With Arctic cold gripping the Ohio River Valley progress on the 1/144 Airfix Saturn V has been slow. It is too cold to do much air brushing so this post will be brief.
I cannot recall how many Monogram and Airfix Saturn V kits I have built since 1968 but, I will say that the black and white roll patterns have to be amoung the toughest model projects to paint! Inevitably the black paint seems to all too frequently seep beyond the masked areas-no matter what type of mask I use or air brush pressure. Chalk it up to the lack of "glacial" patience!!! Needless to say, I have spent a good amount of time scrapping, picking, and touching up those areas!
For this installment I had to correct the S-IVB LOX tank by splicing the dome from the Skylab parts that came with this kit. PE parts and resins RCS were also added.
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| The S-IVB with PE parts. Note the accurized LOX tank for the J-2! |
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| The New Ware S-IVB paint masks prior to painting. No matter how much one burnishes the mask down the corrugations still allowed for some paint seepage! |
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| The S-IVB with the first round of paint. Shading layers and some wash will be applied when the weather warms up! |
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Since it has been too cold to paint I spent some time applying the New Ware PE parts to the Apollo BPC and service module.
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| The new BPC for the Airfix Saturn with New Ware PE parts! |
I am planning to display this model horizontally which means I intend to have the escape tower and BPC separate from the CSM. Sadly the CM part is from the earlier issue of the Airfix kit and way too small!
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| I tried the CM from the Monogram Saturn V but it too is small! |
I will have to cast a mold of the BPC and modify the resin copy to look like the command module!
I also had on hand a 1/144 Apollo CSM toy by Takara. The SM heat shield and SPS are detachable so I will attach them to the Airfix SM.
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| The Airfix SM with the Takara SPS heatshield, engine bell, and high gain antena. |
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| With some trimming the heatshield should fit correctly! |
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| A "dry fit" of the F-1's to the S-IC stage. |
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Due to other commitments there will be no installment of the OVSP for March. The next installment will be in April! Until then-Ad Astra!!!
Some advice to stop paint seepage and get crisp, near-perfect results every time: 1. Use Tamiya masking tape. Never, ever use that blue tape or regular "hardware store" masking tape. This will solve 90% of your problems. 2. After masking a black roll pattern areas, spray the area to be painted black with a coat of the base color of the rocket (white) first and let dry. This will "seal" your mask. Then, when you spray on the layer of black, aim the spray away and not towards the edge of the tape. Hope this helps!
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