Little Joe II - Disaster: A botched paint job!

Well sometimes things just don't go right and this was one of those times. When I went to go and spray the Testor's Chrome paint onto the lower part of the booster, the paint came out ALOT heavier than I was expecting and I ended up with runs everywhere and no visible detail showing on the wrap. So I attempted to get most of the paint off with thinner. Unfortunately, the thinner disolved the waxy coating on the wrap and the fibers of the paper started to become visible in places.

After removing the initial "heavy" coat, I attempted to repaint it with very light misting coats, but that just resulted in the "orange peel" effect you see in the pictures.

So now I have ordered a new body tube from SEMROC and I've purchased some corrugated sheet styrene and some styrene strips in an attempt to re-build the booster. Next time around, I'll be using Alclad and an airbrush.

Besides the Capsule and Escape tower, I never installed the engine mount, so that's safe. Also as can be seen in the above photo, I was able to salvage the fins.

Little Joe II - Fins

The fins for the Little Joe 2 took a bit of time and so I apologize for the delay in getting this update posted. The fin material provided in the kit is simply a wedge shape strip of balsa. The fins are cut from this wedge using a fin pattern on the back of the kit panel.

In this first picture, I've coated the fin with Elmer's wood filler paste diluted slightly with water. This stuff is the next best thing to Hobby Poxy "Stuff" and will fill most of the balsa grain with one thick coat.

The Elmers wood filler sands extremely well. Here is the same fin after sanding. This fin is now ready for a primer coat.

Here is a tip I saw on the Apogee Components build videos. Using a floral foam block and thin floral wire to hold small parts will they dry. Works great. Here are the rest of the Little Joe II fins ready for primer.

After primering and sanding smooth, I sanded a small notch on the bottom of each fin where it sits over the bottom band of the paper wraps.

Here are all 4 fins primered, notched and ready to attach to the rocket body...

To attach the fins to the body tube I first used 5 min epoxy to get the fin "tacked" on. I wanted fairly small and even fillets, so I used some "Fix It" epoxy putty for those and was very happy with not only the results. I may do all my future fillets this way

Now that the fins are all attached, it's time to paint the lower portion of the main body...

Little Joe II - Body Wraps

There are 2 body wraps that come with this kit. One upper (self adhesive) and one lower (embossed paper glue on). As we discussed in and earlier post, we will not be using the upper wrap and will opt for waterslide decals instead. The lower wrap must be glued in place and since I hadn't glued a wrap on a rocket in quite some time, I solicited opinions from people who had. Probably the most popular method currently is to use spray adhesive and after several people recommended this to me I opted to go with it.

The one thing most people who used the spray adhesive method recommended was that I use the high strength "90" spray (shown above) instead of the general purpose "77" spray. $16 per can at Ace Hardware...OUCH!

...and worth every penny! This stuff worked great. The wrap went on very easily and the adhesive held it very firmly with no noticable buildup underneath the wrap.

In the above picture, I tried to show how smooth the wrap looks on the rocket with the 3M spray adhesive. I do remember having a lumpy wrap on a rocket I built back in high school when I simply used white glue.

After the main wrap was in place, it was time to add the smaller detial wraps and tunnel covers.

Here is another view... In this view you can see where I "wicked" some thin CA glue under the wrap to seal it down. I'm not sure if that was necessary or not but it couldn't hurt. With the wraps all in place, it's time to start working on the fins.

Little Joe II - Assembling the Launch Escape Tower

The launch escape tower is next up. It comes in 10 pieces - 4 support sides, a base to which 4 motor nozzels attach, and the escape rocket itself.

The first step was filling in the circular dimples from the injection molding process. Some people skip this step but I think it's important enough to the overall appearance of the model to try and fill them in. After all something that small may get lost to the eye when looking a Saturn V model, but the Little Joe II is a much smaller rocket and they would be a lot more conspicuous.

This picture came out a little blurry but the part on the left has just had filler putty applied to it while the one on the right has already been sanded smooth and is more or less ready for a primer coat.

After filling in the mould marks and sanding, it's time to start putting together the support sides. Here we see the first 2 sides glued to the support base. The motor nozzels are also glued in place but they leave 4 little "pockets" that need to be filled with putty so that the support base has a smooth finish all the way around.

Now all four sides have been glued together, and the pockets from where the motor nozzels were glued in have all been filled and sanded smooth.

Next we sand off the moulded in detail of the launch escape rocket body. I also filled a couple of mould imperfections with putty and sanded smooth.

Finally we have the completed escape tower assembled, primered, painted and decaled...

Little Joe II - Engine Mount and Sanding Details Off of Capsule

Ok, so as I said in the introduction for this kit, I'm not going to do a seperate entry for each construction step as I did with the U.S.S. Atlantis. I'm just going to post progress as it happens, in the order it happens...

As with most kits, we start with the engine mount. This one is only different by way of it's size. It's a T engine mount for mini engines. Other than that it's just a straight forward engine mount. I used CA glue for the centering rings. I might add an epoxy fillet over the CA, but I haven't yet.

One thing the instructions said to do was to remove all of the surface detail that is molded into the Apollo capsule. It is the same capsule mold that is used for the Saturn-1B and Saturn V kits. However the Little Joe's had simulated Apollo capsules that were smooth. In the above picture I've removed all of the detail, sanded out the major scratches and put down a primer coat and sanded it all smooth. It's now ready for paint.

Little Joe II - Introduction

My next project is going to be the Estes 1/100 scale "Little Joe II" (Kit#0892). This kit was fairly short lived in the Estes catalog; it was available only for 2 years - 1991 & 1992. So that means this kit is approximately 20 years old. The parts all seem to be in good shape (sorry, no photo). I probably won't be using the decals (more on this later), but there is no yellowing on any of the paper components. This is probably thanks to the fact that it's been sitting in a box for most it's life.

This is a much simpler kit than the U.S.S. Atlantis was, but it still has some "tricky" parts to it. For this project, I won't be doing a step by step exhaustive blog on every detail of construction. Instead, I will be giving more general type updates as construction progresses and I might take time to point out an area where I had difficulty or discovered a "gotchya". As with the U.S.S Atlantis build, I will try to include lots of pics in each blog entry. Hopefully we can get this one done in a couple of weeks.

U.S.S. Atlantis - Pictures of the completed model.

Yea!!! We're finally done! Here are some pictures of the completed model:

U.S.S. Atlantis - Makeing a display stand.

Now that I've got a finished model, I needed to come up with a nice way to show it off. Since this is a Sci-fi model (more or less), standing it up on end didn't seem like it would make sense. I wanted something that would show it off in an "in flight" sort of attitute. So, after wandering around Michael's craft store for a an hour looking for ideas, I came across these decopage bases that I thought would make a nice display base. All it needed was a little color. I went to Ace hardware and picked up a can of dark Mahogany wood stain and after two coats, I had what I thought was a nice dark wood tone.

To support the model itself, I went to my local hobby shop and picked up a piece of 1/8th inch dia. brass rod. Now all I needed was a way to get a nice uniformly curved bend in the rod to hold the model at the right angle. As it turns out, the galvanized steel street light pole across from my house was just the right diameter for the bend (you can laugh, but it worked!). I glued the rod into the base at a slight angle using my Dremel drill press to make the hole. I then glued a piece of wood dowel onto the other end. The wood dowel was as close to 18mm as I could find and cut to the same length as an Estes 18mm engine case. This piece goes into the engine mount and supports the rocket on the stand.

As a finishing touch, I had this name plate made up by a local engraver. All I had to do was give them an MS Word doc with what I wanted it to say and the Estes logo in ".eps" format. The next day, I had my nameplate and it cost less than $20.00 out the door.

So here is the completed stand ready and waiting for the U.S.S. Atlantis. For the next and last post for this project, I'll take some higher quality pics of the finished model on the display stand.

U.S.S. Atlantis - Finishing (part 3), Decals

Applying decals to the model is one of the most enjoyable yet challenging steps in any modeling project. It's enjoyable because your model really starts to take on a finished look. It's challenging because it's also a very easy step to mess up! One product I have found very useful when working with "water-slide" decals is "SolvaSet" (pictured above). After placeing the decal on the model and dabbing off the excess water, let it dry. Then very gently brush on 1 coat of SolvaSet and let it dry completely. Keep applying the SolvaSet in this manner (3 or 4 coats at most) and your decal will eventually "settle" onto the surface of your model such that the edges will barely be visible. SolvaSet actually melts the decal and causes it to get very soft which allows it to flatten out and settle in around any surface imperfections or uneveness in the paint surface. However, be careful not to apply too much at one time or you'll melt the decal to the point where it will start distorting or even come off the model all together.

The main issue I had with these decals was that they were the original decals which means they were over 30 years old! A few of the decals broke apart while I was trying to get them in position on the model and had to be pieced back together. Fortunately nothing broke apart so badly that it couldn't be positioned. Here's another area where the SolvaSet is your friend. It will literally melt them back together on the model so won't see the cracks where they split apart.

One design issue I had was that the decal pictured above does not actually fit between the dowel and the panel piece unless you trim the decal right up to the line. Of course I didn't realize this until the decal was already off of it's backing and I was trying to get it placed on the model. After a several tedious minutes with a single edge razor blade I was finally able to get it down. Of course I trimmed the other side correctly and had no problems with that one.

Another issue I had was that the two yellow windows (next to the single black window) in the above picture broke off sometime after they dried and before I got the SolvaSet on them and I had to canabalize another decal sheet with some yellow striping to make two replacement windows. Hopefully the color is a close enough match so that it's not noticable. This is a good example why you NEVER THROW AWAY EXTRA PARTS OR DECALS. You never know when you might need to fabricate something for a repair or replacement. KEEP EVERTHING!

Lastly, these little guys are "mystery decals". I could find no information in the instructions, any of the pictures of the finished model, nor any of the decal diagrams that described where they go. So if anyone out there happens to know where on the model they go, please leave a comment.

Well, other than clear coating the model and installing the recovery system (which I'll skip for this blog) this about completes our model. The very last thing I'll show for this project is how I put together an inexpensive but nice looking display stand. I'll also throw up some pictures of the completed U.S.S Atlantis.

U.S.S. Atlantis - Glueing on those last few pieces...

Another piece that we postponed until after final paint, the antennae assembly goes on the tail as shown above. What I didn't get a picture of was that when I did the final paint, I had the area where this antennae assembly glues onto the fin masked off. Before glueing I masked off the area around where this glues on and and sanded all the way down to bare wood to make sure the glue joint was strong. I like the effect given by the "solid" sensor housing rather the stock "open" look.

Next up, we glue our warp engine domes in place. Once again, I had the front cardstock discs masked off so the glue joint would be paper to wood. Also prior to glueing, I "scuffed" waxy outer coat off of the cardstock disc.

Here's the result. As you can see it's not a perfect fit, but I do like it better than the flat discs that came in the kit. Just looks more like old "Star Trek" to me!

Our last painting step (other than final clear coat) is painting the rear panels on each engine dark grey. For this, I used the same color as the sensor housing which is the dark grey Ultra Cover Primer from step 8.5.

That completes major construction. The only thing left is installing the recovery ssystem which we will do last.

Now we're ready for decals...

U.S.S. Atlantis - Step 15, Attaching the Main Deck

Now that the model is painted, we can finally attach the main deck. The reason we waited to do this is simply because it would have been too difficult to get paint coverage into all of the little nooks and crannies with the main deck in place.

There really wasn't much to this step other than to say that I chose to use CA glue over epoxy due to the small amount of surface area for the glue joint (flat deck against a rounded tube). Regular CA worked very well and the deck piece went on with little trouble. One thing about the design of this kit was that there was very little tolerance for circular portion of the main deck to fit between the warp engine supports. You'll want to test fit these parts well before painting. I actually had ended up sanding off a fraction of a millimeter or so to get the deck to sit all the way down on the tube. Of course if you have gaps, there isn't much you can do except move the deck slightly forward until it touches the supports.