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PEB
10-15-2009, 01:27 PM
I have started building Ton’s Gemini-Titan found on Jonathan Leslie's site http://jleslie48.com/index.html
I'm planning to do some changes along the way. Initially the areas I wish to do some work on are the exterior detailing, the top of stage 1, the engines and the engine supports frames. I will post pictures in this thread as I progress.

First up are some exterior details for the first stage. In the kit from Ton the engine supports and the ribbed tunnels running up and down each side of the rocket body is made from white strips, but I'd like to make it look a little closer to the real thing.
I drew the parts in MS Paint, and then copied them to Photoshop. I had a great deal of trouble with the scale, but after some tweaking and corrections I finally got it right.

Some very good reference drawings of the Gemini Titan can be found here: Titan II Drawings Menu (http://www.ninfinger.org/models/titan_II/tii_dwgs/frames/tii_menu.html)
A good picture showing the two stages with one of the four engine supports visible: SpaceArchive.net | KSC-65-10745 - Gemini 5 - Gemini 5 launch vehicle stacking (http://www.spacearchive.net/pages/KSC-65-10745.html)

dhanners
10-15-2009, 06:27 PM
You're off to a fine start, and Ton's Gemini is a fine model. It'll be great watching your build.

I built one of Ton's Titans awhile back and used a silver paper I found at an art-supply store for the silver portions of the rocket's body. The paper is made by Wyndstone and is a "cast coated text" paper called "aluminum lines." It went through the printer fairly well once I cut it to 8.5x11 (it comes in a roll) and I used a coated glossy paper for the white sections of the rocket.

And those orthographic drawings REALLY helped decipher the thrust structure and all that plumbing. To me, that was what made the Titan look cool....

PEB
10-17-2009, 09:25 AM
Thank you for your comment Sir! I have been studying your beautiful model for some time during my research prior starting this build. Actually I joined the Space-Model-Paper group at Yahoo just to read your build thread there! Thank you for the link to the drawings! :D Don’t hesitate to post more photos of your model here.
I build my rockets in some petty basic materials because I haven’t been able to find any good art stores in Antalya Turkey where I live. I build in some paper I bought in the local printing and copy center, and I have no idea if it will turn yellow with time or not – but that is not so important to me, it is the building process I enjoy.

My build is progressing slowly in between sleep and work.
In an article on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini)) it is described how the rockets had a serial number painted on them and after some copy paste I am now building the Titan rocket that launched Gemini III. :)
I had some problems with the top half of the first stage as I am using the updated texture that is also available on John Leslie’s site. The file is in the JPEG format and when printing it the scale is wrong. After a few tries I found that printing at 88% scale works on my printer.

dhanners
10-17-2009, 10:12 AM
Great work so far. And you got those tear-drop shaped holes much cleaner than I ever did. Keep the photos coming! Who needs sleep? Who needs to work? (Oh, yeah. All of us....)

PEB
10-24-2009, 12:54 PM
Getting to the top of the first stage, which is one of the areas I’d like to customize a little. I have seen pictures of the top of the oxidizer tank and the stringers in the interstage in some brown colour. Ranging from almost wine red, over rusty brown to nearly orange I had to choose something. I went for something in the middle.
I added a strip with this colour to the inside wall of the stage top. The brown colour can be seen on the edges of the cut outs like on the picture I link to below.

Open this picture in high res. too see the almost wine red colour on the stringers on the interstage: SpaceArchive.net | 55-HC-1875 - Gemini 12 - Launch of Gemini 12 (http://www.spacearchive.net/pages/55-HC-1875.html)

Here it looks more like corrosion (approximately 4/5 down the page): PAGE 2 (http://www.siloworld.com/390th%20SMW/TITAN%20II%20MUSEUM/page__2.htm)

PEB
10-25-2009, 03:57 AM
Next up is the top of the oxidizer tank. The shape for the parts comes from Greelt’s Saturn V. I reduced the size to 30% and removed all colours to save ink. I added another layer of paper from my brown colour sheet and let I set under weight as explained in this thread: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/pasa-paper-aeronautical-space-administration/5439-contemplating-building-alfonsos-ares-i-x-but.html

jagolden01
10-25-2009, 06:05 AM
This build is looking beautiful!
What scale are you building it at, 1/48?

dhanners
10-25-2009, 09:31 AM
Fine progress, and it looks like you've got the interior color spot-on....

PEB
10-26-2009, 08:14 AM
Thanks for the comments! I forgot to mention the scale ofcourse! It is 1:48. I have been wondering if the interior of the interstage is the same brown colour as the top of the first stage? I have not been able to find any pictures.
The bottom of the stage is finished, and now I'm ready to mate the two tubes into one part.

redhorse
10-26-2009, 08:29 AM
This looks really good! Not much experience building rockets myself, but I do like following the builds. Especially ones of this quality!

PEB
10-27-2009, 12:22 PM
Thanks alot Redhorse! Buildthreads are always a joy to follow. But I'm a slow builder so please be patient! ;)

Retired_for_now
10-27-2009, 02:58 PM
For this, we can muster patience. Great work!

Yogi

PEB
10-30-2009, 03:53 PM
I have spent the last few days fixing a mistake I made when I glued the two halves of stage 1 together. Yogi said it in another thread: “glue sparingly”! And I didn’t. The result can be seen below. The moisture from the glue went through the paper and did something to the ink turning it into some brownish colour. Look at the left side of the A in States.
There was a lot of banging my head against the walls, and then I started over on the top of the stage.
It is not a pleasant experience cutting a rocket up in pieces like that, but it worked out fine. Now I can proceed with the exterior detailing.

PEB
11-02-2009, 05:21 AM
The first stage exterior detailing is finished which was an easy job as everything was ready. I had to cut of a portion of the upper tunnels though, due to the scaling problem mentioned earlier in this thread. The top of the tunnels are closed with fairing.
All in all I am happy with how it looks, and now I can get to work on the labyrinth of tubing being the engines.

dhanners
11-02-2009, 07:25 AM
Great work so far! It's shaping up to be quite the Titan!

PEB
11-03-2009, 03:23 AM
Thank you for the comment! There are a few things that could be better but I am not going to start over now. The most noticeable flaw is the connection between the top and bottom of the stage. As it can be seen on the photos it looks like the top has a smaller diameter than the bottom, but when looking from another angle the top looks bigger. When I dry tested the parts, everything looked nice, but after gluing this was the result. Luckily it looks worse on the pictures than real life, and I believe that once the model is finished it will not be noticed. Maybe a circlecutter for cutting formers will solve this kind of problems?

dhanners
11-03-2009, 07:43 AM
Thank you for the comment! There are a few things that could be better but I am not going to start over now. The most noticeable flaw is the connection between the top and bottom of the stage. As it can be seen on the photos it looks like the top has a smaller diameter than the bottom, but when looking from another angle the top looks bigger. When I dry tested the parts, everything looked nice, but after gluing this was the result. Luckily it looks worse on the pictures than real life, and I believe that once the model is finished it will not be noticed. Maybe a circlecutter for cutting formers will solve this kind of problems?

A circle cutter should definitely be in your arsenal of tools; you will find it to be one of the best investments you can make, especially if you're building launch vehicles. And once you get one, you'll find that it has many other uses.

Of course the other thing you can do is go the route I use, and that is to use model rocket tubes (or even mailing tubes) as the basis for the model. They provide strength and rigidity and there's no question that the stages will be straight and the same diameter. You just print out the model pieces as you do now and use them as "skins" to cover the tube.

You can generally find a good selection of different tubes at your local hobby shop, or online at a place like Semroc. And I've found that I can often find them in a size I need, or close to it. And if it is close, I can generally get the next larger size and cut a slice out of it lengthwise, glue the two edges back together and I've got a tube that is the size I need. It's a trick I learned from Rick Sternbach's Saturn V modeling page, and even though he was working in styrene tubes, the same technique can be used with cardboard tubes.

On my recent 1/96th-scale Ares I-X build, the only piece that didn't have cardboard tube backing was the service module of the spacecraft. The first stage and Upper Stage Simulator were tubes that I had cut to size. And the Gemini-Titan that I had posted photos of earlier was built the same way.

dhanners
11-03-2009, 10:51 AM
By the way, here's the page where Sternbach (who is a really nice guy, by the way) describes his method for "shrinking" tubes. As I said in the post above, the technique works pretty much the same for cardboard tubes.

The Saturn V Clinic (http://www.ricksternbach.com/SatV/Sat_Construction.html)

PEB
11-05-2009, 07:03 AM
Thank you for the introduction to using tubes for making rocket models! I am however restricted on workspace in my home. I live in a quite small apartment and have my own little “hobby corner” in the living room. Any work involving sanding anything is a definite no no, as I am sharing this apartment with my wife.
So until we get a bigger place to live, a circle cutter will have to suffice. I haven’t seen one here in Turkey so far, but going home to Denmark next week, I hope to find one there.

I have got the engine bells finished now and did some modifications compared to the original kit. I have shortened the white part a bit and tried to replicate how the diameter of that white part shrinks just above the engine bell. Inside the bell I have applied a layer of dark grey paper. Now trying to figure out how to do the top of the combustion chamber….

Mark Petersen
12-09-2009, 10:05 AM
I'll check my photo folders on my home machine. I think I have close up pictures of the engines and thrust structure of the Titan II at the USAF museum

Mark Petersen
12-09-2009, 03:25 PM
As I suspected

USAF Titan II pictures by markandannie - Photobucket (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v19/markandannie/USAF%20Titan%20II/)

PEB
12-09-2009, 03:59 PM
Mark, your pictures are great! I had some photos from the USAF Museum already, but you give me some good close-ups from angles I didn’t have before. Excellent! :)
My model is progressing very very slowly, hence the lack of updates, but I have finished the top of the combustion chamber. If time permit I will upload a few pictures tomorrow.

PEB
12-10-2009, 02:16 PM
Here are the pictures of the combustion chamber. The white part of the engine was a bit too tall, but in stead of cutting it shorter, I made the combustion chamber like a little hat that cover some of the white top.
Notice my newest toy – the circle cutter! :) I used it to cut out some circular pieces of a cereal box which I glued on top of each other before wrapping them in small triangular pieces of paper. Various strips were then used to make the sides.
At the moment I am working on the turbopump assembly and should be able to post a few pics soon.

PEB
12-11-2009, 12:54 PM
Got some work done today and finished the turbopump assemblies. The parts are rolled tubes of various diameter and other shapes made from layers of cereal box wrapped in paper. Tedious at times, but I am very happy with the result. Enjoy!

dhanners
12-11-2009, 03:20 PM
Wow. Fantastic work....

redhorse
12-11-2009, 03:42 PM
Those look really tricky to do, but you've done a great job!

PEB
12-12-2009, 04:37 PM
Thank you for the comments! Today I started on the engine support frame which is basically made of long thin tubes. I roll the tubes as tight as I can, using normal printing paper. That way I have 2-3 layers of paper in my tubes which I hope will add some strength to the framework.

Retired_for_now
12-12-2009, 04:42 PM
Outstanding work! The laminations (paper + glue) should be plenty strong enough.

Yogi

Gideon
12-15-2009, 11:45 AM
Got some work done today and finished the turbopump assemblies. The parts are rolled tubes of various diameter and other shapes made from layers of cereal box wrapped in paper. Tedious at times, but I am very happy with the result. Enjoy!
I have just one word to descirbe this... No, nevermind, I'm speechless! :eek:

cardist
12-15-2009, 01:49 PM
Excellent work PEB. I have this one in my to-do pile, so will be following with a keen interest.

Bernie

PEB
12-17-2009, 01:10 PM
Thank you very much for the comments! They are much appreciated! I hope to see some of your build Bernie when you get started on the Titan. It is a good looking rocket!
Today I installed a small circular part in the centre of the bottom cone. Later it will act as an attachment point for the support frame. I build the frame itself from tubes made as mentioned above, and you are right Yogi - the tubes are very strong. They even keep the round shape when trimming their length! They should have had something like a toothpick kind of shape, but I’m not sure it is possible to make in paper at this scale?

PEB
12-18-2009, 01:07 PM
The engine support frame itself is finished. I still have lots of plumbing to do in that area, so to give myself some workspace I better wait a little before attaching the engines...no matter how tempting it is! :D

dhanners
12-18-2009, 03:41 PM
Impressive work so far! Keep the photos coming....

SAustin16
12-18-2009, 07:04 PM
PEB, that is SUPERB craftsmanshiip on your thrust structure frame...the detailed arms really make this model special. I second Mr. Hanners...keep the photos coming please.

PEB
12-19-2009, 05:27 PM
Thanks guys! I promise to maintain a flow of build photos!

I’m still a newbie in the paper modelling world, but I think the reason my Titan thrust structure is going well so far, is equal amounts of patience and staring at photos of the real thing before starting. I often find myself wondering what the guys and girls doing piston engines in the Aviation forum – or those roaming around in the Amory could do with the Titan!

Last progress before Christmas is today’s work: More structure made of tubes. These tripod thingies connect some kind of piston to the engine. My guess is that it has something to do with gimballing.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to Denmark to celebrate Christmas with my family, so to all here on papermodellers.com I’d like to wish a very merry Christmas!

PEB
01-10-2010, 02:04 PM
After a busy Christmas and New Year I’ve finally had some time on my hands to look at my Titan again. The turbo pump assemblies have been glued in place, but it was not without problems.
I glued them in place last night just to find I had positioned them to far away from the centre of the cone. It was outside my personal limits for letting it pass, so today I took them off again. It caused some tearing on the cone itself but luckily it was easy to fix.
The model is beginning to get that messy Titan look! :)

sf4ever
01-10-2010, 02:31 PM
That looks awesome! I wait for the next pictures. ;)

Retired_for_now
01-10-2010, 03:25 PM
This is outstanding Peter! I'd say this is a good layover project, but you probably should be sleeping then (nor one to work on at FL300 even with "george" flying).

Yogi

PEB
01-12-2010, 02:56 PM
Thanks for the compliments! Modelling while on layover? LOL! If I am not mistaken a papermodelers.com member once made one of your space probes while camping!?! :cool: As for modelling on the flightdeck I'd better wait until I become captain! ;)

Today I rolled some more tubes and glued them in to yet another tripod. I have not been able to figure out its function on the real rocket, but fact is that it is only found on one side of the thrust structure.
Next I should be able to attach the engines!

PEB
01-13-2010, 03:30 PM
Engines are attached. It looked like the thrust structure was going to be too tall, so before gluing I had to cut about 1 millimetre of the small cylinder on top of each engine.

hueydriver
01-13-2010, 06:36 PM
Whoa....stunning work, Keep 'em coming, Peter!!

Kirk

dhanners
01-13-2010, 07:01 PM
I'd say you captured the busy look of a Titan's business end. Great job!

PEB
01-14-2010, 06:35 AM
Thank you very much gents! Fortunately I have some good drawings and pictures for reference: The drawings from Ninfinger (page 1) and Mark Petersen's photos (page 3).
On top of that I have found these sites useful:
Titan II (http://www.enginehistory.org/titan_ii.htm)
Historic Spacecraft - Photos of Titan Rockets and Missiles (http://historicspacecraft.com/Titan.html)

However there is one thing that I have been unable to find any good pictures of. The silver thing on the picture below. It seems to be used on the Gemini Titan Rocket only, and not the Titan Missile. Any ideas about what it can be?


http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee111/PEBflyer/GT.jpg

Now back to rolling more tubes. Those fuel lines doesn't roll themselves - unfortunately.

dhanners
01-14-2010, 08:10 PM
I'd say that's a question to pose to the multitude of experts over at the Yahoo space-modeling discussion group; I'm guessing someone there would know. If you're not a member, you should be.

Retired_for_now
01-14-2010, 09:03 PM
One possibility at Mitigating Pogo on Liquid-Fueled Rockets (http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2004/05.html) - article about an accumulator installed in the feedlines to reduce pogo oscillations under thrust. Just a guess at this point ... but it was a new add to Titan for the Gemini launches. Location doesn't quite fit though - looks almost like an add-on for comms or range safety.

Yogi

PEB
01-16-2010, 02:44 PM
Thank you both of you for helping out in the “mystery of the silver thing”. I joined the Yahoo space-modelers discussion group today, did a search in the forum, and found the answer! One member writes: “…these were air scoops that created a "curtain" of air to try and keep the aft bulkhead protected from thrust flame backflow.”
I also found a website from this guy who is in the process of building a Gemini Titan – although not in paper - he show how he is doing these scoops:
GeminiTitan (http://spacemodels.dk/GeminiTitan/GeminiTitan.html) Btw check out his Saturn V on the main page! :eek:

Browsing around pictures on the web I have to correct myself: The scoops were mounted on the Titan ICBM as well.

Yogi that is an interesting article you linked to there! I didn’t know much about the pogo phenomena before. And I thought it was something that affected the Saturn V only, not the Titan II. A bit of physics mixed with history – can’t get any better!

Made the inner fuel lines today. I use rolled tubes just like for the engine framework – normal printing paper rolled tight and with many layers. Cutting is fairly easy. The tube flattens a bit where I cut, but regains it shape when rolling between two fingers. There may be a nicer and cleaner way to do bends in paper, but this works for me. I had a good supply of tubes before starting today but had some issues along the way so nearly spend it all! Back to rolling….

sf4ever
01-16-2010, 03:52 PM
It looks awesome again! the best is how look the nozzles, that's only great!
I hope the finished model will be as awesome as your fotos. ;)

dhanners
01-16-2010, 06:17 PM
The work continues to look stunning.

One method I've used for making curved tubes is to roll the paper much as you did, except use thinner laminations. I mark where it's going to bend and cut a small <> shape out of the inside of the bend. Then I insert a pipe cleaner and use it as support for bending the piece so the paper doesn't collapse. Once the piece is bent and glued, I use a wire cutter to cut the pipe cleaner flush with the ends of the paper. It sometimes requires a little filing with a file to get the metal wire completely flush.