Casey’s First Kit

Today I had Casey assist in assembling the parts to the shuttle. Despite the beginner level even I had some difficulties joining some parts together. Together we completed the assembly and placed the stickers, I choose Discovery since it is my favorite shuttle and also an appropriate name. It’s a small little project that will be proudly displayed by its new owner in his room. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new past time for him…

Got Paint?

With a bit of disappointment I found out that the kit is all in white plastic when I thought that the black markings were painted or separate pieces of plastic. It’s the first time I buy a snap kit and was not aware of this. Since Casey who is 4 ½ is too young to paint such details I decided to go ahead and paint the shuttle black sections and accessories. Nothing fancy but just enough to give it a nice appeal, two coats of flat black should do the trick!

Space Shuttle

While in a toy store with my 4 year old son Casey we checked out the scale model aisle and the Snap Tite Space Shuttle caught my attention. We had built a rocket out of cardboard weeks earlier and Casey is really into rocketry. It was only 10 bucks so I decided to pick it up and hopefully start an interest in scale modelling for him. It also reminded me of when I was young and my father built me the same model, it was the first model I every had and so it will also be the first model for Casey (with his help of course).

I might as well fix it...

Since I will have to add new tissue to the damaged sections I decided to correct another issue with the wings which I was not happy with.

The two white sections on the top of the wings had been painted flat white and unfortunately underneath was a gloss red coat which created an undesired cracking effect. It was light but noticeable so I went ahead and removed the sections so that I can add new tissue and repaint it with a gloss white.

Examining the Damage...

Well, after yesterdays nightmare event I examined in detail and started the process of determining the repairs that will be needed. I removed the damaged sections as can be seen in the photo below.

Crash!!!

Tonight I wanted to pick up where I had left off several months ago and continue work on the tri-plane. While setting up the plane and getting some cardboard to commence spray painting some red I knocked over the plane it took a 3 foot nose dive and it crashed into the floor!!! My wife who was upstairs heard a few curses and came running down to see what happened. The only damage was to the top wing bit it was major. The struts broke and pierced the top tissue and the wing fell off. I glued it back on and will analyse tomorrow what tissue needs to be replaced (lets just say I'm not in the best of moods).

Playing in the backyard...

Here I am outside in my backyard spraying the completed body of the DR-1 with Krylon to harden the tissue. I attached the rubber band used to make the propeller spin to a coat hanger to make it easier to spray.

Signature

The artist must sign his masterpiece…
Photo and signature is just below the machine guns.

Landing Strut

The landing strut proved to be very complicated to cover with tissue due to the landing strut sticking out of the fourth wing. All I can say is that a bit of patience and a lot of cutting did the trick in completing this section of the aircraft. Despite being a hard piece to work with the challenge made it fun sub assembly to work on.

Dope & Krylon

After a lot of research and testing several techniques, I came to the conclusion that the best method to cover the plane was to use a simple glue stick with tissue paper and spray it with fine particles of water then apply in a spray can Krylon clear finish. I tried the traditional technique of using what is called dope to cover the aircraft on a test piece and despite the good results the product earns its name for a reason. With strong fumes and less forgiving then the non-toxic glue stick and Krylon spray, the choice was not hard to make.