Estes Hyper Bat - BATMAN build

I've just finished the Dr. Zooch Vostok rocket - which was super fun to build but very intense, so I thought I'd take a break and do an easier one before moving on and trying the SR-71.

When I first saw the Hyper-Bat it seemed like a fun rocket but I didn't buy one until someone on here posted a build where they converted it to a single stage. At the time I had already built a 2-Stage rocket and still hadn't flown it, so I didn't want to do another. But when I realized how easy it was to convert I went ahead and bought one because it looked so cool.

However, before I could get around to building the Hyper Bat I launched my 2-Stage rocket one evening and lost it to the demon in the sky. I wonder if that thing has come down yet? So going on the assumption that not ALL 2-Stage rockets are lost, I decided to keep this one as a 2-Stage and build it per the instructions.

The only thing I'm going to do different is in the final paint job. I'm not going to go with all black and use the Estes decal, I've got something else in mind.

A quick apology to Estes. Before I changed my mind on the final paint scheme, I requested the replacement decal to be sent to me. It turns out I'm not going to use it - but at least I'm going to get an Estes catalog in the mail along with the replacement decal. So I'm sorry for wasting a decal. I hope they're not in short supply.

To start this build I'll post the standard out of focus picture of all the parts.


There are a LOT more parts to this rocket than I expected there to be. I didn't realize how they'd designed the rear nozzle or the two engine mount system, but it looks like a neat system to this new builder.

There are a lot more tubes included in this kit than I expected. It's not a Saturn 1B or anything, but it since it's a 2-Stage rocket there's 2 sets of engine mounts, some couplers, body tubes, etc. As I was reading the instructions the smaller tubes were only referenced by letter, so before starting I went to the part index and wrote the letter on each tube to help keep me straight.



The body tubes got the letters written on the inside since they'd be getting their seams filled and sanded, which would probably sand off the letter before I was done with it.

There are three body tubes, the long one for the main body, the middle length one for the nose section, and the shortest tube for the first stage. The seams on these tubes are not very easy for me to see, although I can easily feel them with my fingernail so I knew they'd need to be filled. To help me see them better I ran a pencil around the tubes in the seams - now they show up clearly!



It's now time to add the Carpenter's Wood Filler to the parts. The tube seams will get filled with a 4:1 mix of CWF to water, per Chris Michielssen's suggestion. The balsa sheet will get both sides painted with a more watered down mixture that I can apply with a paint brush.



After the CWF goes into the tube seams, they're sanded to remove most of the overlap that got onto the tube body, leaving just a tiny bit in the seam. Then I masked off about a 1/16" stripe showing just the seam and I shot primer over the CWF filled seam. When I removed the tape I sanded off most of the primer, and the result is a filled seam that is as smooth as the rest of the tube. Here's one tube with the primer sanded off, and another with the primer ready to be sanded.



Pretty standard stuff so far.

Mushtang said:

After the CWF goes into the tube seams, they're sanded to remove most of the overlap that got onto the tube body, leaving just a tiny bit in the seam. Then I masked off about a 1/16" stripe showing just the seam and I shot primer over the CWF filled seam. When I removed the tape I sanded off most of the primer, and the result is a filled seam that is as smooth as the rest of the tube. Here's one tube with the primer sanded off, and another with the primer ready to be sanded.


Pretty standard stuff so far.

Click to expand...

The texture of Estes tubes between the filled spirals looks like badly bagged rice. They are not so smooth.

Expand photo to exsamine body tube in detail.

After the tube seams were filled I sanded the balsa sheet smooth, then painted the watered down CWF on it and sanded it again when it dried. This balsa sheet is fairly flimsy and the wet CWF caused it to warp when it was drying. But when I turned it over to apply the CWF to the other side, it warped back into the original flat sheet.

The fins here feel a lot smoother than they look.



When I decided to change the paint scheme I had to come up with a way to do what I wanted. In my mind I could see the final result and it will look really neat, but at first I had no idea how to make it happen. The method I decided to use seems like it should work the best so I'll give it a try. If it doesn't work, everyone gets to see me go down in flames. If that happens I'll probably end up painting it black all over and using the replacement Estes decal anyway. Ha!

To get started on the mod I removed one fin of each size and scanned them. The larger fins are supposed to be attached to the first stage tube and the smaller fins are attached to the main body tube.



Once scanned I was able to import the image into AutoCAD and reproduce the shape of the fins. In the picture below you can see the scanned fins on the left, and the fin shapes that I drew to the right of the scan. You might have to click on the image to make it big enough to see the shapes.



I'll use this a little later in the build when it's time to digress from the instructions.

bradycros said:

The texture of Estes tubes between the filled spirals looks like badly bagged rice. They are not so smooth.

Expand photo to exsamine body tube in detail.

Click to expand...

They get smoother if you sand them, cover with primer, sand that, cover with primer again, and sand a final time with a very fine sandpaper. With a couple of light coats of paint followed by a final heavy coat the finish looks very smooth.

In the image you posted I can easily see the spirals, so it doesn't look like the tubes were prepared at all prior to painting. The Estes rockets I've built so far have gotten better and better. My Big Bertha finish is super smooth. No bagged rice there.

Mushtang said:

They get smoother if you sand them, cover with primer, sand that, cover with primer again, and sand a final time with a very fine sandpaper. With a couple of light coats of paint followed by a final heavy coat the finish looks very smooth.

In the image you posted I can easily see the spirals, so it doesn't look like the tubes were prepared at all prior to painting. The Estes rockets I've built so far have gotten better and better. My Big Bertha finish is super smooth. No bagged rice there.

Click to expand...

I think your missing the point bradycros was making. You said the filled spirals were as smooth as the body tube.

Bradycros only pointed out the body tube wasn't so smooth, not that it couldn't be made smooth.

hammer said:

I think your missing the point bradycros was making. You said the filled spirals were as smooth as the body tube.

Bradycros only pointed out the body tube wasn't so smooth, not that it couldn't be made smooth.

Click to expand...

That's quite possible. I often miss points people make. In that case, then I'll change my statement to be, "The filled spirals were now undetectable from the rest of the tube when sliding my fingernail across it".

More of the standard stuff...

Before continuing on with the build I decided to strengthen the ends of the tubes with a coat of CA. I've tried a few different methods for this after reading them in these forums and elsewhere, and the one that works best for me is to use plastic wrap (Saran Wrap, Cling Wrap, etc) over my finger.

I use a sheet of plastic wrap and cover my finger with it, then I squirt a bit of CA on the inside of one end of the tube and use my covered finger to spin around inside the tube to spread out the CA as much as possible.



The result is tubes that are a lot stronger on the edges. This is especially good for the motor tubes that will have a LOT of inserting and removing of motors (that is unless the thing ends up in a tree after the first launch). I've found that the inside edge does need to be sanded a little to remove a small lip that forms, but other than that there's not much to it.

The kit comes with a thin card that has two small shrouds pre cut. These are to be used along with some card stock rings to make the nozzle on the bottom of the rocket. I've got a little experience with shrouds from both the Saturn V and the Vostok, and the material used here seemed a lot thinner than I wanted it to be, so I upgraded!

I scanned the original piece and printed it on 110# card stock (at least I think that's what it was) to make a thicker set.

Here is the original piece and the thicker shrouds I made.



At first I thought something was wrong when I was curling the shrouds on my hand with a dowel while reading the instructions again. The instructions made it look like the end of the shroud overlapped itself for gluing but since I didn't see any marks on the shroud to indicate a glue tab I'd assumed these would be edge glued. Looking closer I saw small tic marks that were used to define the glue tab area, so that's what I used.

After I got these onto the rings and the first stage I wished I'd edge glued the shrouds for a better fit. The overlap sticks out a little, hardly noticeable at all, but I think it would still be better without it.

Note to self: Edge glue all paper shrouds from now on. Always always always.

Mushtang said:

More of the standard stuff...

I use a sheet of plastic wrap and cover my finger with it, then I squirt a bit of CA on the inside of one end of the tube and use my covered finger to spin around inside the tube to spread out the CA as much as possible.

Click to expand...

I tried this only felt the CA heat thru the bag. So, now I do the Q tip method.

The engine mounts in this model are pretty neat. This is a 2-Stage so for flight the two engines will be taped together. The lower first stage engine will slide down from the top of the first stage section, where it will butt up against an engine block ring at the nozzle. This section, including the 2 engines, will then be slid up into the main body tube where the second stage engine will butt up against another engine block ring. Spacing that upper block ring is critical to allow the lower stage section to fit snug, but the kit has a neat way to do this.

The first stage engine mount consists of an engine mount tube with the engine block ring glued into one end. Then a short spacer tube is glued onto the engine mount tube instead of using the typical centering rings.


Before I glued the mount inside the 1st Stage tube I used the tube marking guide and drew lines on the body for fin location. Once the motor tube is glued inside the body tube at the correct location a centering ring is glued on, flush with the bottom of the body tube. The engine mount tube sticks out a bit, giving a place to glue on the nozzle shrouds. Those are glued in place and then another centering ring on the bottom. It looks cool when it's finished.


When the glue dried on the nozzle pieces I glued the coupler into place in the bottom stage. It's now ready for the fins.


The upper stage engine mount is essentially the same as the first stage, except the engine block ring is glued into what will be the top of the tube, and the first stage has one in the bottom.


I'll wait a few more steps before gluing the upper engine mount into the main body tube.

I moved to the other end of the rocket next. The nose cone section consists of the plastic nose cone, a cardboard body tube, and a balsa plug in the bottom which will get an eyelet screwed in for attaching the shock cord.

The nose cone is hollow plastic and had only a very slight seam that needed to be sanded for it to be smooth. But I sanded the entire cone with a fine grit to rough up the surface a little. I want to paint it with primer before the final color and from what I've read here the primer will stick to a slightly rough service better.

The body tube had already had the seams filled, and it fit very snug over the nose cone shoulder. At the seam where the body tube met the plastic cone the cardboard lipped up slightly, but a few minutes with some sandpaper made it flush again.

The balsa plug didn't slide easily into the body tube, but it's such a soft wood that I was able to twist it into place.

Everything looked good, so I took it apart, added glue, put it back together, and let the glue dry.


When everything was dry I decided to sand the balsa plug flat on the bottom. The plug was slightly rounded and I'm sure would have worked fine, but I sanded it flat anyway.

To spray primer on the nose section I masked off the balsa plug which will fit into the top of the main body tube, and then added a little more tape to give me enough to tape the section to a small dowel that I use as a handle for spraying.



Based on what I've read in these forums, I sprayed a coat of primer on and then sanded nearly all of it off. This gave a very smooth base for the second coat of primer. This time I sanded it with a fine grit paper and the upper section is now very smooth and ready for paint.

The fins have already been sanded, painted with watered down CWF, sanded smooth again, and the edges rounded over. But they were very flimsy and I was afraid I was going to break one in half while sanding them. I did break off a corner and managed to glue it back on with white glue, but it was a small piece near the tube edge so it won't be noticeable. However, I did decide that with the fins being that flimsy I needed to do something to strengthen them further. I've read about people putting paper on either side of a fin and I want to learn how to do that someday, but for this project I just decided to go with a coat of CA like I'd done on the Zooch Vostok kit.



For this I poured out a few lines of CA and quickly spread it around with a Q-Tip. Almost every time the cotton tip would soak up half the CA and get hard before I was done, but in the end I think enough made it to the fin. It's not super strong, but better than it was before. After drying I sanded the fins again with fine grit to get rid of the roughness left by the CA.

With (somewhat) stronger fins I was ready to attach them to the body tube. The first step was to lightly sand the glue edges. I stacked all the fins up and sanded them together with the sand paper flat on the table to make sure the fins were all the same size. After that I wrapped the sand paper around the tube and gave each piece another light sanding to conform the glue edge to the shape of the tube, to make for a better joint.



Once that was finished it was time to start the double glue method. Each fin got a thick bead of white glue on the glue edge and then was lightly pressed onto the tube so there would be some glue to dry on both pieces, and then set down to dry. Here are the fins drying with an attempt to show the glue on the tube as well.



When the glue was dry it was obvious that a lot of glue had soaked into the fin like it was supposed to, there was barely any left on the contact edge. Another thin bead was added to each edge and the fin glued in place. I wish I had a fin alignment jig, that's one of the things on my wish list - but I'm holding out for a good one. In the mean time I just had to use the printed alignment guide on the instruction. I placed the rocket on the image and looking down from above I moved the fins a slight bit to angle them correctly. Luckily I only had to move a couple of them slightly because the glue was setting up fast and I couldn't move them further even if I wanted to.

After letting the glue set up for another half hour I started with the fillets on the fins. Each fin got 4 layers of fillet over the next evening and morning - just to be sure.



Since this is a 2-Stage rocket, there were 2 sets of fins so the entire treatment was repeated to the smaller fins. I also glued on the lugs to the upper stage and added glue fillets to them as I was doing the fins.



Now these two sections are ready for a primer coat. Finally!!

The build is looking great!

Regarding those wrinkles on a body tube between the seams -
On my building blog, I posted a technique by George Gassaway showing how he filled the seams. He'd mask on either side of the seam and direct the primer right on just the seam itself.
I wasn't saying that technique was the "end all" especially now with body tubes that have wrinkles like Bradycros mentioned.
Mr. Gassaway's method works great on large tubes like the Saturn V. On a smaller diameter rocket it might just be easier to do an overall shot of primer and just sand to surface.

For me (for now), using a Q-tip to apply CA works to apply the glue on the inside of the body tube ends. I'll have to try the plastic wrap.
I'm always open to a better way to do it.
I don't have much experience using anything to help spread the glue on a larger, flat surface like a fin. The TLP kits suggest setting a drop of CA on the fin and spreading it out with an index card.

I was curious which Batman logo Mr. Dorffler used when he designed the rocket. I found a collection of the logos online. Pretty interesting how many changes were made over the years.
It'd be interesting to look at other symetrical logos and split them down the middle for fin shape ideas.

hcmbanjo said:

The build is looking great!

Click to expand...

Thanks!

I wasn't saying that technique was the "end all" especially now with body tubes that have wrinkles like Bradycros mentioned.
Mr. Gassaway's method works great on large tubes like the Saturn V. On a smaller diameter rocket it might just be easier to do an overall shot of primer and just sand to surface.

Click to expand...

Oh, well there's that. My limited experience with this was building a couple of ugly rockets before I read your technique, and then the final finish was MUCH better. I guess I'm saying that I really had no reason to question the method since it works very well for me.

For me (for now), using a Q-tip to apply CA works to apply the glue on the inside of the body tube ends. I'll have to try the plastic wrap.
I'm always open to a better way to do it.

Click to expand...

I don't know if it's the type of CA I'm using (oderless) but I find I'm using more than just a couple of drops to get the tube ends and fins covered. The reason I'm using this stuff is that it's the only bottle I've ever used that didn't dry closed after 1 use - wasting the rest. The local hobby shop sold it to me for the Saturn vacuform wraps along with a bunch of extension tubes. Those are long gone but this bottle just works great and I don't know what the difference is.

I was curious which Batman logo Mr. Dorffler used when he designed the rocket. I found a collection of the logos online. Pretty interesting how many changes were made over the years.
It'd be interesting to look at other symetrical logos and split them down the middle for fin shape ideas.

Click to expand...

I found this same image online when I was looking. I mentioned early in this build that I'm going to go with a different paint scheme than the instructions, so this is as good a time as any to mention what I plan on doing.

I want the final finish to be a Batman theme rocket. It wasn't my plan to exactly reproduce this logo, but I wanted the fins to emulate the colors. If I were a more advance builder I might find some balsa and cut the fins to the shape on this logo too, but for now the colors are enough for me.


To do this I took the AutoCAD outline of the fins (shown in an earlier post) and offset the edge towards the inside of the fin, except for the root edge.


And here is what (I hope) the fins will look like when I paint them.


I've come up with a way to make the masking fairly easy - I think. The bottom half of the body tube will be black and the upper half will be yellow, with a fade in between. And I'll finish it with a self made decal of the batman logo from the old TV show on the upper yellow section.

If I can make it look like the vision in my mind, it should be really neat looking.

The next step isn't painting primer like I thought a few posts up, dangit.

The next step is to glue the upper stage engine mount into the body tube. When I first read the instructions on this I was impressed at the neat way the designer came up with to ensure proper spacing of the two engine mounts. They both had an engine block on opposite ends, so when ready for flight the taped together engines would have an engine block above the second stage engine and below the first stage.

To get it spaced right the kit comes with two yellow tubes that you tape together to give you a proper length tube to simulate the engines. I'm not sure why they didn't just make it one tube in the kit - maybe they had a bunch of these lengths in stock? It didn't matter, I taped them together.

The method is to take the lower stage which already has it's engine tube glued in place, slide in the yellow spacer tube, put the upper engine tube on top of that, and then shove the whole thing up into the main body tube. If you have glue in the right place, you'll end up with the upper engine tube positioned correctly and you can remove the rest and let the upper engine tube dry in place.

Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, the graphic instructions fail in two important places.


First - in step 1 they show the coupler being glued into the bottom section - which is where it should be. That's good. For some reason they also show another floating tube of glue off to the right. In step 2 they show the coupler drying in the stage. But the coupler disappears from their bottom stage for the remainder of the instructions!!

Secondly - in step 7 they suggest putting glue on the inside surface of the main body tube so you can glue the engine tube in place. That looks okay on the instructions page, but if you do this you'll only end up smearing glue all over your coupler where you don't want it, and risk gluing the entire thing together. We all know how quickly white glue cements two tight fitting tubes together.

The instructions *should* have said to use a scrap piece of balsa to transfer glue about an inch up the inside of the main body tube, which I did, and then slide it onto the second stage engine tube. I was also able to spin the upper engine tube a little to spread out the glue and then put the spacer back in to double check the position.

To mount my upper stage motor I followed the steps that the instructions should have said. Here are the pieces ready to go. The tube with the big F is the upper engine tube, and the long yellow tube with the two Ks on it is the spacer. Also note that the lower section already has the coupler glued in place.



The yellow spacer slides into the lower engine tube, and goes up against the engine block ring on the bottom. The upper engine tube slides on top of the yellow spacer, with it's engine block ring on the top.



In this picture you can see the yellow spacer inside, up against the upper engine block ring.



Glue was placed inside the main body tube with a piece of balsa I cut from the scrap, but I forgot to take a picture showing how far up it went. It was above the CA that I had spread around the tube end. Here is the upper engine tube in place.



As I mentioned before, I was able to spin the upper engine tube to ensure good glue coverage and then I double checked the spacing by putting it back onto the yellow tube briefly. Once everything dried I was finally ready to spray some primer.

The next step was to spray a coat of primer all over the rocket and then sand it smooth. I'd already done this with the nose section so this is just the main body and the first stage.



Last night I was SO excited to finally be painting this project that I absentmindedly forgot to cover the coupler with tape before spraying. I had to spend a lot of time with heavy grit sand paper to get enough off to be able to slide the coupler in and out again. It was a tight fit before, but if I hadn't sanded off the paint it wouldn't have gone in well at all. I'll probably have to sand on it a little more before I'm done, but I was tired of sanding so I stopped when it looked good.

It's started raining here this morning so I don't think I'll paint anything else until it clears up, either tomorrow or Sunday. I've decided that my earlier issues with the paint crackling was largely because of humidity issues. I do all my painting indoors, in my unfinished basement (the concrete floor is quite a mess) but when it's raining outside it's still enough bad hoo-doo to fudge up my finish. Since the main attraction (for me) on this build is the paint scheme, I'll wait for the sun to come back out.

Wow! Great paint plan.
That'll look amazing. I'll be following the mask.

On the Batrok I did Batman colors, but based it on the costume colors from the old Adam West TV series.
This is no where near what you've got planned.

The rain didn't stay very long and soon the sun was out so I decided to paint. The first thing I did was to spray primer on a spare tube and when it dried attempt to paint a fade from black to yellow. I started with a good coat of yellow (lighter color first is what I've read) and then black.

When I was doing the black I got a good coat on the end to start. To paint the fade I held the tube at different distances as I sprayed the black onto the yellow to see how much paint would actually land on the tube. The test piece ended up with an uneven fade around the tube but I was able to figure out how to do what I wanted.

Here's the test tube:


Next I painted the 3 sections of the rocket to get ready to try the fade for real. The first stage with the big bat wings was painted all black. The nose section was painted all yellow. The main body was painted yellow from the top and only about 90% down. When I was ready to put the black on that section I'd start from the bottom end.

Here are the 3 sections drying before I attempted the fade:


My intended method for spraying the fade was to imagine the main body was in 4 sections of equal length. I'd keep the top solid yellow and the bottom solid black. The quarter of the tube nearest the black would get black paint sprayed on from about 18" away, and the next section up would get paint sprayed from about 24" away. This would give a more gradual fade than just spraying once around from far away. When I actually did the painting the bottom black section ended up being more than a quarter of the body length because I decided to start the fade above the launch lug - but the rest was still the same.

Here's the final body fade:


I'm VERY pleased with how the final paint turned out on the body tubes!! I really hope the fins and the decal turn out that close to how the vision looks in my mind too.

Neat build thread - this is a great new design from Estes, and gives a lot of customizing possibilities. Should be a fun flier on A8-0 to A8-5 (at least until we can convince them to bring back the 1/2A6-4). I like that they've used the aft engine block, like old Centuri designs. Thanks for pointing out the instruction goofs. I'm looking forward to your finished product!

bradycros said:

The texture of Estes tubes between the filled spirals looks like badly bagged rice. They are not so smooth.

Expand photo to exsamine body tube in detail.

Click to expand...

Glad my pic helped you explain shody tube texture

Horaryelrod100 said:

Glad my pic helped you explain shody tube texture

Click to expand...

'Shoddy' isn't the word I would have used.

I would have used the word that discribes what a bear does in the woods!

The first idea I had for masking the fins to paint the yellow around the edges, was to use the CAD drawing above to make thick template that I could use to trace around several times. Then tape several pieces of masking tape on my cutting board to make a single piece as big as a fin. I could trace the shape on the big tape, cut it out with a hobby knife, and use that piece of masking tape to mask off the fins. It probably would have worked fine, but it seemed like a lot of work for each fin.

My second idea for masking the fins was to use sticker paper that could be printed on and cut out. I could print the shape from the computer directly on the sticker sheet (no tracing required) then cut the single piece out with scissors it would be a single piece that wouldn't come apart. The only drawback is the unknown reaction the sticker would have to the painted surface below or with what was painted on top. Testing should answer that.

When I was testing the method for painting a fade onto a body tube, I also cut out a small shape of sticker and put it near the end of the tube on the primer coat. Then when I painted the black coat I pulled off the sticker before the black paint had fully dried.

Here is the area after I took off the sticker mask:


I learned 3 things:
1 - The sticker is VERY sticky, and I should do something to reduce the tackiness before putting them in place or they will likely damage the paint below - IF I'm able to remove the stickers.

2 - I need to let the underlying paint completely dry before putting on the sticker. At least a couple of days.

3 - The stickers left a clean edge, and this would probably work just fine.

I took the fin outline shape (shown in post number 15 above) and copied it 3 times to give me enough shapes to cover all 4 fins. Luckily they fit on one sheet of paper easily and I was able to print them onto a sheet of sticker.

When I tried to print the shapes on sticker paper the first time I made a mistake with the scale and the fins printed HUGE. This was going to waste a sheet of this stuff and it wasn't cheap! But then I realized it wouldn't be wasted if I re-used it. So I printed the shapes to the correct scale, and just ignored the big honking fin shapes.

Here are the fin shapes printed on paper (left) and the sticker sheet (right):


The fin shapes have an inner and outer line. The outer line is the outside edge of the fins and the inner line is the mask I need to cut out. Here is one mask cut out:


I used a straight edge and a hobby knife to cut the straight line at the fin mounting edge, but free handed the curves with scissors. I figured the exact shape wasn't critical and if I strayed from the lines slightly as I cut it didn't matter. But I tried to be careful anyway. It took a long time but I eventually had all 8 masks cut out (one for each side of the 4 fins):

Before the masking went on the fins I decided to put the rocket pieces together now that the paint had fully dried and see how it looked:



The nose section is solid yellow, the main body fades from yellow to black, and the first stage section is solid black. I think this turned out great, I'm very pleased so far!

From the test piece of the sticker I found out that the tackiness of the sticker needed to be reduced a lot for it to work as a good mask. So once again I employed a method I learned from reading Chris Michielssen's rocket building blog - I stuck the mask to my pant leg and pulled it off a couple of times. I wanted the mask to stick, but not do any damage. I was wearing blue jeans and every time I stuck the fin shaped sticker to my leg and pulled it off again it pulled up a lot of lint, and really reduced the stickiness. Twice per sticker produced this:



I carefully stuck each cut out to the fins and tried to keep them as centered as I could. I started with the straight edge near the body tube and pressed the edges down all the way to the tip. Then I took a short piece of dowel and burnished the edge of the sticker all the way around. The test piece produced a good paint line where I'd burnished the edge, but a very fuzzy line where I didn't.

When all the stickers were on I covered the rest of the first stage with masking tape and stuck the whole thing on top of a large dowel rod for painting. Here's the stage masked and ready for paint:


I've asked a few people what they think about the first coat of paint on a mask being the same color as what is below, and I've gotten mixed answers. The theory is that any areas that will leak paint under the mask will be filled with the under color and it will help the mask be better, producing sharper lines and less overspray.

The guy at my local hobby shop swears it's a great idea and suggests to always do it. I asked Chris Michielssen about it on his blog recently and he said he hasn't done it for years having not found it too helpful.

For this build, I decided to do it because I wanted really sharp lines and didn't want to do much clean up. Since the section had already been painted black I first shot black paint over the masking. I tried to get enough on the fin edges to do what it was supposed to do, but there was no way to avoid getting a lot of paint on the sticker too. Normally I wouldn't care how much got on the mask, but when I saw this I was really worried!! Holy painting mess Batman!


I dabbed at the sticker area with some napkins and soaked up most of what looked like trouble and let the rest dry. At first I thought the sticker paper was having a reaction to the paint and was coming un-stuck from the fin, but it was just the paint not sticking well to the shiny sticker surface. There was probably something I could have sprayed on the sticker before doing this to avoid this problem, but I don't know what that might be. It didn't matter, I got enough off with the napkin so it didn't do any damage.

After that paint was given a half day to dry I put a couple of coats of yellow onto the fin edges. There were a couple of places where the yellow and black paint mixture started to drip off the sticker but those were also easily handled with a napkin and no damage was done. Here's the yellow paint on the mask:


So far so good. I'm still pleased with the way this masking method is working. Now to let the yellow paint dry for a little while and remove the mask.

Do you have to use a really gruff voice when counting down for launch with this one?

When I removed the masking tape the stickers were still stuck on the fins more than I was happy with. I think burnishing the edges really put them on tight! But using a hobby knife to peel back a corner I was able to get most of the stickers off in one piece. A few of them left big hunks of sticker residue on the fins, but the knife once again helped get that off by starting at an edge and being careful. Here's the fins with all the masking removed:



There were a few places where the yellow paint got onto the black. A few places where the paint just leaked under the mask (like seems to always happen somewhere) and a few places where I wasn't being careful enough and yellow paint that had gotten on my finger while removing the masking got onto the black when I accidentally touched it. A black sharpie made quick work of those areas! There's also a few small places where I would love to have a yellow sharpie to cover some black that got onto the wrong place, but I think I'll have to just use a brush and yellow paint to touch it up.

Here is the Hyper Bat BATMAN sitting on my rocket display area.



As nearly everyone here knows, having something turn out exactly like the image you had in your mind before you started is a GREAT feeling! This couldn't have gone better as far as I'm concerned.

It's nearly finished. Next up - adding a custom decal to the upper nose section.

paul.nortness said:

Do you have to use a really gruff voice when counting down for launch with this one?

Click to expand...

So people can barely understand what I'm saying? Ha! No, that would be the Dark Knight build.

This one is more of the Tim Burton film logo color with a 1960's logo going on the upper section. So I guess I have to count down and sound like I'm trying to sneak up on zero like Adam West would sound.