Modeling Monday: Tor's Stubby

  In my ongoing search for fast easy paper models, I came across a paper model for Tor's retro rocket logo lovingly referred to as Stubby. The designer for this model is Robert Nava who has designed quite a few Disney inspired designs which are available at the Disney experience site.
  The model itself is simple enough, but not an hour build by any stretch. I did it over an afternoon. I wanted to do inside tabs for flush, butt joints, so I cut the shapes without the teeth and then glued the teeth tabs separately on the inside of the parts. I had originally printed this on cardstock (about 60lbs) and the tabs were still rather rigid. I then printed a copy on plain paper off the laser printer. I then glued plain paper tabs on the inside and this worked better. The extra copy also allowed me to use the extra fins as templates for cardstock fillers to stick inside the fins and thicken them up as well as provide a better sticking surface to the fuselage. I also used the extra tubes to line the inside of the rocket tubes and left off the "lit" ends. This allowed for a simple scrap wire stand that I just insert into the top tube.

  As often happens with paper models, the edges are always a problem. Even with some of the flush joining there was still quite a bit of white edge showing. I couldn't quite find the right color pencil to hide them (somewhere between a dark red and terracota). I might try this again reversing the print order, card on laser printer, color on thin paper, and just paper over the assembly with the color. This often works well at hiding seams.
  Well, I'm going to go back to working on my own stuff. I have a Robur's Albatros that I've been working on for a while as well as my Aries 1b which has been in test assembly for over a year.

  This last bit is annoying in that I finally got a version of the nose that I like, only to find some inaccuracies compared to new photos available at Douglas Trumbull's site. Still, I was only considering this a test build, so I'll just move onto the main hull. At least with the current photos I have a better sense of what's actually on it. For those of you who don't want to go crazy doing what I'm doing, there does exist a complete paper version of the Aries 1b by a very skilled and impressive Japanese designer (but I can't tell you who - you have to find it).

"To infinity and so on"(no tm)