Building my Glamorous Glennis X-1 model

I've always been a huge fan of the movie, "The Right Stuff", especially the segments about how Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 plane he named after his wife, "Glamorous Glennis".  Nerd that I am I've seen the original plane, which now hangs at the Smithsonian (their picture below).  They even have a 3D rendering you can view to inspect all sides of this rocket/plane.

I always thought it would be a cool rocket to build, and even better if it would actually fly, then I found a post on The Rocketry Forum by the user Starfire73 for an OpenRocket simulation of his flying X-1 model (also see his blog here).  I also found a nice article describing a flying 1/20 scale model of the X-1 on RocketryReviews by Larry Brand.  The latter posting used a wider body tube and a boattail, like the V-2 or my Silver Comet, to give it a more rounded oblong look.  I decided to try modifying Starfire73's OpenRocket version to use a bigger body tube and more rounded nose and tail than 3D print what I needed.  Note-If you ever try anything like this, it helps to reach out to the original designers; I had trouble opening the OpenRocket files Starfire73 had posted so I messaged him on The Rocketry Forum and he reached out to the OpenRocket developers report the bug, they helped him modify his file for the newer version of software and he sent it to me all within a day!

After playing around with upscaling Starfire73's OpenRocket simulation, I came up with:

Simulating flight in OpenRocket looks like:

And the Glamorous Glennis is projected to fly well on a 24 or 29 mm engine (295 feet on an E12-4 or 860 feet on an F15-6):

Of course, having the upscaled OpenRocket simulation allowed me to export the nose cone and boattails and print the nose complete with the extra "spear" on the tip.  The final nose cone is about 10 inches tall and the boattail about 6 inches. 

These parts will fit in a BT-80 body tube (2.6 inches in diameter), and I just need to print a retainer for the nose then start cutting balsa wood for the wings and tail fin assembly.  I've printed the parts fairly thin walled (1.5 mm) to keep the weight to a minimum.  I may end up 3D printing custom engine mounts to fit inside the boattail and may print the "spears" to attach to the tips of the wings.  I will post pictures of my progress.  Also, Starfire73 designed some cool decals for his version which I need to figure out how to modify for OpenRocket and/or print to use on my 3D printed version.  This should be fun!

Update 1/26:

I've 3D printed the wing tips ("spears"?) and the tail assembly.  

I will have to reprint the boattail and centering rings because OpenRocket's "rear dimension" was the outside, not inside of the boattail so the engine body tube needs another 3 or 4 mm of clearance (subtracting both 1.5 mm walls).  I may also try 3D printing the wings, instead of using balsa, but haven't decided.