Estes Big Bertha Build 1

This will be the first post of the Big Bertha Build, and I'm actually miles and miles away from the kit itself lol. My wife rented a cabin for us in Hocking Hills, for a nice weekend getaway. But I confess I'm a little rocket-obsessed, so if I can't actually start the build I can talk about starting it.

Here's the kit panel:

And the kit contents:

This is again a very straightforward build, hopefully. My strategy is first of all to take my time with everything. I'm often in such a rush to get a kit finished to get on to the next one and there'e really no hurry, after all. So I'm going to carefully triple-fill and sand the fins with three different thicknesses of successively-more diluted CWF, and then prime & wet-sand with 400 grit (as recommended) multiple times, alternating between white and gray primer, ending with white, until everything is totally smooth. It'll probably be a total of four coats of primer. Then I'll paint Big Bertha a bright glossy yellow with gloss black and white fins. So this build I'll practice my masking technique as well.

I'll again mask off the fins and body tube when gluing the fillets, but this time I'm widening the gaps to make the fillets a bit more substantial.

And I read that the cans of spray paint require a good full two minutes of vigorous shaking before spraying in order to get a smooth even coat, and some even put their can of paint in hot water for 15 minutes or so before spraying. To be honest I don't think I'll go that far but I will shake for the two minutes. Maybe that will prevent the little granular-type spraying errors I noticed on the Baby Bertha nose cone (a goof previously unmentioned). In fact, in surfing around tonight I found that another way to get a mirror-like finish on a rocket is to use an airbrush. Apparently it's possible to achieve such a finish using an airbrush, with no additional clear coats even needed. It's something I'll look in to, because the forum articles I read implied that all the repetitive priming and sanding usually required can be avoided by airbrushing so that's something I could really get behind. 

All righty, I'm going to close again. I'm back home tomorrow to begin the actual build. I plan on stopping by Home Depot on the way home from Hocking Hills to grab the work light I ordered. See you next time!