PURCHASED:
070426

BEGUN:
070520

CONSTRUCTION LOG



070426
Well, with the other spacecraft now in my collection, how could I miss a chance to pick this one up as well?

I had one of the original shuttle kits as a kid (back when the ET was still painted white for every mission!).  I built this kit with a very particualr end game in mind -I set smoke bombs in the SRB's and created a foil base to protect the crawler during ignition.

Well, the foil caught fire much to my young surprise (metal burns?) and the SRB bottoms melted.  I kept the shuttle for a while, but it went the way of all the old models... Now that I think of it, I had one snap-tite shuttle as well.


070522.05
It was about 30 hours ago that I was waiting for some putty and paint to dry on some resin kits, that I had some 'free' time to kill. Seeing this kit on my list, and having built one before, it was this kits' turn for the assembly line.

I started off by laying out the Crawler, the SRB's and ET for priming as they were obvious in their assembly and essentially represented 3/4's of the kit. They went together in no time flat with little hassle whatsoever.

While waiting for those to dry, I began prepping the shuttle parts for priming as well. I immediately determined that I would be gluing the bay doors shut and so wouldn't be needing the included bay detail, the lab module, nor the happy astronaut floating on a tether. These will make nice greeblies some day. More fine greeblies include the landing gear!!! How often do you come across details like that for nothing?

Everything went matte black first as I had more of that around than white. I soon found more white and within the first two hours, the second coat (white) was on. Doing the black first dimmed the white down nicely making everything an ultra-super-light gray which seems about perfect considering the scale. Pure white would look terrible at 1/144th, though it is true at 1/1.

Didn't wait too long to begin assembly and, as mentioned, 3/4's of the kit went together w/ no hassle in little time. The paint was still cool and had a mild tack while I worked, but not enough to leave fingerprints, nor enough to hinder the super glue.

I wasn't going to do the Shuttle that night as I thought doing the full paint job on that before assembly would be better. But before i knew it, it was going together a few small pieces at a time. As I put those pieces together, I realized that more and more could go together as well.

Much of the whole shuttle is now together, though it is still far short of complete. I pushed it as far as I possibly could before needing to analyse my paint/decal strategy.

The decals are generous and look annoyingly small and fairly accurate. The major beef I have with them is that they left off Challenger and Columbia. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.

While the kit gives top bililng to Discovery, that Revell included not only Atlantis and Endeavor, but Enterprise as well (which cannot be accurately built with this kit anyway as it was originally constructed solely as a landing mockup testbed), but leave off the two destroyed names genuinely makes me angry.

Knowing that most Shuttle kits include all 5 names, my purchase intention was to build a memorial piece. While I do make master scans of all decal sheets before use, and I could easily run new decals off my printer, I've decided to go with Endeavor instead to avoid the extra work.

At this point here's what needs doing:
-Paint the ET orange and detail it.
-Paint the Crawler.
-Decal the SRB's.
-Study the Shuttle decals and determine exactly what needs painting and what doesn't -get some further reference for Endeavor explicitly. Proceed from there.

The Cralwer:
Revell could only have been more inaccurate with this piece by including a shoebox with wheels drawn on the side.

There is so much detail on the Crawler that it isn't funny. Nevermindng that the Crawler itself actually carries the launch pad, sets it down, then crawls back to the VAB during launch.

It may be possible to accuratize this piece, but holy crud will that be a huge effort. Should I choose to do so, it would essentially mean reworking the entire thing, possibly from the ground up. The question becomes, 'Is it worth it'?

Whlie the detail on the ET and SRB's looks good-to-moderately-excellent from what I can tell, the detail on the shuttle is half-assed.

The Shuttle has some panel lines here and there which I cannot verify as accurate or not. The entire bottom of the model is essentially smooooooth as ice. And if you have ever so much as caughta glance of the underside, you know it is massively detailed. Every one one of those heat tiles is hand glued to the body. Revell could have at least faked it...

While easy to build and highly detailed decals, I can only give the kit an 'e' for effort. revell wanted a fast half-assed knock off and they got it. The good side is that I only paid $22 for this one.

A few more log entries and it should be complete.


075031.04
The ET went orange somewhat nicely. It was as I was running out of thinner for the airbrush, so that finsihed that. The SRB's were utterly sweet once decaled. I decided to put a gloss finish on them yesterday. One SRB was fine. Within seconds of application, the underlying paint on the other cracked and blistered!!! Ruined in one minute flat!

Devestated by this, and quite angry, I gently put the rocket down and walked away. I looked at it later last night and took a file to the offending blisters.  They came off fine. But how I am going to repair this mess is beyond me right now. 

How do I protect the decals from the masking process without destroying them?  How do I get that smooth white finish again?  I'm highly annoyed about this. The SRB's were perfect and the best looking parts (next to the ET which still needs detailing)!  Ruined.

The only good/lucky thing is that i sealed the top first.  Had I done the bottom, with all it's ribbing and details, I would have possibly given up, glued the orbiter to the ET, dropped the SRB's into the ocean and called it done.

The Orbiter's decals helped the kit beyond my ability to relate.  Before the decals, the orbiter was a piece of white crap.  Now at least it looks like something other than total shit. 

The decals were highly accurate.  There were a few large and oddly shaped ones that should have been worked into smaller pieces by Revell -as they easily flopped onto themselves and had to be pulled apart without ripping.  One did rip, but out of six major ones, that's okay.  And I got it on fine so that you can't see the rip at all.  A top coating of Solvaset locked them down nicely. 

There will be no sealer put on the orbiter or the ET as I don't want to risk it. They are dull and flat anyway. even a matte would give them too much shine.  The SRB's were aided by a gloss top coat, excepting the before mentioned horror.

I also took a black pen and added missing details to the orbiter which made the need to putty gaping seams largely irrelevant. Some pencil work should help to simulate the white tiles on the upper body.  The bottom is largely hidden by the ET and SRB's.  However to help that along, I scuffed the hell out of it w/ one of those green scrubbies for dishes (my new favorite tool!)

Other than detailing the ET, spot painting the orbiter and repairing the one SRB, this kit is finished once all four pieces are glued together.

 I think I will abandon the Crawler.  I am toying with the idea of getting cotton balls, stretching them into smoke and fire, then freezing them into some solid structure so that I can either stand the whole thing on these plumes of smoke, or hang the kit from the ceiling.  If it's stood, i could likely throw some leds into the plumes for a real nice effect!

Oh yeah...  The SRB's slot to the ET on two pins each.  The top pin is hooked, the bottom slides in straight afterwards. The top hook on one SRB snapped off.  I reglued it and it snapped off again.  I reglued it yet again, it snapped off yet again -this time inside the ET!!! Rattle-rattle! 

I shook and slid and angled the ET hoping I could get this little piece close to the hole with no luck or ever a chance of even the vaguest hope (I knew this, but sometimes you have to bang your head in futile desperation).

Thinking i'd have to leave it with a permanent rattle, I gazed upon a bottle of white glue!  I blobbed that into the ET's slot, shook once and the offending piece glued itself into place -no more rattle!  The SRB will still connect to the ET with no problems.  I'll just dab a little extra super glue in there.

Almost there!


070531.18
Just finished spotting the orbiter.  Turns out the black pen I used to detail the body smears, even days later.  So I will now have to clean that mess up.

My hope is that the Solvaset also gives some sealing protection.  Nevertheless, I will be very craful when applying the water to the body to wipe away the smear.  Qtips should do the trick, I expect.

Spotted the ET as well. That is still in relatively good condition. Good enough to be called finished anyway. Glued the main fuel line down to the body. Glued the orbiter to the ET and then the good SRB to the ET. 

I hit on a repair gamble for the bad SRB.  I finished filing all the paint blisters away this morning.  This afternoon I sprayed another coat of a different clear gloss down (with no problems), thus sealing all the decals (In Canada, pronounced 'dek-ulls' -weird).

Next step is to liquid mask all the decal areas and tape mask off the bottom half of the booster.  Theoretically, several light rounds of white spray should repair the damaged areas.  Then, theoretically, it's simply peeling off the liquid mask and putting new top coats of gloss down to even the surafece yet again.  Theoretically, that is.  I'll do that tomorrow.

It must be the temperature differential that has given me this blistering problem.  Letting the parts and the paint equalize to the outside ambient air first should solve this issue.  It's something to test at least. 

I'll now set parts and paint by the front door for some time first.  Should I never get blisters again, this would demonstrate the hypothesis is more a full theory.  However, there will never be any way to truly know -it could be coincidence until proven otherwise.


070601
Liquid masked the decals in the area I was respraying, but not the lower half which was fine. I taped this area off and regretted it upon peeling the tape away. Even though I sealed these decals twice, they still ripped away. Disappointing.

The upper stage was painted heavy this morning.  Upon peeling the liquid mask away, those new lines showed.  Hoped they would hide when I glossed, which I am in mid process of now and it doesn't look like they will.  Screw it.  It's going as is. 

Were this a better kit, I would absolutely go the distance to get this down right.  However, it is not and the level it is at is adequate.  I simply won't enter this one in any contests...

I still like the cotton ball and led idea I mentioned previously. That would be a worthy project for this kit.

Done.


071104
Five months and I still haven't posted a single pic yet?!?


080526.02
Pix posted! It's only a year later, afterall! :D