Dr. Zooch - Saturn V build - FINISHED

[Mushtang]

WOW - you sure do build some kits

You mean I build a lot of them? I don't think I'm that fast, in fact I think I'm slow. I mean, I'm no bradycros, but I'm taking my time. :rofl:

Those engine bells look scary :y:

I know!! The entire time I was working on this I dreaded getting to the engines. But they turned out to be fairly easy and I think anyone can do them. Dr. Zooch did a GREAT job coming up with something that looks fantastic when finished but is within most people's grasp if they take their time.

Hats off to you on this one - waaaaaaay beyond my ability for sure.

Not at all. I've seen your work. You could do a waaaaaaay better job on this that I have. I've made lots of mistakes and have been pretty honest about them.

 

[rocketspan]

This is a great thread. My hats off to anyone that can make FGP and still take pictures. The engine bells on this rocket did seem like a daunting task at first but the processes aren't beyond doable, thanks mainly to the excellent instructions included in this kit. For me, the engines are the coolest part of the kit. I've probably committed some form of heresy by leaving the alpha characters off the fins, but what the heck, I like 'em better this way.



My suggestion for this kit is to secure the fins with small external fillets and fillets internal to the fairings. I didn't beef up the fins internally and had two come off on a landing after a C6-5 launch. I glued them back in with beefed up fillets. Personally I think this rocket flies better on B6-4s. I had nothing but trouble with C's after the rockets's first C flight. In part because I'm not happy with Quest engines and was having trouble with these overheating and softening the engine mount glue in my LPRs - their paper casing will actually be scorched on the outside when I pull them from their mounts.

This rocket last flew into an arc straight into the ground at MWP9 and broke another fin between the fillets. It's escape tower is bent but she's cobbled together as well as she can be. The instructions suggest making an extra engine bell, which I did and haven't needed, luckily. I would go ahead and make up one or two extra fins while you have the templates and stock on hand. You may need them.



The other mistake I made with this rocket was shortening the engine hook. It seemed unnaturally long to me but this is the way it should be. I cut it to match my other low power birds and it comes up way short. :dark:
The engines work as friction-fit but I'm not happy with myself for second-guessing Wes.

 

[luke strawwalker]

APM= Auxiliary Propulsion Modules... They were basically 'rocket packs' added onto the sides of the S-IVB to keep it stable... sorta self-contained RCS (Reaction Control System) units... there should be some graphics showing the works in them in one of the NASA Study Summaries dealing with Saturn V and related hardware over in the Scale section of the forum. When the S-II stage burned out and shut down, the explosive bolts fired holding the S-IVB to the upper end of the conical S-II interstage. The retros on the S-II interstage fired and the three ullage/separation motors on the S-IVB fired, pushing the stages apart, since the S-IVB's conical thrust structure and J-2 engine were buried deep in the conical S-II interstage. Once the S-IVB was free and clear, the J-2 would ignite and push the stage into orbit. The J-2 provided stability to the stage during engine firing by gimbaling the engine as needed. Once the J-2 shut down, there was no longer any stability for the S-IVB provided by the engine, so the APS could fire small thrusters laterally to keep the stage stable. They could also fire to provide a bit of acceleration for propellant settling just before the J-2 reignited for the TLI manuever. Once the J-2 shut down after injecting the stack through TLI, the APS would keep the S-IVB stable after the CSM separated from the stack and the Spacecraft Adapter Panels were ejected (spring loaded) so that the stage and LM would remain stable for the CSM to dock with the LM and extract it from the stage.

Later! OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

As Luke Strawwalker pointed out earlier, the bottoms of my fins weren't horizontal, they were angled backwards. They're supposed to be horizontal, but I guess the way I glued the fairings onto the body tube made them not stand up like they should have. After he pointed it out I noticed it every time I looked at the model so I had to fix it!! Could you live with this?

View attachment 82166

The first thing I did was to pull off each fin. To get a fin off I slowly bent it back and forth until the glue weakened and eventually let go. When they came off there was a lot of dried glue that had to be cut off and the surface cleaned up. Here's one fairing that just lost a fin:

View attachment 82167

After that I sanded the root surface of each fin to remove a *slight* amount of wood, giving the fin a different angle at the fairing connection. The outside edges of the fins actually stick out at least the same distance if not a little further, so I hope this removal of fin area doesn't make it fly badly. But the fins went back on and the bottoms are now horizontal. Hooray!

View attachment 82165

I have to say, that does look MUCH better...

Later! OL JR

 

[Mushtang]

I have to say, that does look MUCH better...

Later! OL JR

Thanks. I am seriously considering pulling off the FGP and doing it again. They all look too big to me.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Before I did that, me personally, I'd take a SHARP hobby knife and try shaving them down a bit... gently whittling them down to the size you want...

I was surprised how well that worked with the epoxy putty; it's quite possible it will work just as well with FGP... and if it doesn't and they crumble or break, what have you lost?? It shouldn't hurt your nozzles if you go gently...

Worth a shot anyway IMHO...

Later and good luck! OL JR

 

[Mushtang]

I tried pulling off the FGP last night but I'd glued the glue on too well, and they weren't going to come off without destrying the bells. So I painted them with the steel paint and they look a lot better. I'm thinking once they're on the bottom of the rocket they'll be fine.

I've tried twice to print my scanned copy of the card stock, so I could replace the bottom graphic that I jacked up, and for some reason my stupid computer won't print it to scale. It's reduced about 90% so the circle is the wrong size.

Murphy's Law is following me around on this build.

 

[luke strawwalker]

I tried pulling off the FGP last night but I'd glued the glue on too well, and they weren't going to come off without destrying the bells. So I painted them with the steel paint and they look a lot better. I'm thinking once they're on the bottom of the rocket they'll be fine.

I've tried twice to print my scanned copy of the card stock, so I could replace the bottom graphic that I jacked up, and for some reason my stupid computer won't print it to scale. It's reduced about 90% so the circle is the wrong size.

Murphy's Law is following me around on this build.

You have to turn "Scaling off" on your printer... I've had problems like that before as well... there are so many different printers and stuff it's hard to tell you how to do it for your specific one... I take it you scanned in your wraps beforehand but now it's printing out subscale... here's a few "gotchas" I've learned to avoid the hard way...

1) when you're scanning in 8.5 x 11 sheets, MAKE SURE the scanner is set to "8.5 x 11 inch scan" instead of "scan size automatic" or whatever... "automatic" tends to trim the edges down near the edge of the color graphics and "throw away" the edges of the paper, so it produces a wonky-sized scan output... "8.5 X 11" size keeps the honkin' big ol' white edges of the paper intact so it doesn't screw up the printout size later (you can still work around this if you did it the "automatic" way but scanning it at 8.5 X 11 is just that much easier...

2) make sure that your printer is set to print "full size" images, and not "fit to page" or other such "automatic" type settings... basically you want 8.5 X 11 input to print out at 8.5 X 11 output... if you scanned it in on 'automatic' and it's a wonky size, setting the printer to "print full size" or whatever (NOT "fit to page") SHOULD work...

3) if you can't get it to print properly no matter what you do, you can always take one of the printouts, measure it carefully and as accurately as you can, and then measure the original as accurately as you can, and then compare the measurements of the two against each other... divide the smaller by the larger measurements and it should give you the % proportion that the printout is off... then you can go into the printer "advanced options" and ENLARGE the printout by difference between the size its been printing and 100%, (say it's printing at 85% of the actual size it should be, you'd increase the print size to 115% and try again). This should get you MUCH closer, and with a little experimentation and a few wasted prints and repeated attempts (usually on printer paper, then when I'm "Zeroed in" I stick a sheet of cardstock in the printer and print the final part) will get you the EXACT size you need.

4) I find the simplest way of "backing up" the wraps is just to use the printers "copier" feature to simply print a 100% copy out and stick it in the instructions envelope I keep my Zooch instructions in... that way I can just put this printer paper copy in the machine and a sheet of cardstock in the tray and hit "copy" and get a 100% copy on cardstock if I fudge a wrap... or need a duplicate part... You can scan them in as well, which probably gives a cleaner copy, but if the printer is cranking out subscale versions, the "copier" version should be 100% scale, no muss, no fuss...

Good luck!
OL JR

 

[Mushtang]

I take it you scanned in your wraps beforehand but now it's printing out subscale...

Yes, that's exactly what happened, and it's happened before. I eventually figured out how to get it to work in the past but I couldn't figure it out this time and it was killing me. But last night the gods smiled on me and I remembered how I got the printer to work... I used a different printer! I was using my wife's printer for some reason, and nothing I could do with any setting would allow it to print properly. But when I printed from my seldom used printer it worked perfect! The reason I seldom use mine is that the color cartridge is nearly empty and the black one is all the way empty, so when I print something black it has to use the color cartridge and mix the colors to print black, and that's not very efficient. But I ordered new cartridges last night and I went ahead and printed the file.

Here's the rocket with the misaligned image on the bottom, and the newly printed and cut out image laying on the table:



This time I was more careful to cut the engine hook space in the correct space, covered the back of the card stock with glue, and put it in place. Now it looks much better!



I'm sure when people see this one launch they'll be saying, "ooh" and, "aah" and, "Look and how nicely the graphic on the bottom of that rocket aligns with the engine fairings"!!!

 

[Mushtang]

I'd mentioned before that even though the FGP was WAY too big on the bells that I decided to live with it and painted them. Here's a picture of one of the bells right before I painted it. This shows the wrapped dowel stuck into the FGP.



You may or may not be able to tell how much the dowel sticks up past the top of the bell. After I painted them all and had replaced the graphic on the bottom of the rocket I was dry fitting the bells to see how they looked, and the dowels were way too tall. The instructions say to trim them down to fit, but these were so tall if I'd trimmed them to fit they'd be cut down way too far. So with the FGP being too big it not only looked bad but it was holding the dowels up too high. That was enough, I HAD to replace the FGP.

I'd glued the FGP to the bells and it seemed like removing them would destroy the bells, and if it did I'd just have to build new ones. Luckily it wasn't as bad as I feared and I was able to remove the FGP with little or no damage.

This time when I made the FGP I used a lot less glue to start off with and made them smaller. After I spread the glue on my palm with my finger it nearly disappeared, and took a lot less time to dry. Rolling it up into a worm shape I wrapped it around the bell and it looked a lot better. I even squished a flat place for the dowels to sit on.

Here's the 4 engines with the new FGP with the old, painted, FGP in front for comparison. The new stuff will shrink some as it dries and look even better.



Here are two of the bells with new FGP after drying overnight.



I'll give them the rest of the day to dry and check them tonight and probably repaint and install them. I'm much much happier with the way these turned out.

The moral of this build... don't use too much glue to make FGP for the engine bells.

 

[Mushtang]

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.



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.



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.

 

[luke strawwalker]

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.

View attachment 82543

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.

View attachment 82544

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.

I had the same problem... I ended up taking bits-n-pieces off different dowels and ended up without a dowel long enough to make the second S-IC systems tunnel...

I solved the problem by eating lunch at a Chinese buffet and eating several of the "teriyaki chicken-on-a-skewer" things and stuck the skewers in my shirt pocket... When I got back to the MIL's house, I scrubbed and dried them and then sanded them down a bit, cut the pointy end off, and sure enough-- exact match for the missing system tunnel...

I was worried about the paint not sticking properly due to chicken grease but it glued on and painted perfectly!

Later! OL JR

 

[Mushtang]

After the FGP dried for a day I painted the bells steel again and let them dry overnight. Mostly they turned out well, no major complaints considering all I did to them. Now that I've figured this stuff out I could make some really nice looking bells, and if this were a model to put on a shelf and look at I'd totally be redoing them to make them as pretty as could be. But this will be a flying model and they look good enough for that for sure. The next thing to do with them is to glue on the wrapped dowels but that shouldn't be a problem, then I can glue everything to the bottom of the rocket. Here's one of the bells with the new, thinner, FGP wrapped around it.



I was also able to finish painting all the details white. I turned them over in the corrugated box to dry and took them out this morning to inspect. There are a few places that will need to be touched up, but they're good for now.



I'll have a little bit of time this weekend to work on this model and I hope to have it finished before I leave the country for a week on Monday.

 

[Mushtang]

I had the same problem... I ended up taking bits-n-pieces off different dowels and ended up without a dowel long enough to make the second S-IC systems tunnel...

I solved the problem by eating lunch at a Chinese buffet and eating several of the "teriyaki chicken-on-a-skewer" things and stuck the skewers in my shirt pocket... When I got back to the MIL's house, I scrubbed and dried them and then sanded them down a bit, cut the pointy end off, and sure enough-- exact match for the missing system tunnel...

I was worried about the paint not sticking properly due to chicken grease but it glued on and painted perfectly!

Later! OL JR

That's awesome! I thought about just running to the hobby shop to grab another one, it never crossed my mind to go eat. Heh.

 

[luke strawwalker]

That's awesome! I thought about just running to the hobby shop to grab another one, it never crossed my mind to go eat. Heh.

I'm glad that I thought about it... because I was in northern Indiana at the time and it's about 30-35 miles to the nearest hobby shop... So the Chinese lunch killed two birds with one stone...

It got me thinking and when I started my BT-80 Saturn V scratchbuild, I picked up a couple bags of bamboo skewers in the grocery store in a couple different sizes beforehand... they work TERRIFIC for making round-ish details like systems tunnels, propellant line fairings, jettison/retro motors, etc... Bamboo is QUITE hard from a modeling standpoint and I found out early on it is MUCH easier to simply "whittle" them down to rough shape with a sharp hobby knife and then do a little finish sanding to get the shape down "perfect" to how you want it, than trying to sand the whole thing down to the specific shape. What's nice about bamboo is that it holds the shapes quite nicely, and a bit of sanding will refine the shape and smooth the thing out VERY smooth, with virtually no grain. For flatter or weird-shaped detail bits, I found balsa to be too soft... I grabbed a sheet of basswood in Hobby Lobby and started cutting pieces, laminating them for additional thickness if needed, and carving them to shape with the hobby knife, then a little finish sanding to refine the shape and smooth things out as needed. Works VERY well because basswood is quite a bit stronger than balsa-- it won't 'crush' while cutting like balsa tends to, is MUCH more resistant to "breakout" where the corners or edges of the balsa tend to chip off while cutting the final part, and resist sanding just enough that you don't have to worry so much about "oversanding" the part your working on and ruining the shape or making it undersize.

For really small diameter detail parts, I found toothpics with the ends lopped off by rolling them back and forth under the hobby knife edge worked very well. With them, i could easily sand them down to whatever diameter I wanted to get the exact diameter I needed for a particular line or fairing or whatever, and then whittle, cut, or sand the final shape in of the piece.

For half-rounds and other irregular shapes that would be exceedingly difficult to make from full rounds (especially in long-lengths like the systems tunnels on the S-IC) I picked up some Plastruct and Evergreen Plastic strips... they work great but require epoxy or thick CA to attach to the rocket... regular wood/white glue won't work. They also make some VERY slender rods which are good for tower construction and such...

Later and KUTGW!!! OL JR

PS... I've found the easiest way to paint detail bits like that is to take a fairly long piece of cheap masking tape, double it back on itself to make a loop, and press it down on a piece of cardboard... then stick the back of the parts to the top of the tape loop. This allows you to "stick" them in place and paint them in one step, all the way to the ends and edges, without worrying about where and how to hold them, and it also holds them securely for drying... don't worry about getting paint overlapped from the part onto the tape... when dry, you can easily run the tip of the hobby knife around the part and cut through the paint, "freeing" the part so it's ready to be glued onto the model... and minor "dings" in the edge of the paint is usually covered by the glue attaching the part to the rocket, if you're careful when removing them from the tape... if not, it's easy enough to do a touch-up...

 

[Mushtang]

After I got all the details painted white there were a few that needed some black added because they overlapped black sections of the wrap. So I used the black Sharpie again to color these areas. Also, since most of these details were round dowels I wanted to sand the backs of them at least a little bit flat so the glue could hold better.

Here's two of the longer dowels that have been painted white previously. I painted the ends black, and then sanded the backs a little flatter. I sanded more of the dowel from the sections that overlapped a wrap in order to allow the dowel to lay flat against the body tube too. The picture shows the front of one and the back of the other.



After everything was finished having color added and sanded I glued them all on. I considered using the double glue method but it turned out not to be necessary. I used very small amounts of glue and everything held on well.



After that, I glued on the engine bells. The bells were the only thing I came back to add more glue to later. I made sure there was plenty of glue around the small dowels, and on the cones, where they touched the bottom of the rocket.

 

[Mushtang]

When I was done with all the details from the instructions I looked at the decal instructions and noticed a detail on the drawings that weren't included with the instructions. I checked my Estes Saturn V and saw there was a cable tray that runs all the way down the 3rd stage and a shorter one that runs down only part of the way. Here's a picture from Hcmbanjo's blog showing these two details.



Here is my 3rd stage with the lack of a cable tray.



I decided I wanted to add the long tray to my model. I could live without the shorter one. I cut a piece of balsa from a scrap and marked it to length.



The balsa overlapped two paper wraps. In this picture you can see how it's not touching the body tube between them.



I sanded the back of the balsa on each end enough to allow the middle section to touch the body tube. I also sanded the ends to a 45 degree angle down to the paper wraps. It was painted white and glued in place. Now the 3rd stage looks more like the diagram in the instructions!!

 

[Mushtang]

Just a few more things before I'm done.

The kit came with decals AND stickers. Earlier in the thread Dr. Zooch explained that he'd gotten enough complaints about the decals that he included both in case you wanted to use stickers instead of the error prone decals. I opted for the decals and hoped for the best. Using warm water, a drop of liquid detergent, and patience, I was able to get them all on without any of them messing up.



The launch lugs had to be glued on but as I held them in place figuring exactly where they'd go I realized I would like it better if the lower lug was black, since it would be glued onto a black area. My black sharpie was used once again and the lugs were glued in place.



Next I screwed the eyelet into the nose cone.



When it was time to tie up the parachute I used the remainder of the string in 3 equal length sections. I'd used the instructed lengths to wrap around the engine bells but the remaining lengths were much too short to make the parachute with. So I cut them off and used longer lengths of yellow Kevlar braid that I'd recently ordered. These worked pretty well and the parachute looks good being yellow with yellow braid cords.



After that I tied on the elastic that I'd previously glued into a tri-fold on the inside of the body tube - shoved everything inside to put on the nose cone - and I am FINISHED!!!

 

[Mushtang]

Here's some pictures of the rocket on my building surface (kitchen table).

 

[Mushtang]

Some pictures of the finished engine bells. The engine hook comes down below the bottom of the bells, so to get it to stand up I set it on my roll of masking tape.

 

[Mushtang]

Then I took the rocket outside for a few pictures in the sun.



I'll give the decals and paint another week to cure (because I'm out of town for a week) and then put on a few layers of clear coat.

 

[hcmbanjo]

Congrats!
Great work on the Saturn V!
Now - wait 'till you see how well it flys!

 

[NJRick]

beautiful job!

 

[JStarStar]

That looks nifty!!

The Zooch Saturns are always fun to see.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Great job... she looks beautiful...

Nice thread as well...

Later! OL JR

 

[gdjsky01]

What they said!!! oint:

:wave:
:clap:

 

[qquake2k]

Awesome job!

 

[Astro-Baby]

Coolness - well done you. What a fiddly build but looks like you pulled it off really well.

 

[Mushtang]

Thanks everyone! My wife and I are on a cruise this week but when I stopped this morning in Key West I was able to check the thread. I appreciate all the nice words!!!

Thanks!!

 

[ksm2001]

Very nice rocket, great job and a great build thread :handshake:.
Enjoy your cruise.