After working on the engine bells last night I continued on the details. Several small dowels are included in the kit and you're told to cut different lengths for different things such as ullage motors, cable racks, LOX tunnels, etc. I used an emery board to round the ends. I mis calculated something and somehow ended up without enough dowel to make the last 3" long piece for the cable rack. No problem, I just cut a piece of balsa from an old fin scrap and shaped it.
The instructions don't say anything about painting these but I realized they needed to be white, and some areas black, before I glued them in place, otherwise it would be a serious pain in the butt to paint them on the rocket.
One problem with painting a dozen small dowels of various lengths is that if I laid them down to dry they'd stick to whatever I laid them on. The solution I came up with was to use the cardboard box that the kit came in and stand the dowels up in the corrugation after painting. I left the bottom inch or so not painted and I'll have to do two coats and flip them all over. I'm sure there was probably a better way, so I could have painted them completely the first time, but this works too.
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This is the balsa cable rack the next morning. Only some of it has been painted. You can see where I sanded shoulders in the ends where they will overlap a body wrap. This way the piece can lay flat on the rocket tube and the card stock wrap too.
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Some of these pieces, like the cable rack, will require sections to be painted black before gluing on, but I'll finish painting them all white first and then use the sharpie to color the black.