
from a light coat of PE varnish on everything, to strengthen the tubes and make for easier cleaning,
that’s it.

DIY Go-Getter Tool (incl. sample g-g casing)

Final notes:

This light-duty tool is intended to be used in the same way that Ned shows in his video, by filling the
go-getter tube with increments of a dampened composition and hand-pressing with the plain
rammer, then inserting the tube into the tool sleeve, hand-pressing with the coring rammer to form
the core and ejecting the finished go-getter.

As Ned says, having interchangeable core pins allows his tooling to be used on a range of
compositions. For this project, a selection of complete core rammers with different sizes or lengths
of pin would be made instead. Some compositions to be pressed into go-getters may include metals,
so, of course, don’t use a sparking material such as steel for the pin.

Go-getters are end or core-burning devices and don’t use a nozzle, so their tubes can be relatively
flimsy, as they won’t need to withstand internal pressure. In fact, it would be best for them to
completely burn away before reaching the ground. Because of this, they only need to be maybe
three turns of pasted paper thick. The closed end can be formed simply by thoroughly dampening
one end of the tube with glue inside and out then ‘swirling’ the end of the tube over the dowel
former. It is then pressed down firmly on a hard surface. You’ll need to work with just over half of
the dowel diameter. I’ve tried it – it’s easy. The little buckets can then be trimmed to the required
length when dry. Make sure that the tubes are a reasonably snug fit in the support tube, or they can
wobble during pressing and cause problems when twisting the finished go-getter off the rammer
pin. You can always add a loose extra turn or two of paper around the outside as a spacer shim.

This little project was only meant to show what can be done with very basic materials and an open mind. You are
encouraged to adapt and modify to suit your own purposes and use better materials if you have them.