Thursday, May 12, 2011

Estes Saturn V Build Part 22 Gluing Wraps

I had an old can of Elmer's Craft Bond spray adhesive, #E-428.
The can says "Extra Strength" and Permanent Bond.
I'd had good luck with it in the past so I tested it on some scrap vacuform plastic from the kit.
The test looked promising, the plastic didn't react or melt from the spray.

I started with the smallest third stage wrap, thinking that would be the easiest.
Reverse tape rolls held it down to a scrap piece of cardboard for spraying.

When spraying adhesive, you only want it on the back of the wrap.
It should go without saying - Spray from directly above, not from the sides.

The first third stage wrap went well, so I went back to the order of the directions and placed the other wraps from the bottom going up.

There is good reason for this, you are continually aligning the wraps while ascending up the tube.

This Craft Bond spray adhesive did give me a little play, I was able to re-position the wraps before it grabbed on too tight to remove them.

The inter tank wrap wouldn't properly align no matter how I tried. I wanted the tunnel "bumps" to be in line, but they weren't.


I finally decided to start sticking that wrap on from the back, not from the master alignment line. The wrap was stretched a little to pull it closer to the tunnel alignment lines.

Still it's a little off, but better than it would be otherwise.

No comments:

Post a Comment