It has been a few weeks since my last update, as progress will remain at a standstill until temps rise enough to prime the model. (The time has been used to work on my latest ukulele project, which uses exactly the same skill set as rocket construction, intriguingly.)
I did have the opportunity yesterday to add some detail to the exhaust vanes, the basic construction of which was covered back in
this post a few years ago. We're going to add some simple nut and bolt details to the vanes, similar to what we can see in this photo of the RAF Hendon V-2 display.
The carbon vane assemblies on the V-2 were incredibly fragile and expensive. The vanes were transported along with the rockets in a special handling crate, and were added only at the end of the preflight process to reduce the possibility of damage. The installation of the exhaust vanes can be seen at the 28:33 point of this British-produced documentary of Project "Backfire," a V-2 demonstration program that took place just after the close of WWII.
Step One was to purchase some 00-90 brass hex nuts off of Amazon. .025" styrene rod will be used to simulate the threaded bolt section, albeit without the threads.
Next, the bolt locations are embossed into the assembled vane part.
A tiny drill bit is used to create a socket for the styrene rod bolt section. Note also that I have added a styrene tube "collar" to the vane axle to add a bit of visual interest.
The styrene rod is anchored into place using a drop of medium CA. Each bolt segment is much longer than it needs to be to make mounting them easier.
The nuts are mounted on the styrene rods, again using medium CA as an adhesive.
The styrene "bolts" are then cut slightly longer than the intended final length, after which we sand them down to the final size using a sanding stick (sorry, no picture).
After sanding each bolt has a bit of mushroom-shaped plastic flash on the tip. We can get rid of that by touching each bolt with a tiny drop of Tamiya thin plastic cement, which will immediately melt the excess plastic into oblivion (no photo).
Here's a quick shot of the completed vane assemblies. After priming they will be airbrushed with the final color coats and then lightly weathered to bring out the detail we just added.
These are tiny little boogers! As a reference each square on the cutting mat in the photos is 1/2".
More later,
James