A tube wrap is used to mark the BT-60 in half.
An aluminum angle was used to mark the tube and then used as a knife guide to cut the tube in half.
After the first side was cut I slipped my sanding block between the halves and sanded the cut edge straight.
The insides will be painted fluorescent orange. The tube seam was filled with CWF and sanded smooth.
The centers were removed first.
TIP: Leave the caps on the card stock to lightly file the edges smooth. I used a fine diamond file. It's easier to file the edges smooth with the support of the outside card stock still in place.
I only filed in one direction. That left the side that will be facing out flat and square. There might be a little lip (right side) on the inside of the plate but it won't be seen.
While building the clone, I toyed with the idea of adding internal led lighting to the engine housings and ventral intake tube. With a clear piece of plastic over the inside of each end cap, painted orange on the inside, it would look like the lighted engine nacelles of the static Star Trek models. Of course, the incremental added weight and closed tubes might adversely affect the stability and flight characteristics of the rocket. Still might build a second clone with lighting and make it a permanent shelf queen. Cuz this kit is made to be lighted up. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteHi BAR,
DeleteLED lighting would look great! But you are right, it might add too much weight for a flying model.
Some thoughts... you could pull the guts out of some LED tea lights. The built-in flasher circuit could also make for a neat "pulsating engine" effect). They also normally run on coin cells which should be much lighter than AA or AAA cells.
ReplyDeleteA while back I'd picked up some that are small enough to completely (including button cells) fit inside nacelles of a 1:1000 scale USS Enterprise (the model comes out to 12" long). They run off the "button" type cells, are pretty bright and flash red and yellow in a random pattern. I just need to put something to act as a diffuser (could be as simple as a crumpled wad of cellophane), and I'll end up with a cool "pulsating" effect (minus the rotation effect of the 11-foot miniature).
Of course, if you're only lighting the model for display and not for flight, you can keep the power supply external to reduce weight for flight (since the batteries will likely be the heaviest part). A convenient connector to use would be an earphone jack. Mount the socket end into the model (at or very near the CG), then the plug portion would be attached to the base. With the power supply in the base, you can even choose to set up with A/C "wall wart" adaptor instead of batteries.