Four forward... Four forward... Picking Up Some Dust...

[WeeVikes]

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of progress for a couple days. Between getting No. 1 son back to college, de-Christmasing the house, and seeing my wife off on a business trip, there hasn't been much in the way of modeling time until today.

Today we begin working on the base, our little slice of the Sea of Tranquility.

We start with a certificate frame from Wal Mart. They're inexpensive, about $2.00. To that, we add 1/4" x 1/4" square balsa sticks, mitre cut at the corners, and glued to the frame. This is so there is a little larger lip to build up the "lunar surface", and to dress up the display a little.

Next, we start our lunar surface material. Following Ton Noteboom's instructions, I shredded a copy of the Dayton Daily News, and am currently soaking it in a tub of hot water in order to pulp the paper and to get the ink to run, giving the recycled paper the gray color we're looking for. In a day or so, I'll be squeezing out the excess water, mixing in some glue, and applying the putty-like material to the frame.

That's it for tonight.


Mike

[WeeVikes]

After a good 24 hours of soaking in water, I took some of my pulped newspaper, squeezed as much water out it as I possibly could, and kneaded a liberal amount of Elmer's white glue into it to help it bind to itself. My thinking is, given the extreme amount of moisture in my "lunar putty" it's pretty likely the stuff will shrink as it dries. Therefore, I decided to lay up the lunar surface in a couple layers. My fear is that it will draw away from the walls, and if I build the entire surface in one shot, it will not come out the way I want it.

So, for my first pass, I layed up a layer a little more than 1/8" thick, wall-to-wall. This ended up being a little higher than half-way up the balsa walls. I then used a small kitchen roller to make the surface as smooth and flat as I could, in order to allow it to dry as uniformly as possible. We'll see how much shrinkage there is when it dries, and how much filling in around the edges I may have to do.

If all goes well with the base layer, the next layer will be sculpted with some texture -- some very shallow rolling "hills" and "valleys", craters, rocks, dust, etc.


Mike

[WeeVikes]

Ok, I couldn't help myself... I'm staying up too late, but I'm on a roll.

I poured out some of the muck water from the newspaper pulp into a Tupperware bowl. Into this, I added some Elmer's glue, and a few scoops of soot and ash from my fireplace. I mixed this all up as thoroughly as I could in order to make Moon-colored die.

Into this I dunked a healthy wad of polyfill, my material of choice for rocket exhaust and now lunar dust. I soaked it in as well as I could, and once it was pretty thoroughly soaked and stained, I took it out and put it on a plastic shopping bag to dry. This is probably a lot more material than I'll actually need to model the dust, but I'd rather have too much than not enough.

Time to get some sleep...

[WeeVikes]

Time for the second layer of the Sea of Tranquility.

Basically the same as yesterday -- scoop out a bunch of newspaper pulp, squeeze out the excess water, knead in some white glue, and begin adding it to the layer already in the frame. Tonight, however, I intentionally made it a little "lumpy" in order to give the surface some interest. I then smoothed out the overall surface a little with my fingers, wetted a little, to try to make the surface transitions a little more gradual, and to fix any cracks as best I could.

Given the gray color, the "quality" of the camera in my phone, and my complete lack of photography skills, it's a challenge to show you what it really looks like. In all the pictures, it's looks much lumpier than it actually is, but you get the overall idea, I hope.

Next, time to add craters. I used a Mio bottle, a tube of lip balm, and a Sharpie, to make indentations of various sizes, smoothing them out as I went.

After that, it was time to add some 1/96th scale "moon rocks" -- clean kitty litter sprinkled over the surface. I then gently pressed the litter into the surface in order to get them to stick. There are more than I probably want, but I'm guessing some of them will fall off. I'm hoping the glue in the pulp mixture will hold a good amount of it in place, though.

My polyfill "dust" is still damp in places. I need to put it in front of a fan to dry. Once that is done, I can begin shaping it to get an appropriate blown dust effect.

Mike

[Vermin_King]

I'm assuming you are going to be painting this, so that will help everything to hold together. Didn't shrink as much as I thought it would.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

As long as it is not completely dry, it will keep shrinking. I did a very small diorama of NEAR-Shoemaker some time ago and the mass shrunk almost 5mm in length and width. This took days to dry completely. I used strips of thick mat paper cut to size to fill in the gaps that ran alongside the frame. It created a kind of nice looking extra rim around the diorama.

Mike, your base is coming out really nice! I second Vermin King on the paint part. That will keep it all nicely together. Don't be afraid to use several shades of err... grey.. Not fifty though. (-:

[WeeVikes]

Other than to add/touch up color, the base is holding together well enough that I don't think paint would be needed to seal it in place. I've done this once before, on a much smaller scale, and the base remained very solid. However, it's something to keep in mind, for certain. I appreciate the suggestion, Vermin King.

Obviously, it's still drying, but shrinkage hasn't happend like I thought it might. That was the main reason why I built the base up in two layers, in order to counteract this issue as much as I could. Then again, to your point, PK, given that it'll be a few days before it's all dry, I may be in for a surprise...

[WeeVikes]

Life gets in the way of modeling sometimes...

Following PK's suggestion, I decided to make the engine exhaust be the way to support the LM over the surface. I know that there's a great chance the exhaust was nearly invisible, however, I decided to take a little artistic license in this area.

In the Tips and Tricks section, I saw a tutorial on how to turn solid airplane nosecones. I decided to try something similar. In the first attempt, I was working with a solid, straight tube of cardstock. When trying to shape it, I broke the wooden dowel in the chuck of my drill. Whoops! Time to try again.

As you can see in the pictures, in my second attempt, I went with a "near-net shape" approach. Basically, that entailed using carefully tapered strips of cardstock. My idea was to have the exhaust expand out of the nozzle, reach a wide point, then taper back to the bottom. At the bottom of the exhaust is the section of dowel that was in the drill chuck, and will be inserted in a hole in the "lunar surface", and hopefully hidden by the "dust". After a little sanding, I got the piece smoothed out, to an acceptable shape.

I then painted it in light gray, as a primer. After this dried, I painted it with a light coat of yellow. I intentionally left it a little light, so some of the gray could show thru, and in parts left it a little "blotchy" as I don't think actual flames would be uniform color.

After that, I drybrushed some red randomly over the piece, and rubbed it down a little to try to smooth the piece and the color out a bit.
I know, it's a little "cartoony", but trying to model fire is daunting...

That's it for now.

[jleslie48]

that cone technique for the the exhaust looks great!

[WeeVikes]

Thank you, Jon!