Starship Avalon: build thread

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Been enjoying your build thread enormously. Learned a lot about building and painting techniques as well. I'm looking forward to the final completion and unveil of your model.

Thanks, me too. :)

BTW, I couldn't figure out how your fin alignment jig works?

It was described more thoroughly in a previous build. It works fine, but at some point I need to get back to it and improve the design. Possibly a good winter project.
 
Thanks, me too. :)



It was described more thoroughly in a previous build. It works fine, but at some point I need to get back to it and improve the design. Possibly a good winter project.

Simple and ingenious in my opinion. Very intuitive to use. It looks way less complicated and easier to adjust perfectly than some of those guillotine-style jigs out there, and at a fraction of the cost.
 
The nose section:
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Good lord that looks like the dog pooped it out. And that was the best angle, if you can believe it. For whatever reason, I got a very poor seal on the tape against the strakes. It's really a mess, and quite visible. I'll have to decide the best way to attack it. Right now I'm not sure.

How about the fin can?
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Cool beans!!!! How do those bits look up close?
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OK, there is apparently going to be some clean-up and touch-up work to do. I don't really care so much about the underside of the helical pieces, but the tops need to be cleaned up for sure. I can deal with it.

This, on the other hand, angered me:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1499563232.953942.jpg ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1499563224.878926.jpg

The white you see in those pictures is not reflection, it's two spots (on the outside of the helixes) where the tape pulled off the base coat. That's easy enough to touch up, and most of it will be hidden under a decal, but seriously WTF.

There are also about a million other little places on the fins where the black is dinged up and will need to be fixed.

Executive summary: Looks very cool. Messy as all heck. Once again my painting ambitions have outstripped my skill level. Let the touch-ups commence!

One additional note: I applied one piece of vinyl, the green ring around the base of the nose (just above the strakes), and I can say happily that the key lime matches the green vinyl *very* closely. That is pure luck, but thankfully color mismatch will not be something I need to worry about here.
 

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@NeilW: that vertical pic of the strakes, from the look of the green/black edge - that isn's a poor seal, that is where the paint has flaked as you've removed the tape.. I hit the same issue on my bertha, which is why I don't leave the tape on so long these days...

I'd be willing to bet if you looked closely at the tape you removed, there are little green edges that lifted from the coloured (unmasked) side of the tape line...

I think there is a balance between how early I pulled the tape off my V2 and this, where the edges are crisp while the paint is still flexible enough to let you remove the tape without fracturing the work you've just laid down...
 
If you get the paint bleeding under the tape you can brush on a thin coat of the same base color (black in your case) along the taped edge. When that is dry, then paint the second color (green) where it needs to go. Any bleed lines will be the same color as the base coat and the edge is sealed :wink:

Given it is green bleeding onto black a black permanent marker might be your best friend here.
 
I feel for you. I'm just relearning how to use spray cans of paint and for me it's still a hit or miss question in terms of results.

Considering how complex and ambitious your paint scheme is and all the masking it required, I congratulate you on the successful parts.
I guess the cup half full perspective is that you're learning what works and what doesn't, so your technique can only improve from here.
 
@NeilW: that vertical pic of the strakes, from the look of the green/black edge - that isn's a poor seal, that is where the paint has flaked as you've removed the tape.. I hit the same issue on my bertha, which is why I don't leave the tape on so long these days...

Having looked at it more closely, I think there's a fair amount of both. Bonus! :)

I'm not sure why this happened so much here though; I don't usually have this issue and didn't even have it on the helical pieces, which were all done with the same tape and same timing.

If you get the paint bleeding under the tape you can brush on a thin coat of the same base color (black in your case) along the taped edge. When that is dry, then paint the second color (green) where it needs to go. Any bleed lines will be the same color as the base coat and the edge is sealed :wink:

I applied a coat of clear before the Key Lime to accomplish this. Micromeister has recommended this because the clear "seals" the seams the same as paint, but builds up less and creates less of a paint dam in the final product. In any case, it didn't work well for me for whatever reason.

Considering how complex and ambitious your paint scheme is and all the masking it required, I congratulate you on the successful parts.
I guess the cup half full perspective is that you're learning what works and what doesn't, so your technique can only improve from here.

If that were true I wouldn't keep making the same mistakes and inventing new ones. :facepalm:

Nonetheless, I soldier on.
 
So here's a look at a bit of final overlapping the paint, so you can see how closely the colors match:
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Yikes, every time I look at those strake edges up close it gives me the willies.

Anyway, I decided to apply the rest of the vinyl to the nose, because it will not interfere with subsequent paint fixes to the strakes and I just wanted to do something positive. It went on smoothly and looks great I think:
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Next I prepped for the strake paint fixes. I decided to remask and then hand-touch the key lime, until it's all evenly filled in. Here it is taped up. Anywhere you see black along the root edge will get re-covered with green. As far as I could figure out, this will produce the most pleasing final result, with straight edges on the strakes, even though this may bring the paint a little further down the fillets than I would normally go. Anything's gotta be better than the way they are now.
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While working on this I came up with a great way to burnish the edges of the tape, which I will use from now on. I start with a pair of these tweezers:
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Then squeeze them and use the tip to burnish, like so:
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This did a *fantastic* job, and it made me realize that I had probably not done an adequate job burning them down in the first place.
 

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As painstaking as this may seem, I discovered that sometimes I had to score the paint at the edge of the of the tape with my knife to insure a clean straight edge when I pulled off the tape. This won't help a bleed, but it sure helps to keep from pulling off the paint.
 
As painstaking as this may seem, I discovered that sometimes I had to score the paint at the edge of the of the tape with my knife to insure a clean straight edge when I pulled off the tape. This won't help a bleed, but it sure helps to keep from pulling off the paint.

Glad you mentioned that, I was wondering if that was a good idea. Wish I had thought of it for this one, might try it in the future.

When I hand-touch the strakes, I'll remove the tape after... oh, roughly 12 hours I'd say (paint Saturday night, remove Sunday morning.) The paint should be past the gooey stage by then but still a bit soft.
 
Touched up the black today with some Testor's in a bottle. Generally fine except on of the fins where the base coat was ripped up; that's a bit of a mess but most of it will be covered by decal so I'm not gonna stress over it.

Saturday I'll apply the Key Lime touch-ups.
 
Neil, you could have a hundred flaws on that fine little piece, and still ace the envy awards when you show up at your next launch. She looks damn nice dood.
 
Looks awesome dude. Well done! 😁👍🏻
 
Thanks guys. This bird shall fly at the next launch I attend, which is not yet scheduled. We'll see. I still have to install the recovery gear, but that's pretty easy.
 
Now that I've posted finished pictures maybe no one cares about these details any more but whatever.

So indeed I hand-dabbed some more green paint onto the strakes. I experimentally removed the tape between two of them and again a bit of green was pulled up at the edge (although not nearly as bad as before). So then I remembered about running a knife along the edge of the tape before removing, and hey that worked pretty well. Here is the "best" view of the updated nose section.
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Pretty good. I'm not gonna bother with the two edges that I messed up (again); enough is enough there. Note again the good color match between the vinyl and the paint. Note also that I haven't installed the nose block in there yet; I suppose now is the time. :)

Applying the window vinyl to the helixes was mostly uneventful; getting it positioned correctly was a bit finicky but no big deal. In hindsight, what I should have done was painted the entire top of the helixes green, and then used the edges of the final to create black/green border. How much easier that would have been! But in order to do that I would have had to make the vinyl pieces exactly the right size, and I didn't think of it then. As it is, they're just a bit smaller than the black area on the helixes, which means you can see the edge of the vinyl just inside the green, but it's no big deal.

The fin vinyl was fairly tricky, as expected. Two things saved me:
1) I accidentally made loads of extras of those pieces
2) The ability to get the vinyl to stretch and lay down into a gap with a hair dryer.

After the first one I figured out how to get it positioned, then apply down the portion on the body tube, then press the decal into the fillet, then apply the parts on the fins. I often still had a bit of air under the vinyl at the fillets, but that was taken care of by warming it up with a hair dryer and gently pressing it down until it softened up sufficiently that it would lay in there. On one piece I overworked it a bit and ended up with a couple of small bubbles underneath, but I'm reluctant to pull the whole piece off at this point.

One piece was an adventure. Note my inopportune placement of the launch lug between these two fins:
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God the paint looks like a$$ in these close up shots.

Anyway, the lug extends about halfway into the area that will be covered with the vinyl. After cursing my lack of foresight (if I had made the lug an inch longer, it would have extended all the way through the vinyl area; that would have been easy to deal with just like I did on the APRO Lander lug) I thought about it and realize it's not so bad.

So I first cut a notch in a vinyl piece to work around the lug. Getting it in exactly the right spot took three tries; I was glad I had all those extra pieces.
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With the notch, this ended up being the easiest of the fin pieces to apply, since the lug/notch dictated the position:
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Then I cut a small piece of wrap for the lug. I had actually included a couple of bits of vinyl expressly for this purpose, and it's a good thing because I messed up the first and ended up getting it right on the second. With the lug covered, here's the "finyl" result (just coined a new word there):
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After doing the APRO Lander and now this, I think lug-hiding is me new favorite thing. :)

And lastly: I realized that my engine hook (again, oh-so-beautiful in closeups) goes right down the middle of one of the green triangle pieces. So I just cut out the middle of one and put a piece on either side. If I were really ambitious I could put a middle piece on the hook itself, but I don't think I'll bother since it actually looks OK like that. Also I used up my last extra piece. :)
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Still needs a coat of Future (which should take a bit of effort on this one) but other than that the finishing work is done. Still need to hook up the shock cord (haven't quite decided how to do that yet) and parachute and then finished.

I think the finyl result (there it is again) looks pretty close to my original renderings. I had my doubts about this design at many points during this build, but I am very happy with the finished product.

Now let's see how it flies. :)
 

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All up it's a sexy beast - you should be proud.

Out of interest, you've probably already answered this but will the helical fins make it spin in flight?
 
All up it's a sexy beast - you should be proud.

Out of interest, you've probably already answered this but will the helical fins make it spin in flight?

Almost certainly yes, although hard to say how much.

Has anyone else noticed the close resemblance of the the fin can to a push mower blade? I'll have long since given up trying to unsee that. :p
 
Almost certainly yes, although hard to say how much.

Has anyone else noticed the close resemblance of the the fin can to a push mower blade? I'll have long since given up trying to unsee that. :p

I hadn't until you mentioned it... now, I can't I see it either.

I swear it's only because it's green...
 
Bubbles are easy to fix. Just a pinhole in the center and squeeze the air out. If said bubble has a bit of wrinkle in it, that makes it a real challenge. Same procedure, OR, a slight cut with a knife and tug the wrinkle out using tweezers and the hair dryer to assist.
 
Despite all the challenges along the way, the final result is, in a word, Impressive. Actually it deserves coining a new word for: "Awesometastic".
Hope to hear about her maiden flight and people's reaction to it when they get a look at the launch.
 
The whole thing turned out fantastic. The window decals add a really nice touch. Helical fins do slightly resemble a reel mower blade.

Avalon will chop right through the wind, Biohazard will inject the sky with excitement, and Diamond Cutter will slice right through those Mach Diamonds and impregnate the clouds with it's payload, if you'll pardon the engineering parlance.

I hope to see some new facecard artwork for your latest scratch builds.
 
Avalon will chop right through the wind, Biohazard will inject the sky with excitement, and Diamond Cutter will slice right through those Mach Diamonds and impregnate the clouds with it's payload, if you'll pardon the engineering parlance.

:eyepop:

I hope to see some new facecard artwork for your latest scratch builds.

Jeez I completely forgot about that. It shall be done!
 
Almost certainly yes, although hard to say how much.

Has anyone else noticed the close resemblance of the the fin can to a push mower blade? I'll have long since given up trying to unsee that. :p

Now I can't unsee The Lawnmower Man rocket.

Seriously though, can't wait to see it fly!
 
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