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Sunday 8 November 2020

Booster Building

I had bit of fun recently, scratchbuilding one of the best vehicles in the Project Sword/Spacex fleet - the Booster Rocket. As usual it was a rush job, brought about by a chance find of a random piece of scrap which gave me the idea. I love Kinder Eggs and have loads of the plastic capsules from inside them hanging about, so I thought one day I might make something with them. Then when moving out an old gas fire, I spotted a decorative finial with more than a passing resemblance to the exhaust from the Booster Rocket, so the idea quickly came together after that.
The finial was plastic with a gold finish, so I added a few pipes and other bits, found a tube for the body and a cone for the front. The shuttle was a Kinder Egg Rocket with some Airfix kit wings.

Once I added the egg fuel tanks, I was struck by how much it resembled the Atomic Rocket design for the Mars landing in the 60's! A lucky co-incidence. 

With the main parts assembled - the tanks were only just holding on with epoxy resin, as they are flexible polythene - I tried to emulate the metallic red colour of the Spacex version. As I couldn't find an appropriate paint, I used nail varnish over the gold finish which worked quite well. However it was less successful on the shuttle, clogging up the detail.
An initial coat of white on the tanks started to bring it together, but when I decided to spray them silver, the cheap silver paint spattered and the finish on the model wasn't great. Add to that the paint peeing off randomly and the buttons I had superglued to the tanks coming away and I got a bit fed up. As a result its been relegated to the back shelf for a few months, but I decided to fetch it out today for an airing.



Maybe version two will be on the cards soon..

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6 comments:

  1. Lewis Morley11/09/2020 12:05 am

    Hey Wotan, I admire your grit! Working with polythene has always been a bugbear, here's how i deal with it...
    First I rub the surfaces with very fine grade steel wool. It'll take the surface gloss off, but not rip up the finish too much. Then I give them a wipe with ESP surface prep fluid. It comes in a can, but I prefer the spray. I wipe off the excess and wait for 2 hours before painting or gluing with superglue. I wish I'd known about the steel wool trick as a kid!
    Hang in there and keep modelling, Regards, Looey

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  2. Anonymous11/09/2020 12:19 am

    Yes, a valiant effort Wotan, but I'm with Lewis. Fine sanding and some kind of primer, say Halfords Grey Plastic Primer, or even thinned down Evo Stik brushed on, but never, NEVER, nail varnish !
    Mish.

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  3. Ed and Bettina Berg11/09/2020 4:23 am

    It is, even with a couple of minor faux pas', a really cool build Wotan!

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  4. KevinD11/09/2020 7:18 am

    That is really nice. I tried to emulate the spacex lacquer effect on the booster rocket shuttle by spraying it with alcad and then giving it a wash with clear red paint. It sort of worked.

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  5. WOTAN11/09/2020 8:01 am

    Thanks for the advice guys! Luckily Ive got two of those finial things, so this was a throw away effort. Ill avoid polythene full stop in future, its just a nightmare. One thing I did learn from it was using a small niobium magnet in the shuttle allows it to ‘dock’ firmly with the main collar. It could be something to use for detachable fuel tanks in the future

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  6. WOODSY11/09/2020 9:00 am

    At last we get to see this beauty! A magnificent Booster Bill, I think it looks really great too. The kinder capsules really do the trick and the finial, well, that's one of those chance encounters that spark the creative juices. The front jet looks superb as well! Get that scratch Nova out you did and take some shots of them both together in your ersatz SpaceX universe!

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