Biohazard build thread

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Wait, these things can fly? S'pose I orta put a parachute in there at some point. I was just plannin' to put an E12 in the thing and scatter its ashes in the river.

Seriously, I have no idea what I'm talking about at this point. I feel like I've been painting this rocket for about a decade.
 
I guess with Estes E's you really have to know your date codes. Maybe a E 18 composite reload would be safer. No need to recklessly endanger such a purdy rocket on the first flight!
 
Ha ha, fear not, for this rocket I put in a short MM so I could never be tempted. It'll be AT E15s if/when I want it to *go*. For this one I'll probably work my way up from a C11; it doesn't sim very high due to the ring and tubes but it's fairly light, so I want to see what it actually does. My mind sim says the drag penalty for the ring will not be as bad as predicted by Rocksim, in which case an E could put this thing uncomfortably high.

But first I suppose I should actually finish it. Red paint goes on this weekend, Cthulhu willing.
 
For this one I'll probably work my way up from a C11;

I've used countless C11's for maiden flights. Providing they were under a specific weight. Great starter-off motor. I shot the Dart with a C11, then a D12, and last weekend with an E9. I was tempted to go with the suggested E20, but I wanted to see how much walking I was up for that weekend.
 
Man Neil, that's looking awesome!!
We're launching this weekend :wink::wink:
 
Pick a weekend this month and I'll bring the equipment for you too launch.
I really want to see these rockets in person, they look so cool on here.
The Diamond Cutter I've been drooling over for what almost year now? LOL
 
Pick a weekend this month and I'll bring the equipment for you too launch.
I really want to see these rockets in person, they look so cool on here.

That is such an absurdly nice offer I don't even know what to say. But first I should try to see if I can get to a proper club launch.

The Diamond Cutter I've been drooling over for what almost year now? LOL

Not quite a year yet! (but getting there ;)) Yeah, I really want to see that thing fly....
 
Masking is tedious but I find it kind of relaxing. This is the last masking session for this bird.

First I took a look at my handiwork from last time and realized I had forgotten something:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473383744.571101.jpg

Gonna be hard to stick a painting dowel in there.... I removed the tape covering the MM, shoved a rod up its butt, and retaped. Ahh, better.

Next, the middle fins needed the fine masking around their root. I think I did a better-than-usual job here, although I shouldn't jinx it.
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473383753.513996.jpg

Finally, the mask for the pods. Here's what the masks looked like as delivered by Mark:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473383766.052856.jpg

The mask is very close to being plain old yellow vinyl, although this time I think I detected a slightly less grippy adhesive (could be imagining it, dunno). Anyway, each pod needs one of those hourglass thingies wrapped around it to keep out the red and leave the nice white swoosh at the end. Applying these pieces proved quite a bit harder than I expected, if I used standard vinyl application techniques. Even though I made the masks a bit oversized so I didn't have to get the position *exactly* right, it was still a challenge to get them aligned satisfactorily. Eventually, on two of them, I found them to be sufficiently out of position that I just peeled them off and repositioned them. It turned out that in this case, that was by far the easiest way to do it (peel them completely off the backing and then place them where desired). I wouldn't normally do that with vinyl due to the inevitable touching of the adhesive side, but since these all need to get peeled off eventually anyway I figured it didn't matter if I got a bit of skin oil onto the sticky bits (heck, maybe it would make them easier to remove later on).

Here's what one of them looks like, in position:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473383778.994589.jpg

What's white will be red, what's yellow will be white. I'll need to remember to re-burnish all the edges before painting (I often forget this!)

And here is the whole assembly, all ready for the red paint:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473383802.675834.jpg

Whew!
 
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Well lookie here!
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473639083.948427.jpg

Good, bad, or otherwise, the last can has been rattled for this build. There is still masking to remove, and vinyl to apply, and red and/or white touch-ups to do (probably), but no more spraying. Thank goodness.
 
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I removed the masking tonight. The best lesson I can learn is that my painting ambitions exceed my painting skills. Oh well!

The pod swoosh paint masks proved to be troublesome; the edges just didn't seal down tight in some places. As a result I got this:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473987396.437501.jpg

Ugh. There were a couple of other areas where there was a bit of bleeding; I haven't decided yet how much effort I'm going to put into fixing it all because just as often I make it worse. Gonna have to do something with those swooshes, though, maybe try a Mr Clean magic eraser to remove some of the excess red.

Here's what the base of the rocket looks like after unmasking:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473989390.350663.jpg

I then applied the black vinyl to the ring. Did an OK job, there are a couple of bubbles in there but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get them out. Will have to work on that another time, if at all.

Here's a good view of the rear of the rocket, showing the colors and various swooshes:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473987414.978960.jpg

And finally, here's the whole rocket, finished minus some touch-ups and some Future still to come... in the future.
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473987408.923960.jpg

Wildly imperfect finish-wise but still pretty spiffy I'd say.
 
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Skin oil and dirt, dust, is your enemy when using vinyl. Your peeling it off and on is probably what caused the bleeding. It's not going to stick as well as it did the first time. There are some methods of applying vinyl that can nail accuracy and keeps your fingers off the sticky side. I recommend looking into some vinyl application videos to help out the next time you have to do this.

Your color concept is wonderful though. You really have a knack for that.
 
Skin oil and dirt, dust, is your enemy when using vinyl. Your peeling it off and on is probably what caused the bleeding. It's not going to stick as well as it did the first time. There are some methods of applying vinyl that can nail accuracy and keeps your fingers off the sticky side. I recommend looking into some vinyl application videos to help out the next time you have to do this.

I actually have watched them (multiple times :)) but these particular masks seemed to break all the rules. Pulling off the backing paper kept lifting the vinyl and or stretching and deforming it so it wouldn't stay where I had put it, probably due to its spindly shape and also it had to wrap around a fairly small radius tube.

Possibly shooting a sealer coat of paint or clear coat before the red would have helped in this case, maybe I'll try that in the future.

Your color concept is wonderful though. You really have a knack for that.

Thanks. It's actually a tortuous (and torturous) process for me to come up with this stuff, and a primary factor that will keep my scratcher output very low for the foreseeable future (I won't go forward with a design until I have the paint scheme, because it usually affects the build sequence). Frankly I'd be totally lost without the ability to preview in OR. It's pretty rewarding to compare the final product to the original OR renderings.

That said, I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to a lot of the fine detailing commonly found in commercial kits, and especially aircraft-style and/or scale- or scale-like designs. I'd probably be willing to pay someone to figure that stuff out for me. :p

One of the great reliefs of building a kit is not having to think about this stuff...
 
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:clap:
Looks really cool. I'm sure most people who haven't seen this thread would assume it was a professional kit and ask "That's a cool kit, who makes it?"
 
:clap:
Looks really cool. I'm sure most people who haven't seen this thread would assume it was a professional kit and ask "That's a cool kit, who makes it?"

Thanks, that is typically the type of result I'm aiming for. I think this one would actually be kittable if someone were so inclined, since it doesn't require any unusual parts. Packaging the decals and paint masks (or coming up with a better way to do it that is less troublesome than what I did) could be a challenge though.
 
By the way, thanks Cabernut for the original idea to use the biohazard symbol as design inspiration; I probably would not have come up with this design without it. I am certain there are lots of other interesting things you could do with that symbol (a couple of which were posted in my original thread).
 
I actually have watched them (multiple times :)) but these particular masks seemed to break all the rules. Pulling off the backing paper kept lifting the vinyl and or stretching and deforming it so it wouldn't stay where I had put it, probably due to its spindly shape and also it had to wrap around a fairly small radius tube.

Then there's always the wet application. This enables you to gently slide the vinyl over the surface until you get it positioned just where you want it. Then you start pressing the fluids out from under the vinyl to stick it into place. Always a real good idea to do this well and let it dry for a day until all moister is gone. Then do a last minute thumb/squeegee on it before you paint. Just to make sure all edges are stuck well.
 
I decided that those pods needed to be touched up, regardless of whether the white matched or not. I first tried sanding off the excess red, then a Mr. Clean magic eraser, and neither had any useful effect. So I grabbed my little touch-up wands (second pic shows how small they are; that's one of the small Testor's paint bottles):
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1474227217.275875.jpg
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1474227226.750685.jpg

These little guys are super cheap and really good for very fine touch-up work. Use and discard. I masked off the areas I was going to touch up and went at it with the Testor's white. I could've done slightly better in a few places, but overall I'm happy with the result.

Before:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1473987396.437501.jpg

After:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1474227143.252079.jpg

Then, using a normal brush, I did this:
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1474227134.173221.jpg

Apparently I still have to roll a qtip or something on the edge, looks like I didn't get perfect coverage with the red. Minor.

Finally, I went to do a last bit of black touch up, and HOLY $%*(& MY BLACK TOUCH-UP PAINT IS FLAT ALSO!!! Guess I'll need another trip to Michael's to pick up the gloss.
 
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Wow, looks really professional. Great finish, looks better than the OpenRocket visualization. Are you going to make a face card for this one?
 
That's actually a cool idea on how to present your scratchers. Add the recommended engines, which would be the ones you actually flew it on.
 
Very COOL(ish)!!! :wink:

Nice touch on the facecard!

PS: Who's this "Frank" it mentions?
 
It is good to see this one finished and in paint, it is spectacular! The face card is an awesome idea, now I just need to work on my OR fu and my Paint fu to make it happen.
 
It is good to see this one finished and in paint, it is spectacular!

Thanks, not quite finished yet though. :) The end is in sight!

The face card is an awesome idea, now I just need to work on my OR fu and my Paint fu to make it happen.

Should I post a tutorial on how I did this, along with my files? I could do that if folks think it would be useful, though it would take a little while to pull together.
 
we're having a launch this coming Sunday :wink: :wink:
 
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