With everything having a good coat of white primer, it was about time to start painting. But before that I needed to pour some epoxy into the communications dome so that the metal rod that connected the station to the display base had something to fit into that was more sturdy. The rod fit into a hole in the center of a bump in the communications dome. But that hole went all the way through into the hollow communications dome. That meant that the rod from the base would go completely through the hole and into the dome and then could continue up into the space station hub. I didn’t like that, so I filled the communications dome with 5 minute epoxy.
I placed the communication dome into the space car landing pad to keep it level while the epoxy cured.
I put the rod into the dome and then test fitted the rod to the base button. Unfortunately it was a very sloppy fit.
This was not going to work. I decided that the best way to fix it was to epoxy the rod into the base button.
The instruction illustrations had confused me into thinking that the center hole in the communication dome was where the rod was supposed to go. Further checking made it clear that it actually needed to go into the hole that was offset from the center in a protrusion on the side of the dome. When I test fit the rod there, it was as sloppy as when I tried to fit the rod into the clear base button. This meant I needed to fill the hole with epoxy and then drill it out to the diameter of the rod. The rod was 1/16 inch in diameter so when the epoxy cured I drilled a new hole.
A test fit now showed that the rod will fit nicely.
Now it was finally time to start some painting. I started by brush painting the round details on the main station with Tamiya X-7 Red. I had glued the airlock cylinder to the station hub before spraying the primer. Unfortunately that didn’t make painting the inner round details any easier. I should have left that part off until the detail painting was done.
I still need to paint the molded in pipe detail that is on two of the main spokes. I’ll do that with Vallejo 71.063 Silver RLM01.
I then sprayed the other silver parts with Tamiya TS-30 Silver Leaf.
Much more painting to come. I may need to apply the decals to the station ring before I glue on the other parts. That way I can avoid spraying a flat clear coat over some of the shiny silver parts that need to attach to the station.
This week was a bit busy outside of modeling and next week looks like it will be busy as well. I’ll see how much work I can get in.
Thanks for looking.
Luhman-ations 