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Old 12-30-2011, 07:50 PM
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Gus Gus is offline
7/21/61
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: North of Detroit
Posts: 2,223
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Although I've focused on the SpaceX Falcon 9 for this tutorial, I don't want to finish without showing a few more pics of other rockets I've done with this technique.

First pic shows how I also routinely use sticky paper wraps for fins as well. I obviously leave the root edge uncovered but completely wrap the rest of the fins with overlaps. Once sprayed with a shell of several coats of clear spray paint, the fins are pretty much bullet proof. Covering the SLV3 fins (in post #3 above) with pre-printed wraps was way easier than masking and painting them.

Second pic shows another type of covered fin. For the Goodbye Kitty fins I printed regular and reversed versions of the same fin. I stuck the front to a piece of balsa, cut around the outline, then attached the reverse picture to the back side. I used a thick black outline around the outside of the character pictures, then just used black sharpie to finish the fin edges. The body tube wrap was created from pics downloaded from the web (nosecone was a kids shampoo bottle top).

Of note with regard to fins, sometimes I paint the fins white before applying the wrap. Believe it or not, if the printed fin wrap has a lot of white, sometimes the wood grain will show through once the wrap is clear coated. So if the fins are largely white I will spray the fins first with a coat of white paint to keep the grain from showing through.

Similar effect can sometimes be seen by putting wraps over brown Estes-style body tubes. The darker background can diminish the intensity of the colors on the wrap once clear-coat is applied. So I usually try to use white Totally Tubular style tubing.

Third pic is of a kitbash I did of a BerthaVostok. Fun mix of printed label paper wraps and printed cardstock. Would have been impossible without label paper wraps.

Finally, last pics are of some Fliskits Acme Spitfires I did, using very different themes for each rocket.

Hopefully now you see why I'm such a fan of sticky-paper wraps. They allow you to do things that would otherwise be impossible, or just much more difficult.

And, hopefully, now that you've learned to "start from the middle, not from the edge", you'll find them easy enough to do that it will open up all kinds of new projects for you.

Thermals,

Steve
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