Pigasus build thread

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"The wings get paper glued onto one side after it's painted, so this isn't really the same thing as papering the fins. I'm sure it'll add a little strength, but the main purpose seems to be the graphics and not the strength. If these fins were papered there would be a layer of paper glued to the fins before the primer was sprayed on."

The wing prints actually add a lot of strength to the wings! Your wing cutting looks fine!CM

"Chris, the instructions say to use spray adhesive. Is there a reason not to use a very thin coat of white glue instead? I have a few days before I get to the point where I need to buy some adhesive if it's necessary."

You could use a thin coat of white glue. I've even used a glue stick. The edges may raise with just the glue stick.
I recommend the spray adhesive. The fins are sealed after painting and the white glue won't get into the balsa. CM
 
hcmbanjo said:
"The wings get paper glued onto one side after it's painted, so this isn't really the same thing as papering the fins. I'm sure it'll add a little strength, but the main purpose seems to be the graphics and not the strength. If these fins were papered there would be a layer of paper glued to the fins before the primer was sprayed on."

The wing prints actually add a lot of strength to the wings! Your wing cutting looks fine!CM
Click to expand...

Good to know. Thanks! Maybe I should paper over all the fins to cover up the seam if they don't disappear using primer?


hcmbanjo said:
"Chris, the instructions say to use spray adhesive. Is there a reason not to use a very thin coat of white glue instead? I have a few days before I get to the point where I need to buy some adhesive if it's necessary."

You could use a thin coat of white glue. I've even used a glue stick. The edges may raise with just the glue stick.
I recommend the spray adhesive. The fins are sealed after painting and the white glue won't get into the balsa. CM
Click to expand...

In theory would it matter that the glue doesn't penetrate the balsa for a graphic like this? The glue should still stick to the paint, and then there will be several coats of clear coat over the graphic to help protect it and hold it down. I think.
 
After sanding the entire rocket with 120 grit paper I have a better feeling about the fins. Somehow I managed not to break off any fins while sanding them. Whew! The outside of the wing fins were only lightly sanded because they'll be covered with the graphic and I don't really care how they look at this point. But I did want them a little smooth.

Pigasus 075.jpg

I paid a lot of attention to the fin seams. I'll know if the extra primer worked as soon as I spray on the next coat. Hopefully it'll go on even and the seam will disappear.

Pigasus 076.jpg

Maybe I'll go over the whole thing again with 400 grit before the next coat. Or maybe just the fins.
 
hcmbanjo said:
"The wings get paper glued onto one side after it's painted, so this isn't really the same thing as papering the fins. I'm sure it'll add a little strength, but the main purpose seems to be the graphics and not the strength. If these fins were papered there would be a layer of paper glued to the fins before the primer was sprayed on."

The wing prints actually add a lot of strength to the wings! Your wing cutting looks fine!CM

"Chris, the instructions say to use spray adhesive. Is there a reason not to use a very thin coat of white glue instead? I have a few days before I get to the point where I need to buy some adhesive if it's necessary."

You could use a thin coat of white glue. I've even used a glue stick. The edges may raise with just the glue stick.
I recommend the spray adhesive. The fins are sealed after painting and the white glue won't get into the balsa. CM
Click to expand...

You risk severe warpage if you use a glue that has water as the carrier solvent, and apply it to one side only. The water penetrates the grain, causing it to swell, causing the opposite side to curl in. Non-water solvents (like spray adhesive or contact cement) do not seem to have the same effect. Nor does (water-based) glue over paint/primer, or if you apply it to both sides at the same time.
 
sooner.boomer said:
You risk severe warpage if you use a glue that has water as the carrier solvent, and apply it to one side only. The water penetrates the grain, causing it to swell, causing the opposite side to curl in. Non-water solvents (like spray adhesive or contact cement) do not seem to have the same effect. Nor does (water-based) glue over paint/primer, or if you apply it to both sides at the same time.
Click to expand...

As you pointed out, this doesn't happen when using it over paint/primer.

In this case the fins will have two coats of primer and at least two coats of paint before the glue goes on, so there won't be any warping.
 
After the first coat of primer was sanded off with 120 grit, and then another sanding with 400 grit, it was time to give it another coat which would only be sanded with 400 grit. Unfortunately I ran out of the Rustoleum 2 in 1 primer that I'd used to start with and I couldn't find any on the shelves anywhere! For the past 4 days I've stopped into every Lowes and Home Depot in the area to look for it.

I got tired of waiting so I just picked up another Rustoleum primer. I'm wishing that I'd waited until getting the 2 in 1. It goes on a lot thicker and does a much better job of filling in grooves and gaps. Here is what I used instead.

Pigasus 079.jpg

This stuff went on a lot darker than I expected too. After a good all over sanding with 400 grit it was looking really good and felt very smooth.

Pigasus 080.jpg

Here is a close up of the nose to nosecone transition that I filled in with CWF and sanded down. In this picture it looks like it might feel rough, but it definitely feels very smooth.

Pigasus 081.jpg
 
The first can of pink spray paint I found was at Michael's and I didn't notice that it was lacquer instead of enamel paint. After reading some on these forums about the differences I decided not to try it with lacquer and went back to buy some pink enamel. Since I will be applying decals I also had to have gloss paint and not flat or satin. This is the only pink gloss paint I could find. It doesn't say enamel anywhere on the can that I could find, but it didn't say lacquer either, so I risked it.

Pigasus 082.jpg

The first coat was very light, I could still see a lot of the primer color through the pink. After about 15 minutes a second thicker coat was added, and another 20 minutes later a third very thick coat was sprayed on. It's VERY pink. So far I haven't noticed any crinkling or other paint finish problems.

Pigasus 083.jpg

Here's the nose to nosecone transition after three coats of pink paint. Still looks good! I'm glad I gave it a fillet of CWF.

Pigasus 084.jpg
 
Looks great! It's a mango pig.
The nose transition seam is very smooth!
(Smoother than any of mine!)

Be ready, some of the decals that go over the nose might need some coaxing to fit the curves.
I had to make light cuts where the edges raised up.

Try removing the bubbles or smoothing wrinkles with a damp Q-tip.
That works better than a wet brush.
 
Last edited:
Decals!!

There's a few decals that go on this piggy. The first ones I put on were the back hoofs. When I first cut these out I left way too much decal surrounding the ink so when I set the dry decal on the foot I realized that cutting it very close to the ink was required. A quick trim and the decals fit.

Pigasus 085.jpg

I probably would have put these on wrong if I hadn't looked at the picture on the front of the kit.

Pigasus 086.jpg

The next decals I put on were the cheeks/mouth. After the feet, and after HCMBanjo's warning above about these particular decals going on the curved nosecone, I trimmed them close too.

Pigasus 087.jpg

After laying them on the rocket I realized I needed to cut angles into the decal between the cheeks and the mouth to get a better curve.

Pigasus 088.jpg

They laid down fairly snug on the nose cone without wrinkles.

Pigasus 089.jpg
 
Next up was the ears. These are pretty much just a shape of pink color that fades away. At first I was afraid that since the pink I used was much darker than the pink on the kit cover that these wouldn't show up very well.

Pigasus 090.jpg

But, as it turns out, I very much like the way it looks!

Pigasus 091.jpg

Ears the other one. (See what I did there?)

Pigasus 092.jpg

The next decals are the front legs. These are designed to overlap the body tube and the nose cone, and after they're on you cut them with a sharp blade. The ink on these is the foot and then two lines trailing back to be the legs, so before I put them on I cut out the decal between the long lines as much as possible, to avoid wrinkles as much as possible. It was tricky to keep the leg lines where they're supposed to be as I dried off the water but I managed.

Pigasus 093.jpg

The last decal to go on was the nose but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it. Basically it's two small black ovals for the nostrils.

I'm giving these decals a few days to set up - not because they need that much time, but because I'm out of town in Orlando on business. When I get back home the next step will be to glue on the paper covering on the wings and glue the goggles to the face, and then cover the rocket with a lot of clear coat.
 
Great build thread! I bought one of these kits also and will build (someday). For some reason I already have the Rustoleum 2X Pink on the shelf in my workshop. Much lighter than your pink and probably closer to the kit picture I would guess.

3cb49d66-3933-4a9d-9922-aaebb52d5b79_300.jpg
 
dixontj93060 said:
Great build thread! I bought one of these kits also and will build (someday). For some reason I already have the Rustoleum 2X Pink on the shelf in my workshop. Much lighter than your pink and probably closer to the kit picture I would guess.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it is, but I went with darker because that's the only non-lacquer pink I could find. Heh. Also, I'm color blind, so a light pink would probably look white to me so I can actually tell mine is pink. Now that I think about it, there was probably a light pink on the shelf next to the dark pink I picked up, but since I couldn't tell it was pink I never considered it.

You should do a build thread too!!
 
Mushtang said:
In a recent thread in the off topic section, LucasSpringsteen asked about filling tube spirals. Many methods were discussed but I mentioned how I use primer to do it. This is a method that HCMBanjo mentioned in his blog (I think) at one point, which was a method that George Gassaway came up with. I may or may not be doing this the way George does it, but it's worked VERY well for me and I no longer fill spirals with CWF.

First I make sure I can see the spirals. The spiral that is easiest to see doesn't need to be filled. The other spiral which does need filling is nearly invisible, so I used a pencil to make it show up by drawing on it lightly. Here's the spiral with the pencil mark halfway around.

View attachment 167418

I used some blue painters tape to mask off about 1/16" on each side of the spiral. This doesn't need to be a super accurate job, and certainly doesn't need to be done with expensive Tamiya tape. The point here is to avoid sanding off as much primer as you can. It's possible to do this without the tape (I've done it a couple of times) but much easier with. Putting tape onto the tube took about 3 minutes.

View attachment 167419

The primer I like to use best for this is Rust-Oleum 2-in-1 Filler & Sandable. This goes on fairly thick so it fills the gap well, and sands easily when dry.

View attachment 167420

I sprayed the primer into the spiral VERY close to the tube. Maybe an inch or so away from the surface. This is a lot closer than you'd normally spray primer or paint onto something because you don't want it to drip. But to do this it doesn't really matter. The thicker the better. Because I'm spraying so close I can only get short lengths painted on each pass, so it takes a few minutes to go round and round. It dries fast enough that once I get all the way down the tube I start over and can get two coats on. You can see how far to each side of the spiral the primer has gotten. Not very far at all. This shows you how close I was to the tube when spraying.


View attachment 167421

About 5 minutes later I took off the tape and the result is a very thick spiral of primer filling the tube spiral. When this fully dries I'll sand it smooth. You can see that there's really not a lot of primer to take off because of the masking. You can also see that I had some runs under the tape, but that's okay. It took about 3 minutes to put the tape on, but that will save about 10 or 15 minutes of sanding.

View attachment 167422

After I sand the spiral I can spray another coat of primer on the entire tube. After sanding most of that coat off the tube should be really smooth with no spiral, and ready for gluing on fins.
Click to expand...

EXCELLENT tips on the spiral filling! :cheers: Blue painter's tape is cheaper than a can of good primer! Never used the Rusto, use Duplicolor gray and white. Gray to find the first flaws, then finish with white (unless it's a black finish coat, then I coat the white with silver, gold, or copper.) Awesome pics and build!

Thomas
 
So what motor will you be using?
An AeroTech “Warp Swine” perhaps?

Thanks for the detailed assembly photos. I was thinking about purchasing one of these kits but was reluctant to buy a “Pig in a Polk”.
 
Birdie birdie in the sky, why’d you do that in my eye. I will not laugh I will not cry, I’m just glad that pigs don’t fl. . .Oh crap!!
 

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