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1/72 Saturn V


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@roma847Thanks a lot Manfred. Although comparing to your fantastic project my efforts are not quite up to the same level I think. Your work is awesome.

 

@Ken StenzenkoI have seen those, but I thought 1/70 may be too far off, but that's not necessarily so of course. Will be interesting to see what measurements you get. In the meantime I'm progressing with the dirty work...

 

Detailing the CSM is now done. All its parts are ready for a thin coat of primer and then painting.

 

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First round of sanding the surfacer on the fairings are done. Much sanding it is...

 

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Here we are after a second round of surfacer sprayed. A lot better, but still much more work needed...

 

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Good to do more interesting work at the same time. Details for the LM. It's nice to work with quality parts like the New Ware set.

 

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@Ken Stenzenko The Shapeways (The Aerospace Place) fairings are about 70 mm (2,76") wide excl. stringers, circular shaped at bottom edge, and almost 114 mm (4,48") tall.

 

That may be a few mm tall when compared to the Weeks drawings. Those drawings also have non circular bottom shape (at least in my smaller non original copy). However, at least one source who did a lot of hands on measurements on the real things in both Houston and Huntsville claim they are circular shaped. I don't know, but that said, I don't think this is the most critical problem in 1/72 scale.

 

Maybe one could cut off the bottom edge slightly on the Apogee 1/70 fairings and end up with something useful, but they will also need stringer corrections as far as I can see. They aren't very expensive, so it may be worth a try?

 

Here's what those Shapeways fairings under work look like when mated to the body this morning. Now, this is of course my own scratch built thrust structure. I think it looks quite right, even if not perfect.

 

The center bottom stringer under the fin shall be replaced with two, I should have caught that before, but it's not too late yet. I will fix that when my new fins and air scoops arrive from printing. There will also be some small stringer adjustments needed towards the top.

 

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Agree, for the cost the Apogee fairings are worth a try. Are you happy with the surface of the Shapeways fairings now? They look ok in the photos and placement looks great. Are you making your fins available through Shapeways? Won't be long and you'll have to start  getting the paint out.

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3 hours ago, Ken Stenzenko said:

Agree, for the cost the Apogee fairings are worth a try. Are you happy with the surface of the Shapeways fairings now? They look ok in the photos and placement looks great. Are you making your fins available through Shapeways? Won't be long and you'll have to start  getting the paint out.

Oh no, they're still scruffy and need a second sanding and a new but thinner third round of surfacer, that will need fine sanding once again. The insidethough is now good to add back missing detail after sanding the second layer, working on them right now actually. Paint is getting closer, but there is till some work to do before I'm there, not least a good surfacer-sanding round of all major sections.

 

I don't have Shapeways shop, I could of course look into setting one up. Or I could put them up at my good friends shop here: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/brusefalt-model-parts Let's see how they look when they arrive and I can prime them and we can see them test fitted first.

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Work of the day: fairings. The second round of surfacer sanded out nicely on the inside, and they are now ready for internal ribbing and bracing to be added to the lower section.

 

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Then it took an hour each to sand the outside. No fun, but it looked much better than I dared to expect when done. I removed the lower part of the center stringer, there should be two stringers downwards joining each side of fin, which will now be relatively thick at the bottom, as it should. I also elongated the three middle stringers at the top.

 

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Here we are after the third round of surfacer sprayed on the outside. This will be lightly sanded and then it's time to cut out for the air scoops and test the new fins, when they arrive. I think there is actually hope for these fairings, but I wouldn't like to go through it again...

 

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You are doing a fine job Jörgen!

The frustrating thing is that the aftermarket parts most of the times are lacking in quality and accuracy..

At least this is what i am experiencing with my 1/96 Revell kit and what i can see in your build!

I also keep following your thread with interest.

 

cheers, Jan

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I've been working on the Lunar Module to finish it for painting, preparing parts and adapting it to what I will need from New Ware set. Here is the finished descent stage.

 

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Then as I was moving the Command Module to reach some other stuff I did what is forbidden to do; I dropped it. Hard on the bench and down on the floor behind the bench... It almost survived, but losing one of the photo etched window frames.

 

Searching the messy work bench, the window bay behind and all of the floor underneath of course revealed nothing like that frame, just a lot of dust and scrap after a long time of work. I had to create a new frame from the same brass sheet.

 

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A frustrating hour or two later it was back to its former state again and I could go on.

 

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On to the LM ascent stage. New Ware supplies frames for the LM windows, but first I couldn't figure how it would work out trying to cut the Dragon part according to the instructions. After a while I realized it would alter the angle and size of the windows and that it could actually improve the look, so I decided to try.

 

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With some careful cutting on the inside the new pieces would also fit smoothly.

 

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It ended up like this. I'm using gloss black for all other windows on the CM and LM, so I chose the same appearance for these.

 

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Here is a dumb mistake not to repeat. Note the tree white fillings. When it came to the roof details all drawing and instructions seemed mirrored to what they should be. Then I understood the problem. I had to put the roof section on backwards... That was not possible to alter at this stage. Luckily the shape is fully symmetrical of that part, so I could fill the holes and make new in the correct place.

 

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The last details fitted and the ascent stage is also ready for painting.

 

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I could no longer go on working in the accumulated mess at this point, so I spent time doing a through cleaning and sorting all tools and other stuff back to where they should be. Reasonably at least.

 

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That's when it happens. In the window bay. After I have gone over it completely with the vacuum cleaner (which was very much needed). The CM window frame. It's just not possible...

 

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Current state of the project this evening.

 

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Remaining work:

- S-IC system tunnel detail

- S-IC fairings inside detailing, air scoops and fins

- S-IVB helium spheres

- Final cleaning of the printed J2 engines

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The new fins have arrived from printing, and 3D-printing has its limitations, or I'm asking too much. Even with the finest material and best resolution at Shapeways there's still a fine pattern in the surface, and what's more, the resolution is not fine enough to clearly pick out the narrow section between the two main surfaces as the difference in angle becomes too small for the resolution to clearly define. I was still going to highlight that section in a different metal shade when painting, so it's not the end of the world, but still.

 

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Furthermore the fins were slightly bent when they arrive. Probably they sag slightly during the printing process. However it was easy to heat them gently with the hairdryer, straighten them and cool them in water to a much better shape.

 

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When straightened I lightly sanded them to get rid of the fine surface pattern and they were soon ready for primer. They will photograph better once we have some paint on them.

 

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I made all the cut-outs in the fairings for the new air scoops. Next I must attend to the short stringers underneath and of course the center stringers under the fins. This area of the build became much more involved than I had ever anticipated...

 

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@roma847 At least I try a little bit to get closer to that level. 😎

 

@Ken Stenzenko Not yet, I think we need at least to see them in primer first. Not sure if I should perhaps ad small scribings in the print to aid masking that center rib?

 

Got a lot of work right now so less progress here. At least the new lower center stringers have been done. The fins are only held with tape here.

 

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The stringers under the air scoops have now been repaired. Here it's taped to get a look again.

 

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When building the internal structures I didn't want to add any tension to the fairings, so I wound the Evergreen strips around a glass jar, heated with an air gun and cooled in water. Not that they ended up in the correct radius, but they were rounded and much softer to work with.

 

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The first pieces glued in place. It will again be a bit simplified on the inside I think.

 

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Then I did the round sectioned bracing, the first sections in steel to fix the fairings radius where I wanted it.

 

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When done it looked like this.

 

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Test fitting with an engine.

 

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With the inner details finished off I had this. Hopefully it will do under there when painted.

 

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After quite some measuring and test fitting I could add the outer sections of the heat shield.

 

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In theory this will fit perfectly together when time comes. In theory that is... I will probably have to do some adjustments and touching up that day.

 

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Hopefully something like this.

 

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A mock up of the main parts to get some reward after a good days work.

 

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I think I'm calling the fairings area done now, at last. I'll just give the parts a coat of surfacer to get a better look.

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Hi.

 

Although I have not read it in its entirety, I have reviewed all the work you have done.
I find it fabulous, thorough, detailed and I love it. However, every time I see one of the main exhaust nozzles ... I see that they have a quality far inferior to the work you are doing. I am afraid that if you use them, the final result will get worse.

 

Regards.

 

Andrés.

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1 hour ago, Andrés S. said:

Hi.

 

Although I have not read it in its entirety, I have reviewed all the work you have done.
I find it fabulous, thorough, detailed and I love it. However, every time I see one of the main exhaust nozzles ... I see that they have a quality far inferior to the work you are doing. I am afraid that if you use them, the final result will get worse.

 

Regards.

 

Andrés.

 

Thanks a lot Andrés, glad you like the project.

 

Regarding the F1 engines, you are aware that they represent the "batted" engines as they were actually flown (covered in insulation and foil)? They are not the naked engines usually seen in engine photos and modelling.

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7 minutes ago, Bengalensis said:

 

Thanks a lot Andrés, glad you like the project.

 

Regarding the F1 engines, you are aware that they represent the "batted" engines as they were actually flown (covered in insulation and foil)? They are not the naked engines usually seen in engine photos and modelling.

Well no, I didn't know.
In that case I think it represents them correctly.
Thanks for the clarification.

Regards.

Andrés.

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2 hours ago, Andrés S. said:

Well no, I didn't know.
In that case I think it represents them correctly.
Thanks for the clarification.

Regards.

Andrés.

That probably explains it 😀 Here's a posting that talks about the insulation and shows a number of photos of the engines: http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=304

 

The resin engines I'm using are from saddly now closed operation LVM. When I got them back in 2013 or so they were said to be the ones to use, but then I haven't compared them to any alternatives and this was also some years ago. If you check out @Tomas Bark build of the same kit he have already painted his LVM engines:

There are other batted 1/72 scale F1's available from Real Space Models, Martins Models and also 3D-prints on Shapeways, not sure of the quality of any of them though as I haven't seen them IRL. Perhaps I should look at this once again.

 

In the mean time I have just spent several hours at apolloarchive.com and found two more vents on the S-IC intertank that for some surprising reason are never mentioned in drawings or correction instructions, but were clearly present on the real things. Oh well, more work to do...

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I spent a good few hours today doing further research of the S-IC system tunnel sectioning and the third very thin "system tunnel" beside pos. I, but also became side tracked by the clear appearance of two more "vents" at the S-IC intertank structure that I was not aware of. To my surprise they are not present nor mentioned in any of the typical drawings, web sites or instructions dealing with Saturn V, not that I have seen anyway. But they are clearly there, through the Saturn V launches.

 

First we have one lower down on the segment at pos. I. It looks very much like the two fuel vents close to pos. II, so I did it like those. I also realized I had put the five oval vents far too low on the segment, so I had to fill those and redrill them.

 

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Then there is one at pos. III, just below mid height. What little I see just looks like hole, more round than the five oval ones, and no shadows cast like the pipe stub at pos. I, so I just drilled a small hole at this point.

 

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I'll dwell on those for a while and attack the system tunnels in the mean time.

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I like how you are constantly reviewing the model for missing or incorrect details. What's your technique for drilling the oval holes? Do you drill two holes and then enlarge or are you using a template?

Great progress and to think I have a Saturn V and a Skylab to build which is twice the work!

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9 hours ago, Ken Stenzenko said:

I like how you are constantly reviewing the model for missing or incorrect details. What's your technique for drilling the oval holes? Do you drill two holes and then enlarge or are you using a template?

Great progress and to think I have a Saturn V and a Skylab to build which is twice the work!

I just drill two holes and remove the material between them gradually with a sharp pointed X-acto blade.

 

You are building both an Apollo and a Skylab Saturn V? That's mighty, I don't think I would have the energy to do all this reworking twice...

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