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  #111  
Old 04-19-2020, 08:50 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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Start of upper torso for life-size Buzz and Neil

Dear all

So I have made some progress on the torso above where I decided to split the torso (what I am now calling the "upper torso"). Given my experience with the lower torso I thought it was best to build Buzz and Neil at the same time part by part.

Starting with Neil, first comes the front part of the bottom ring. Here is the parts and then cut out ready

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13862.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13863.jpg

There is a "subtle" curve join. This needed joining tabs at the back of the part to make strong enough (shown below)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13865.jpg

And here is the finished part (I have Gene in shot for scale)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13864.jpg

The same was then done for Buzz

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13866.jpg

Now the first difference between Neil and Buzz is encountered with the right shoulder, which is part of the torso. The actual "first part" difference is the back part (which is very large). So the next thing was to decide how to divide up this part and then make the necessary alterations to it for Buzz. In the end I went for this chopping up

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13923.jpg

One of the reasons is this way gives a cutting up between definite reference points. I have found out that when cutting up big parts you really need to be accurate otherwise this leads to things being "a long way out" when you start joining to other bits of your model (like below)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13867.jpg

So here are all the parts for Neil cut out ready to be glued together

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13871.jpg

Another reason for dividing it up this way was it means only one piece is different between Neil and Buzz and the alteration is (again) between good reference points. Here are the different parts (Neil and then Buzz)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13869.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13872.jpg

So here is a comparison of the back part (Neil is upper and Buzz is lower)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13873.jpg

So back to gluing together. This was quite a hard glue since the parts were pretty big and the whole thing was quite unwieldy. Here is a sequence showing Buzz being glued together

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13874.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13875.jpg
Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13876.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13877.jpg

And finally the first "ring" of the upper torso of Buzz

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13880.jpg

Sooner or later I am going to have to start on the formers for the torsos, which to be honest I am not sure about at all at the moment. But still have a bit of time to think about that whilst I complete the upper torsos. So next up will be doing the above glue for Neil

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #112  
Old 04-20-2020, 09:48 AM
rifleman rifleman is offline
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as always some great work
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  #113  
Old 04-23-2020, 09:02 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbal View Post
Like most of the others, I am in awe of the nearly-insane ambition of this project. You are truly an inspiration to us all.
Keep up the brilliant work!


Greg
Thanks for those kind comments Greg. So pleased this build and thread is enjoyable for people. My wife thinks there is no need for the word nearly in "nearly-insane"!

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #114  
Old 04-23-2020, 09:03 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman View Post
as always some great work
Cheers rifleman!

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #115  
Old 04-23-2020, 10:00 AM
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Upper torso of life-size Neil continued

Dear all

So after getting Buzz's upper torso started I next moved onto Neil's, the first parts which I had already cut out (see earlier post). So this was the front "half" of the bottom ring of the upper torso

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13864.jpg

and I glued the remaining parts, which are these

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13871.jpg

symmetrically either side of the front half, like this

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13878.jpg

and then this

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13879.jpg

Finally the last part to form a long strip

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13881.jpg

Then glued it together to form the ring (shown below with Gene for scale)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13883.jpg

You can now clearly the difference between Buzz and Neil (Buzz is on the left)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13880.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13882.jpg

I decided to continue on with Neil. So next to cut out was the chest and fronts of the shoulders (where the mission patches go)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13884.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13885.jpg

Figuring out where it was best to have tabs took me a bit of time but gluing them was not too bad. Then came the part which was "the between the shoulder blades". This was a big part and I found it tricky. The whole upper torso structure is very "flexible" and this part is so big that a tiny bit out is going to cause a lot of error when it come to adding the shoulders and neck ring. Here is it being slowly glued into place (hoping it was correctly positioned)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13886.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13887.jpg

Then came the tops of the shoulders and shoulder blades (which get glued to the back). And here it is with both sides done

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13890.jpg

As you can see the "back" is only pegged to the shoulder tops. This is because there is a huge amount of movement in the part and you need to get the join just right to make the "hole" for the neck. So it will be best to finish off the shoulders and then do the back join and then the neck. The rest of the shoulders are going to be tricky I think (they are such undulating curves) but before that I think the "torso" needs more stiffening by doing something with the umbilical connector and mission patches holes.

So whilst considering my options I rested Neil's upper torso on his lower torso

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13891.jpg

It looks big (can you see Gene?). To get a feel for the size here I am leaning as far in as I can through the neck hole

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13892.jpg

Even at full stretch I cannot quite get my finger tips to the bottom. I wonder if this is going to be a problem.

Regards and take care

Kevin
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Last edited by Algebraist; 04-23-2020 at 10:04 AM. Reason: spelling corrections
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  #116  
Old 04-27-2020, 09:34 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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Life-Size Umbilical connectors on Neil's torso

Dear all

So I have been thinking about the umbilicals and where they join onto the suit. Here is a photo of the real thing



This is a NASA picture. For those of you interested on the site Lunar surface journal there is a page devoted to Neil Armstrong's space suit which has lots of up close detailed photos. Here is the page https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11NAAFlownSuit.html

So what I noticed is the "connect ring" for each "hose" which is mounted on the suit doesn't flex, so is always in the same plane. This is nicely shown by this photo



(from https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/4...ort-connectors ). The upshot for me is I need to have a "flat" disc for eack of the connectors to join to at the suit (however I decide to do that), where currently there are holes.

So the plan I decided to go with was to sandwich the "triangular tabs" of the "hole" between two cardboard circles of the correct size. So first I had to trim the tabs so they would not overlap (here I am trimming one of the upper torso holes)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13903.jpg

Next, being very mindful of limited stock of card at the moment, I thought it better to cut the card sandwiching discs from card as economically as possible. Thus I cut out the formers for the ends of the left and right shoulder, as well as the former for the neck, and backed them all onto 2 mm card and then cut out the middle of each of these.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13901.jpg

I then used these "off cuts" to cut out some of the umbilical disks.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13900.jpg

So each umbilical hole is having a 2 mm thich "backing disk" (ie in the inside of the model). This will give that disk strength. It will also have a 0.5 mm thick disk on the front (ie on the outside of the model. This will (should) mean that where the umbilical rings join the suit will be nice and flat but that area will hardly stick up ablove the surface of the surrounding area of the suit. Well that was the idea.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13894.jpg

For the above to work I needed both the disks to line up exactly with the hole and that needed to happen first time, since the faces of the disks would be covered in glue there would be no possibility of adjustment. So to make this easier I used a copper wire "spindle" which meant I could locate the outer disk in place and the slide the inner disk easily into the correct position. the photos below give the idea of what was going on

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13895.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13896.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13897.jpg

Other than trying to locate the small hole in the inner disk, to thread onto the copper wire, after it had been covered in glue the method worked really well I thought.

Here is Neil's lower torso with disks in place

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13898.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13899.jpg

So that is the bottom two of the 6 umbilical connect holes. I then did the upper two on the upper torso. The middle two are actually cut by the seam between the upper and lower torso so was unsure about them at the moment.

My thoughts in my next post...

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #117  
Old 04-27-2020, 10:16 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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Life-Size make or break decision

Dear all

So with doing the "holes" for the umbilical connectors (see my previous post ), since the join between the upper and lower torso cuts across 2 of these holes, there is no more putting it off, I need to decide how to do the formers for the upper and lower torso.

I have been thinking of different ways of doing these and none of them looked promising. The best solution I came up with was to try and make a pair of semi flexible formers. These would be stiff enough to do the job of a former but flexible enough to take up the undulating shape of the profile of the torso's.

To get another feel for what was involved I rested the upper torso of Neil on the lower torso and leaned in as far as I could to see how things looked. In this new position I found I could just get the knuckles of one hand to the bottom of the lower torso. I wondered if it would be possible to be able to properly glue every point of the inside of the torso? However it was impossible to tell. There were so many angles I would have to glue from and it was not at all clear where you would be able to access them from nor if you could realistically reach and apply glue and pressure.

I picked up the 1/4 torso's of Neil and Buzz peered in through the arm, neck and waist holes trying to imagine what the life-size would be like. After a few minutes of doing this I simply picked up the scissors and started cutting off the joining tabs at the bottom of Neil's upper torso in order that I could try and join the upper and lower torso.

I do not know if this will work. Even if I manage to join the upper and lower torso the size of the part may throw up problems further down the line. However I just felt, overall, this was the best option to try.

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #118  
Old 04-30-2020, 12:54 AM
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Attempted joining of life-size Neil torso

Dear all

I have now had a go at trying to join the upper and lower torso parts of Neil. It took quite a while because of the size of the upper torso. Here is a photo of what I could see as I tried to join the parts

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13905.jpg

I had to glue one tab at a time because it was a bit wobbly in applying the glue due to coming at it from different angles and directions. Also it was tricky at times trying to find a position where I could apply the glue and see what I was doing at the same time. Then needed to make sure the glue was spread over the whole tab. I was a bit nervous doing the first few tabs because of the need to get them right. However once they were done it got a bit easier. Here it is partially done

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13904.jpg

What turned out to be the hardest thing was applying pressure on the joining tab because for many of them I could only see one side and had to use a hand each side with my arms quite out stretched to press together. Surprisingly, I found it a bit tricky to get my fingers "opposite" each other before pressing.

Still I managed to join the two torso parts together. Then I needed some more disks to do the middle umbilical holes

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13912.jpg

and here is the end result

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13914.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc13913.jpg

To be honest I am very pleased with how it has turned out. The midrift has got quite a bit of stability and I think once the shoulders and neck are in the torso will be quite a stable structure.

So I have decided to push on with Neil to get that far with his torso and then to return to Buzz after that.

Regards and take care

Kevin
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  #119  
Old 04-30-2020, 06:51 AM
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Quite an experiment you have going there. Sounds like you are definitely stretching yourself.


I had to test to see if I could put my arms under the desk and touch my index fingers together without looking on the first try... Hardly the same, I know, but I had to check
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  #120  
Old 05-03-2020, 09:42 AM
Algebraist Algebraist is offline
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I certainly am Vermin_King.

If you want to get your experiment a bit more like what I was doing, try putting you head on the desk with one ear on the desk. Put one hand underneath the table with your index finger pointing. Then without moving that hand/finger try and touch the end of that index finger with the end of you other index finger, preferable first time.

Maybe it is just me but I found this surprisingly hard!

Anyway, hope you are enjoying the build.

Regards and take care

Kevin
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