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  #371  
Old 01-18-2025, 03:55 AM
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Originally Posted by Vermin_King View Post
Funny thing about plugging along. Fortune sometimes changes, which you would never have known had you thrown up your hands in surrender.

Nice work
Very true Vermin King. Thanks for the complement too.

Regards

Kevin
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  #372  
Old 01-18-2025, 03:57 AM
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your doing a grand job hang in there chap you got this far keep going
Thanks rifleman. Makes a difference knowing people want you to succeed when things are not going so well.

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Kevin
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  #373  
Old 01-18-2025, 07:33 AM
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Continuation of life-size helmets

Dear all

Having managed to rescue Buzz's helmet I decided to press on with that helmet. So the next stage was to try and "close the helmet at the front with the gold visor lift assembly. To follow what is going on it help to know how the actual helmets were made. So the spacesuit is actually many suits in one, one of which is a "pressure suit". The helmet of this pressure suit is the "bubble" helmet.



When the astronauts were to walk on the moon a further helmet was added on top of this (called the LEVA helmet). Below is a video which shows the helmet being add (watch from 5 mins in)



The body of the helmet was essentially a hard plastic which was then covered with a "beta cloth" shroud. It had two siding visors, an inner clear UV protection coated polycarbonate visor and then an outer gold coated reflective visor.







There were also 2 sun shades, one left and one right





The following video is of replica helmets but gives a good feel of what is going on (note that the helmet visor system was slightly altered for apollo 13 and subsequent missions)



So for the model I am now adding the bottom ring of the gold visor and the lift flap of this visor. Subsequently will add the parts underneath that. So here are the bits cut out

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14611.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14612.jpg

The lift flap needs to be nice a ridged (clearly looking not made of fabric) so I decide to triple layer it

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14615.jpg

The parts are then glued together and then trimmed

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14617.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14616.jpg

Before attaching to the face plate I have the good idea of adding a thin card strengthening template on the lower semi circle of the face plate (given the previous experience of the upper semi circle.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14614.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14619.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14620.jpg

Overall here is where it is at

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14621.jpg

Some of you may have noticed that to either side of the gold visor lift flap should lift flaps for the UV clear visor. These flaps are not on the model. Sometimes these flaps were covered by the shroud.

Regards

Kevin
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  #374  
Old 01-18-2025, 09:00 AM
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Vermin_King Vermin_King is offline
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Way, way, way back when this was current events, in art we had to paint a moon scene.

My face plate looked like the picture at the start of your video, and I had no idea that I was depicting the sun shades deployed. Thanks
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  #375  
Old 01-23-2025, 06:30 AM
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Ah yes, that comment of yours Vermin King has brought back lots of memories of me as a boy trying to draw space scenes. I really wanted to create pictures like this official NASA painting



which of course I never managed!

I remember a book in that era, which some of you may have also read, which I really liked particularly because of the pictures. It was called "Exploring the Planets" by Roy Gallant with illustrations by John Polgreen



The big double page colour pictures were my favourites

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-6674-2.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-6674-4.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-6674-6.jpg

Later on I learnt that John Polgreen had been influenced by Chesley Bonestell (as had pretty much every space artist) who (almost) invented the genre of "space art". Here is an iconic Chesley Bonestell painting (Saturn from Titan)



Chesley Bonestell is a really interesting person and was super talented. Very worthwhile finding about him if you art interested in this sort of stuff.

There was something really captivating/magical about the "illustrations" of the 50's and 60's I think, which for me is never quite replicated by (more realistic) photoshop images (though that is probably more to do with my age at the time and what the world was like then).

If you like official NASA illustrations you might find this book enjoyable



and here is a youtube of it



Of course there is a ton of non-NASA great space art too.

Regards

Kevin
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  #376  
Old 01-23-2025, 07:10 AM
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Still on the life-size helmets

Dear all

Continuing on with Buzz's helmet I found that there was an issue around where the hinge mechanism of the visors is located





in that is was hard trying to get it to keep some sort of angular shape. There was just too much of the weight of the paper from other parts of the helmet pulling in different directions. However this was cured by adding some thick card formers

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14623.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14624.jpg

and then all looked fine

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14622.jpg

Next I added the lower part of the lift flap which is a very long thin part indeed

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14628.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14631.jpg

At this point I decided that was as much as should be done on Buzz's helmet for now so moved back to Neil's helmet. Things are being done in a different order than to Buzz's helmet. So the face plate has the lower semi circular template and lift flap added and then I add the underneath ring

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14630.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14629.jpg

Now it is time to attach the face plate to the body of the helmet. This turns out to be particularly arkward at the sides (mainly due to the "strengthening" brace I added). It seems the helmet just has some tricky (for me) spots no matter how I tried to assemble it.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14632.jpg

Anyway the face plate is very slowly glued together and this is the end result

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14635.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14638.jpg

I am pleased with the end result, particularly the top of the helmet.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14637.jpg

which is way better than my first attempt with Buzz's helmet. I still am worried about the visor "installment". However there is a certain amount of flexibility in the lower semi circle as shown below

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14639.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14640.jpg

This means that no more can be done on the body of the helmet until the visors have been made and attached, otherwise this "flexibility" will be lost and I think that is going to be needed when attaching the visor. So next up has to be "The Visors".

Regards

Kevin
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  #377  
Old 01-31-2025, 04:57 PM
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Life-size visor for Buzz

Dear all

So it was time to start the visors. My view is that the visors of the models are like the faces of a full length painting of a person. In the latter, if the face is not a good likeness then no matter what the rest of the painting looks like the picture will be poor. The same for this model (I think), the visors are like the "faces" of the spacemen and as such, if the visors are not really good looking then it doesn't matter how good the rest of the model is, overall it will look poor. So a substandard visor will ruin a good Of course the converse is not true (a poor model can not be redeemed by a good visor).

So just what is a good visor? Well, mention an astronaut on the moon and I think most people will have in there minds eye this image in the first instance



and your eyes are immediately drawn to Buzz's visor. So I think the model visor needs to have the same impact. As stated in earlier posts I have decided to just try and make the best "standard" visor I can and hope it has the required impact. With this in mind my plan is to make and attach Buzz's visor first (and basically learn from that before doing Neil's visor).

So the visor is made from 8 gores (in the original 1/4 scale model). However each gore is way to big to fit onto a single piece of A3 paper at life-size, however you can fit a little over half a gore on an A3 sheet as shown below (with 30cm rule for reference)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14717.jpg

My thought was NOT to make each gore from two halves (which would result in a "seam" running down the centre of the visor). I thought your eye would easily pick this out. Instead I decided to make gore from two uneven length parts and to stagger the short and long side on alternating gores. My hope is (with enough care and touch-up art at the end) this will make the joins almost invisible. We shall see!

First I cut out the printed sections. I need to be as precise as possible so the match as close to perfect as I can manage. This turns out to be quite tricky for since my eye-sight is deteriorating and can no longer see good enough to do this using a scalpel. I instead use these Fiskers scissors

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14117.jpg

Once two parts of the same gore are cut out I need to cut off the "excess" overlap at some point.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14720.jpg

So laying one part on top of the other I try and line up some reference points on both parts also use a lot of "feel" that the edge curves match. When matched one on top of the other they are joined at the back with masking tape.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14721.jpg

Now I use the "trick" of cutting a perfect match that I learnt as a boy helping to lay turf, which is, now parts are overlapped it does not matter what shape the cut is, provided it all lies within the overlap the two parts wil join together perfectly. I go for a roughly vertical cut (though I wonder if a wiggly cut would be better at being harder to see).

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14722.jpg

And here is the the gore after the cut

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14723.jpg

I am using black "sugar paper" (as it was always called when I was a boy at school) to do all the joins of the visor parts. This is to try and eliminate any "white flecks" being in the visor

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14732.jpg

I am also doing doing edge colouring for the same reason

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14730.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14731.jpg

So the objective is to get an invisible join (or as close to as possible)

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14718.jpg Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14719.jpg

It is a slow process for me but hopefully it will pay off

Regards

Kevin
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  #378  
Old 02-01-2025, 02:04 PM
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it will pay off keep chipping away at it your doing great stuff well done
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  #379  
Old 02-05-2025, 03:39 AM
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Life-size Buzz visor continued

Dear all

Continuing to make the gores for Buzz's visor I hit a snag, which was, "How to cut the two parts, that make up a gore, in the correct place when there are no identifying marks on the overlap?" After a while I thought about a method which came to me by thinking about riding a square wheeled tricycle. Yes there are such things (with rotating wheels, not tank tracks in the shape of a square). Here is a video of such a trike



If you are near the New York City area you can ride this trike at the Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) as well as other places in the word. The principle behind the "smooth" ride is of two "curves" (the square wheel and the ground it moves over) rolling over each other



Actually the same principle is essential in getting to the Moon!

So my thought were as follows:- Since each part of the gore that was to be made was more than "half", then in theory there was a point on it (somewhere) that would be "half way of the final made gore. Now that "halk way point must coincide with the halfway point of the (already made) gore below it. So first I found the halfway point of the already made previous gore (the one below the one I am trying to make.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14735.jpg

As you can see I did this using a rule and set square to mark the point on the back of the gore. Next turn the gore over, secure it on a flat surface and mark the halfway point of the joining edge.

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14727.jpg

Now take one part of the "to be made" gore and roll it along the bottom gore starting from the outer side. When it rolled to the half way point make a tiny mark. Do similar to the other part of the gore. Now each part has an identifiable matching point to line up.

There are a couple of things with the method however. First is the assumption that the outside edges of all the gores actually match up (at this increased size). Second, when rolling, no "slipping" happens. Only the final made up visor will reveal if this idea worked.

This is the method I decided to go for in the cases of no overlapping identifying marks. And here are all the gores made

Life-Size Buzz and Neil (enlarged 1/4 Ken West "Apollo Astronauts on the Moon")-sdc14734.jpg

Next step is to join them at which point I should get a feel of how things might look overall for the visor

Regards

Kevin
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  #380  
Old 02-05-2025, 03:41 AM
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it will pay off keep chipping away at it your doing great stuff well done
Cheers rifleman!

Kevin
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