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Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Estes Saturn V #1969 Build, Part 23, Gluing The Fins And Fairings

TIP: To start - Glue just the front tip and rear edge of the fin to the body tube. Line up on the center pencil line drawn earlier. Using very little glue now will allow you to lift and re-position the fin if needed.

Slide the fairing over the fin. Check to be sure the rear of the fairing is even with the body tube. Also check the front to see if it is centered.

If the fairing fits well and between the corrugations, slide it off.
Now - Add the glue fillet to the sides of the fin. You can still do some last minute fitting with sandpaper if you see high areas and gaps.

Slide the fairing back on and brush liquid cement at all the joints. Add glue to the fairing sides first and the fin joint afterwards. Apply the liquid cement about 1/2" at a time holding the joint or seam together until the glue dries.

The first time I used the brush on Plastruct Plastic Weld glue I was concerned that it might melt the vacu-form plastic - It didn't!
TIP: To be safe - Test your brand of glue on some scrap vacu-form plastic. Always save your scraps until the model is finished!

Under a bright light you can see where the glue was applied down the "fillet" area. This will disappear under paint.
After a few hours, go back and check all the joints. If there is any lifted areas, re-glue.

Here's the fins and fairings in place.
The newer Styrene fins and fairing assembly are so much stronger than the old #2157 kit vacu-form fins.

Assembly time so far:
13:10 minutes previous
  1:00 minutes this post
14:10 Total so far
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4 comments:

  1. Eric PeltzerJune 28, 2019 at 4:57 PM

    Chris - The fin fairing top end (the pointy end) sticks out over the wrap and kind of hangs there in mid-air. Do you ever try to reinforce that or do you just leave it hanging? thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chris MichielssenJune 29, 2019 at 12:03 AM

      Hi Eric,
      I did a wood glue fillet. It sticks to the tube and closes up that gap.

      Delete
  2. Manny WeberJuly 1, 2019 at 3:37 PM

    Chris - did you find that you have to slightly squeeze the sides of the fairing a bit in order to get it to fit between the corrugations? I cut/sanded/shaped them but with the rear right at the tube edge they seem to still need the squeeze - they don't just fit nicely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chris MichielssenJuly 1, 2019 at 8:13 PM

      Hi Manny,
      The more that is taken off by sanding, the smaller the fairing spread is and the easier they fit between the ends of the corrugations. I did squeeze them a bit, but not by much at all, you don't want to distort the shape.
      I've seen some forum pictures where builders have complained about the fit and glued them on top of the corrugation ribs. Five more minutes of sizing and they would have had the correct fit.

      Delete