Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Estes Mercury Redstone #1921 Build Part 11, Capsule Assembly Part B

Here I'm evening up the capsule side edges before gluing. The antenna housing cap is dry fitted in place to insure the top alignment.

Some "safe" plastic cements won't do the job.
Try the Plastruct Plastic Weld liquid cement.
With this type of glue you hold the pieces together then brush the cement over the inside seam. This way there is less chance of glue getting on the outside surfaces.




Here the sides are held together and the cement brushed on down the seams. You won't have to use a lot of glue.



To get glue into the top seams, take off the antenna housing cap.
A rubber band was wrapped to hold the top of the three sides tight.

Apply more cement to the top of the joints.





This is still a dry fit of the top and capsule coupler base. Don't glue the antenna housing on until later.

On my build, the three capsule sides snapped into the bottom coupler piece.






Reaching in from the bottom, work inside around the "X" brace applying glue to the base joint.

Again, don't glue the antenna housing on until later.

4 comments:

  1. Oh man

    I wish I stumbled across this earlier. I tried putting my capsule together like the instructions suggest. As a result, I failed miserably and the severely mutilated capsule is now in the trash.

    It is really dang near impossible to put this assembly together as the instructions suggest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Donald,
      Sorry to hear about that. I bet there are quite a few that gave up on the capsule. The tower instructions are what really need new instructions, or a reprint of the old Centuri instructions.

      Delete
  2. Hi Chris

    I plan to get a replacement but I'll try your method next time. I also have to contact Estes as my kit is missing the V part to the escape tower assembly. It also had a damaged BT which they just replaced.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, I learned that the Estes instructions were wrong the hard way, as well as you did. I have successfully built three more by following the advice of this blog, and I highly recommend you do too, as well!

    ReplyDelete