How to Make a Conical Nose Cone

Create the body of the nose cone using the metal pipe and the Styrofoam cube. Place the Styrofoam cube on a hard work surface and punch the metal pipe all the way through the cube.

Work the Styrofoam out of the pipe using your thumb. Be careful of the pipe's potentially sharp edges.

Determine the shape you'd like the nose cone to take. Some of the most popular shapes are a complete cone (which looks like a cone for ice cream), a parabolic cone or a rounded cone.

Use the sandpaper to sand off even portions around the edge of the Styrofoam cylinder shape. Sand off small portions at a time; you can always take more off, but you can't put it back on if you take off too much.

If you want to make a sharp nose cone, sand your Styrofoam into an ice cream cone shape with a sharp point at the end. For a parabolic shape, start sanding one-third of the way from one end of the cone and taper the edges until you reach the end, where you must leave a small rounded tip. To create a rounded cone, just sand off the edges evenly at one end and shape them into half a ball, which will leave the nose looking like a pudgy test tube.

Clean up all the Styrofoam shavings before attaching the nose cones to an airplane or rocket. Styrofoam tends to fly everywhere and get stuck in the sandpaper, glue or any masking tape you might be using.