Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius - Page 10

**whulsey** · #91 10-08-2016, 10:52 PM

Excellent, excellent!!

**smithdr** · #92 10-09-2016, 11:42 AM

I'm detailing a little airplane cockpit right now and thought I was doing ok.

Not so...

DANG!!! Your model is some really prime work! Very, very envious.

Cheers,

Dan

**Wichita** · #93 10-29-2016, 04:04 PM

Parts 230a and 230b are brackets for the rear RCS thrusters. They are a bit of a complicated shape but the pictures explain. The center double armed bracket is pretty straight forward, but the two side arms are a bit poorly designed in my opinion. The base of the arms do not quite meet together due to being attached to the part at an angle. Plus the two sides of the arms do not glue up back to back, but are perpendicular to each other. They took a bit of forcing into place, but is quite minor and does not have much effect on the appearance.

Mounting the left RCS bracket was straight forward since the mounting points for the two side arms on the aft equipment bay are marked and are obvious. I left the center double armed bracket unglued until later in the build to make sure the RCS gets positioned correctly.

The right RCS bracket was a bit more challenging since there is a small box on the aft equipment bay in the way of the lower side arm. I compromised by gluing that arm to the back side of the small box instead. I left the center double armed bracket unglued until later in the build to make sure the RCS gets positioned correctly, the same as the bracket on the left side.

Part count to date: 423

**Wichita** · #94 01-08-2017, 07:02 PM

Parts 231a through 231d form the left tank support. Part 231a is rolled into a simple tube. Part 231b (appears to be mislabeled as part 231a) is rolled into a simple tube that goes around 231a. 231c and 231d are cones that form the ends. Very straight forward construction.

To give the part more strength I tapered the ends of a lollipop stick and put the cones on each end. These were cut off with a length of the lollipop stick on the ends. These were then cut to size to slide into both ends of the tube. I had to trim the ends of part 231a since they did not fit inside the end cones very well. The lollipop stick was sufficient for alignment.

I decided to skin the part with aluminum foil. I used the cutouts from the part sheet as an outline to scribe the foil as a guide for cutting. I then just formed the foil over the parts and attached with glue.

The tank support will be attached to the model later in the build.

Part count to date: 427

**Wichita** · #95 01-31-2017, 09:54 AM

Parts 232a and 232b form the aft birdcage. It is a bit of a complex shape to form 2 sided printing. The first challenge was to figure out how to align 232b onto the back side of 232a. I started off by using a pin to poke holes at into the interior corners of part 232b and the corresponding interior corners of 232a. These holes were used to align the parts glued back to back using T-pins to hold into place. After drying the open space of the part was cut out.

A similar method was used to align the other sides of part 232a that are folded over to form 2 sided printing. The process was a bit tedious but the results were pretty good.

As a side point, I used a Quickie Glue pinpoint roller to glue the 2 sided printing together. It worked great. The applicator is very precise, does not get stringy, and the glue remains somewhat flexible so it does not get brittle and separate when working the part, which is a problem I had when using Elmer's All Purpose glue stick on other parts of the birdcage.

I wanted to create a more realistic finish for the gold foil. I used Grafix Metallic Foil gift wrapping paper. It has an excellent realistic metallic finish with a paper backing which makes it very easy to attach without needing to use specialized glues. To make the foil skin, I cut a piece of the foil paper then wadded it up into a ball to give it an appropriate wrinkle then laid it out flat again smoothing it out with my finger. This does not remove the wrinkles since it is backed with regular paper. I then traced out the shape of the skin to the back of the foil paper and cut to final size. The foil paper was then glued onto the part and resulted in a very realistic finish adding minimal thickness to the part.

Now that the part was completely cut out, I made the necessary folds for the final shape and attached it to the aft side of the LEM. I took several pictures of the attachment points for reference.

I did not count the foil skin as an additional part.

Part count to date: 429

**Wichita** · #96 01-31-2017, 10:02 AM

These are additional photos associated with my previous post. I took more than usual of this step to clearly show the steps of the alignment process, skinning method, and attachment points.