Q-ball’s painted. I mixed some gray (primer, as it happened) and flat black, painted on with a brush. Doesn’t look great under the OptiVISOR #7 lens, but looks okay, and looks fine with the unaided eye. When I masked the fin fairings, I left a small crescent masked that should have been unmasked, and it […]

The SM is inverse masked, masked, masked, unmasked, and painted; the S-IC fin fairings are, too (roughly). The SM is silver; there are several white radiators around the SM, some near the top edge, some near the bottom. The top radiators are fairly small, and there are lots of them. The SM was painted white, […]

Monday, the black paint went on the S-IC/S-II unit. After it dries and cures (and I’m able!), the next step will be to mask and unmask and otherwise prepare to paint the silver on the S-IC fin fairings. After that: Unmask the S-IC/S-II Touch up the S-IC/S-II and the Interstage/S-IVB-IU units. Mask the SM radiators […]

In my previous post, I mentioned that I thought I’d make a small mistake by masking the Interstage/S-IVB/IU segment first. Now that I’m nearly done masking the S-IC/S-II unit, I’m not sure it really matters. Although there are many more small things to mask on the S-IVB and IU (numerous antennae), and although the Interstage […]

Finally, I think I’ve found and masked all the little things that need masking on the Interstage/S-IVB/IU structure. The ullage rockets, the retro-rockets, the reflectors, the antennae, the roll pattern. I thought I was done yesterday, and then realized that there were myriad (well, not literally, but it almost seemed that way) small things on […]

It’s easy to mask off a cylinder, whether the dividing line goes around or lengthwise or even diagonally along the cylinder (assuming it’s a straight line to be masked). Masking a conical transition, though, is a different story: though the line around might look straight and parallel to the ends, it’s not: it’s really curved, […]