Atomic City Mercury Capsule...Any Tips

terryhimself

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
I am going to be starting this build in about a week. I was hoping
that someone has built this kit and might have some ideas on detailing
it.....Thanks for any help.
 
Did you get photo disc with your kit? Some of the kits came with a disc full of referance photos of the interior and the exterior.
The kit builds into a good looking model. If you can get the Mat Irvine book Scale Spacecraft Modelling this will help you on all aspecs of the build.
 
I built this a couple of years ago. GREAT kit, but it could stand some more details. It all depends on how "hardcore" you want to get. A few things I did:

-Drilled out the thrusters and replaced them with teeny pieces of aluminum tubing. I polished the tips in a Dremel first, so they were "chromey". It was very easy to do (maybe an hour to do all of them) but they really POP when you look at the model up close and match the real capsule better. Much better than just painting them silver. (IMO)

-Don't forget to pant the various temperature and pressure sensor disks silver. If you look at good photos, you will see them all over the capsule. I am guessing there were about 30 or 40 of these silver disks on the Liberty Bell.

-Some of the stencilling is missing from the decal sheet. It probably depends on which capsule you are replicating. I added these with white dry-transfer lettering.

-The decals are a BUGGER to get into the corrugations. Use TONS of micro Sol and Solvaset and slit them in a few places to get them all the way down. You can then touch up the slit areas with paint after they set.

-I didn't trick out the interior, but I have found pics on the internet of others who went NUTS. I am too lazy. Maybe they will inspire YOU...

-The escape tower is lacking a BUNCH of details. I used reference on the net to add the missing clamps, wiring, protective piping, and electrical grounding connectors. I even used teeeeny watch screws to attach the ground-connectors to the tower. It is also missing rivets in the cap area but I didn't add those. I have since bought several sheets of Archer rivet decals and I might go back and fix that now.

-I put a piece of cut-down slide glass in the window. It looks better than plastic for large-scale models. I did the same thing on my 2001 pod model. Glass has a "glint" that you can't get with plastic. I dunno...it is one of my pet peeves.

-I VERY LIGHTLY dry-brushed silver over the hull to make it pop a bit. Then clear-coated the whole thing after decalling to seal it all up.

Here are couple of pics to illustrate what I am talking about:

View attachment 82017

View attachment 82018
 
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