Pic of the Day: Revell 1:96 Saturn V build, Part 6--Still on the S-IC

Calling this "Part 6," though I haven't been diligent in numbering all the previous Revell Saturn V posts. Sorry. Just go here or click on the "Saturn V" label at the end of the post to see the others.

Still working--very slowly--on the S-IC. I did make some significant progress in recent weeks after almost 2 years of leaving the thing in the box.

I wrote about the big, ugly gaps along the edge of the two wraps forming the O2 and kerosene tanks back in August. Did something about them shortly after that.

First thing was to cut the systems tunnels (the big "pipes" along the sides of the stage). I was going to remove all four of the kit pieces, but realized that the lower halves looked fine. The wrap for the kerosene tank (the lower "half" of the stage) didn't look nearly as bad as the upper one did. I left it alone.

It took some careful work with a straight/chisel X-Acto blade to cut the pins holding the two upper halves. The stage is pretty big and bulky and I didn't want to cut into the wraps, but everything went smoothly.

Once I had the O2 tank wrap exposed, I got to work cutting the overlapping end away. This amounts to a 1/4"-wide strip, as seen above. Then I ran some liquid model cement under the new edge of the wrap and held it with my fingers until it set, working a little at a time. There's still an overlap, but at least it will be covered by the upper half of the systems tunnel when it's glued on.

Here, the upper ends of both systems tunnels have been glued and clamped. No more gap at the midpoint.

There's still a gap under one of the tunnels along the length of the kerosene tank wrap. I'm filling this in with gap-filling "Super Glue" a layer at a time.

I've yet to glue up the second and third stages, but I'll be using the lessons from this one to do them both right the first time.