Finishing

I did my usual thing of using Rustoleum Filler Primer (in gray) followed by filling spirals with Elmer's Carpenter's Wood filler, then sanding followed by LOTS of red Rustoleum Ultra Cover paint (red for body, black for nosecone).  One suggestion I have which I would do differently is to paint with white paint or primer after the sanding step and before the red paint since red goes over white much better than gray (which required more red paint to cover over).   After the red paint was dried, I realized that I should maybe account for the white portions of the decals not having a good light background...I noticed that the white portions of the decals on my regular sized Der Red Max didn't look so great since the decals were thin and so the red made the white portions darker...you can see some of the red paint underneath.  Given this, I then painted the top 6" of the body tube with white.  Of note is that later I used a large white skull decal on one of the big red fins and it looked fine over the red background.  Kudos to Estes for making the decals very thick with excellent white coloring!

The decalling is likely one of the most difficult parts of this rocket build.  This is no surprise given the massive size of the top decal (which is one piece and wraps around the top of the body tube).  I used a dish bucket with warm water and just a bit of liquid soap (I know some people say you shouldn't, but I've done this for years with good results).  Do yourself a favor and make sure you get a large flat pan/bucket like I did for decalling.  Lay the decals in the water face down and this helps prevent them from curling up. Then pull them out of the water (don't wait too long or pull out too quickly) and check them by trying to gently slide the decal.  For the largest decal, I made sure to wet the body tube first and did a combination of lifting and gentle sliding along with re-positioning until I was happy with the placement*.  Afterwards I realized that having the seam where the launch lugs are usually makes sense, but in this case the skull and crossbones are then not aligned with anything.  Oh well. There are plenty of decals to add for those of you who are sticker-crazy and this also gives plenty of options for customization.  This is one of the things that made the MDRMax so great and it really carries through to this Mega size rocket!  To finish, I used Rustoleum Acrylic clear coat.  Rocket looks great and I got lots of compliments on it at home and at the field.  Makes me want to use it as a table centerpiece or put it on a pedestal like a work of art! :)

*EDIT:  Thinking more about the large decal, I would now suggest that you actually cut it in half (between the skulls) to make handling easier.