Finishing

Finishing was slightly more involved than construction because of the amount of body tube spiral and balsa grain to cover, but surfaces were large enough to allow for broad swipes while sanding, so it all worked out well.  When all of the glue fillets were dry, I sprayed the entire rocket with Valspar primer to toughen it up a little before the Fill & Finish.  Once the primer was dry, I sanded everything lightly to remove any burrs that resulted from the drying primer, then brushed on the first coat of thinned Elmer's Carpenter's Wood Filler.  I've found that the best way to work with this is to fill a cup with water, dip the brush in the water, then smear it around in the wood filler.  Once the bristles have picked up enough filler, I then paint it on the fins, nose cone and tube spirals and wait for it to dry.  Once dry, the filler is sanded off and the process repeated until your fins are glass smooth, or you run out of patience, (which is what usually happens to me.)  Once up to my standards, the rocket was reprimed, then the body was sprayed with Testors Racing Orange, a fancily named flourescent orange with a nice pop.  This paint works best when sprayed over white primer and in multiple light coats.  More finicky than the flourescent orange I usually use, but the results were very nice.  The nose cone was painted Testors gloss black, as was the stripe down the one fin.  This caused a bit of a problem when it ran badly.  (Forgot that I wasn't painting with Valspar.)  The run looked pretty horrible, and as usual, I got disgusted and lost interest in the project.  Just before NARAM 55 I decided to see if I could save the project, and to my surprise, I did.  The offending runs were sanded away, and I again used the Testors gloss black, this time taking care to do it in light coats.  It turned out very nice.

Decals were more of an issue.  I've tried before with the decal scan at JimZ and filed, but in the meantime I won an auction for a set of Screamer instructions and a decal.  I tried scanning my version and working on it and was more successful.  I broke it down into sections as I was most interested in the wrap and Mini Brute "bug", but I also printed off the black stripe that sits just above the fins on the body tube.  I did the upscale by measuring the wrap from the original decal, then figured what length it would have to be to fit around a BT-70.  Not the most elegant method, but it worked.  To be sure I had the upscale right, I printed the wrap off on plain paper and checked it for fit.  Once I had that sized right, I upscaled the original scan by that number, then isolated the decals separately and put them in place using Print Shop.