Q-ball, Paint Touch-up, etc.

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 […]

Masking Transitions

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, […]

Fits over Fit

Time to mask the roll pattern and other details. First step is laying out the roll pattern: determining where on the S-IC and on the S-II the different things are black (and silver), and what portions of the S-IVB are black. Apogee supplies a template for masking the the S-II/S-IVB transition: it has cut-outs that […]