PAINTING THE FINS
The first three pictures show the first attempt at painting and trimming the fins. The fourth picture shows the second and final try.
The instructions mention an orange fin. That line is followed by well detail that later in the instructions. I didnt see a reference to it in the remaining pages. But, the enclosed pictures on the History of the Little Joe page do show orange stripes out the outside edges of the fins.
Off the model, the fins were sprayed with the cheap 99 cent Walmart Aluminum. I wanted to paint the outside edges orange, but was concerned about using a tape mask over the aluminum. I remembered my past experience with masking aluminum, silver and chrome. Any tape tends to pull up or dull the metallic paints.
The Dr. Zooch kits use printed paper wraps, why not use this on the orange fin tips? Itll certainly be easier than trying to mask the aluminum.
I sprayed some 20 lb. printer paper with orange. Ill cut strips and glue them to the outside edges of the fins. This way, the outside wedge edge and bottom of the fin will still stay silver like the real Little Joe.
Spraying orange on white paper turned out too bright compared to the printed orange on the main body wrap. I tried again, this time spraying paper with aluminum, followed by the orange. This helped slightly darken up the orange for a close match.
Before gluing on the orange tips, I searched for Little Joe pictures on the internet. The Little Joe had a thin black strip down the leading edge of the fins. When these fins were shaped, the leading edge wasnt sanded to a knife point. I left a very thin flat edge for strength.
A 30 year old Marks-A-Lot felt tipped pen made the black line down the leading edge. It actually covers better than a new Sharpie. Its not scale, but it gives the impression of that black strip.
With metallic paints, fingerprints show up very easily from handling the model. I made a point of holding the fins with a paper towel when gluing on the orange tips.
The forward edge of the orange strip was pre-cut to match the angle of the leading edge. This way I can recess the orange slightly back so the black line is seen all the way down the leading edge. The trailing edge of the orange strip will be trimmed afterwards with a razor blade.
Earlier the fin root edge locations were cut out of the body wrap for a better glue joint. Because spray adhesive was used on the wrap, the edges had lifted a little. I put a very small amount of white glue on my knife tip and pushed it under the raised wrap. After it had dried a minute, it was burnished down. There were no problems gluing the fins to the main body.
The launch lug seams were filled and sprayed with Aluminum paint before gluing in place. The lug is cut in two and glued onto the wraps seam. With the lugs over the wrap seam, the launch rod covers up the seam at launch.
The fins got white glue fillets. White glue dries clear and I knew after applying the final clear dull coat they would be almost invisible.
After spraying with the Krylon clear flat, it dulled the metallic sheen a little. The aluminum paint was now very close to the gray color of the body wrap.