Help with a Tintin rocket!

[Spey_Phantom]

there's really no kit derivative for this rocket.
for the first test rocket in the comic, i would advise a V2 kit.

also, the pic you posted is the prototype test rocket, for the fullscale manned rocket, i think youre gonna have to go old school scratchbuilding for it.

[NARSES2]

Nah, real old school would be to carve it from balsa, coat it with sanding sealer and then paint it. 

Ah the joys of talcum powder and dope. That and banana oil on Plasticine takes me right back 

[PR19_Kit]

Nah, real old school would be to carve it from balsa, coat it with sanding sealer and then paint it. 

Ah the joys of talcum powder and dope. That and banana oil on Plasticine takes me right back 

Amazingly I was able to buy some sanding sealer just a few months ago. I needed something for the wooden dowel floats on the Monterey beaching trolley and the LMS guy suggested it! 

[NARSES2]

Lucky to have an LMS Kit.

[PR19_Kit]

Well, it's 20 miles away, which is as 'L' as it gets in these parts.

[NARSES2]

Well, it's 20 miles away, which is as 'L' as it gets in these parts.

Well my nearest now is Hannants at Colindale which is about a 2 hour plus journey by public transport

[strobez]

ok... so I did give the styrofoam idea a try, but I quickly started ending up with a blizzard and a stalk of cauliflower instead...

So instead, I just glued my stacking cups together as accurately as I could and then, once it was all dry, gave it a coating of 2-part epoxy putty.  I tried to off-set the slight ridge of the seam from the cups by padding out the rest of the rocket as evenly as possible to give it a circular shape.



At this point my wife walked by and asked me why I was building a pickle... 

Anyway, once the epoxy was good and dry, I took it out on the balcony and gave it a sanding to within a mm or its life...  Which actually, surprisingly, seemed to work the way I hoped it would as I was able to knock back the ridge quite a bit and make the thing pretty close to round in diameter.  Once I was satisfied with the overall shape (and my level of satisfaction increased with every stroke as I got closer and closer to rupturing the thin styrene walls...) I basically dipped it in Tamiya grey putty.  I covered the whole thing, but tried to pay special attention to to various divets and low spots.



Then, once the Grey putty was dry, I gave it a light sanding to try and even out the surface.  It worked pretty well, but as expected, it's going to take more than one round of PSR to get the job done.



After I was satsified that I'd done what I could, I added yet more putty to the remaining divets and low spots.  My plan is to repeat the cycle until either I give up or my wife stops calling it the rocket pickle...

[Old Wombat]

I like your wife's sense of humour!

[strobez]

I like your wife's sense of humour!

Now she's calling it the cow rocket...

[zenrat]

It's good that she takes an interest.

That looks pretty good already.

[NARSES2]

That looks pretty good already.

Does indeed

[Old Wombat]

That looks pretty good already.

Does indeed

Yup!

Now she's calling it the cow rocket...

Well, it does have a certain Holstein Friesian look to it.

[strobez]

Ok, after what seems to have been a thousand rounds of putty/sand/repeat, I engaged in several hundred rounds of "thin coats of white paint" in an attempt to make the rocket less "cow-like" in appearance.

While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I decided to build the launch support tower.  I actually took several cracks at this.  My first attempt was made using a leftover bottle of Tylenol (convenient that I've had so much head/foot pain lately!~).  The bottle is quite a hard plastic and even after cutting it quite thin, it retains its circular shape.  The only real problem was getting the circular slices uniform as it really did not sand well and no matter how close to the guide tape I was able to cut, it still looked like I'd chewed it apart with my teeth.

The second attempt was using thin styrene strips, which gave the correct "flat walled" circle shape initially, but after glueing several of them to the support poles quickly turned from a true circle to more of a triangle shape.  So in the end, I had to opt for using my circle cutter on a sheet for styrene.  The upside is that the circles all retain their shapes and it's easy enough to ensure the holes are in the right place.  The problem, however, is that they're now flat and thick rather than tall and thin circles... but oh, well.



Afterwards I noticed that I still needed more white paint... which, luckily gave me time to scratch build the comm tower.  Just some tubes and wires, but I think it turned out alright.



<edit> i just noticed the Ki-10 Perry peeking mournfully out of its box in the background, wondering why the Tintin rocket was getting all the love while it has to sit in its tray and sulk...

It knows what it's done...

[NARSES2]

which, luckily gave me time to scratch build the comm tower.  Just some tubes and wires, but I think it turned out alright.

Certainly looks good from where I'm sitting 

[strobez]

As expected, masking the checkered red/white pattern is giving me fits.  It's not as easy as just slapping down some uniformly even squares... 

Anyone got any tips for masking lines over curved surfaces?