Dr. Zooch SLS Build Part 31 Engine Bells & Decals

Instead of the recommended Testor's #1180 Steel I used Testor's #1145 Gunmetal Steel. It's not quite a full black and looked great on the nozzles.
For painting, the nozzles were stuck down to some masking tape, sticky side up. The small end of the nozzle was set on the tape. This kept the paint off the small end gluing edges.

The engine bells were tacked in place with white glue.
Center the bells evenly inside the fairings.

After the white glue set up, I went back in with some medium CA applied with a toothpick. I made sure I got a CA fillet along the inside edges of the bell.

The yellow trash bag parachute was assembled.
To make a tri-fold shock cord mount, the instructions say to: "cut a rectangular strip that is 1/2" wide and just over 1" long."
I've seen this in the Dr. Zooch instructions before. Considering the elastic shock cord is 1/4" wide, this piece of cardstock seems very small.
I cut my tri-fold piece from left over kit cardstock, it measured 1" wide by 2 1/2" long.

Looking back on the latest Space.com artistic rendering, the words UNITED STATES and a NASA "meatball" logo were added.
Up to this point, the upper section of the SLS is all white. I wanted to add the additional decals to make it more interesting.

Here's the decal sheet I made up.
I hate to waste most of a decal sheet for such a small set of decals, so I added a vertical "USA" and many upsizes of the SLS decals I needed. It's a full 8 1/2" X 11" decal sheet with plenty of NASA logos, Flags, USA and UNITED STATES decals for future use.

Patreon members: If you'd like a PDF of this art to make your own decals, email me at oddlrocket@bellsouth.net and ask for the NASA/USA decals PDF.