Taking Rick's advice, I used a 2.75" diameter Plastruct ABS tube to depict the entire S-IVB.
The real S-IVB is 260 inches in diameter which scales out to 2.71" if you're a purist. I'm not
a purist, so I can live with the .04" difference. The length of the real hardware is 476",
which scales down to 4.96" in 1/96. The Revell kit parts are two heavily corrugated rings and
a flimsy styrene wrap to represent the S-IVB body.
Rick suggests using Evergreen corrugated metal siding #4528 for the forward skirt, and
#4527 for the aft skirt to use as wraps to depict the stringers. These come very close to
duplicating the 108 and 144 stringers of the real hardware. They don't look anywhere near as
heavy as the Revell skirts. The forward skirt should be 1.27" tall and the aft skirt
should be .89" tall.
After test fitting the cut skirts, they appeared completely out
of scale to the rest of the S-IVB body, so I sanded down each end of the tube to the proper
height and depth so the wrap looked more to scale with the original. As much as I like working
with CA, I used plain styrene cement for the wraps, so they would weld with the ABS tubing.
The seams will be covered with some of detail parts.
Placing the SLA on top of the S-IVB, there was a noticeable difference in diameter between
the two units. I cut a piece of .030" styrene sheet to a height of 0.375" and wrapped it
around the area that would depict the IU. The reduced diameter is much more appealing to the
eye and should look even better once it's painted.
After the usual puttying and sanding, I placed the detail parts
from the New Ware kit onto the tube. I also added the S-IVB thrust structure
[See sweating the details]. The fit check with the IU
worked out fine, and details were also added to this part of the structure [again, knowing
(hoping?) that the black IU paint will hide many of my usual sins].
Luckily, the paint did the trick [in my eyes] and the S-IVB was put aside
for a final coat of semi-gloss when the rest of the stack is also ready.
