Headroom Horror

The following was forwarded by Burl Finkelstein in August of 2003:

It has been raining here every day, keeping the humidity well over the level that sensible people try to paint rockets. But I really wanted to fly the 8 foot tall V2 model I just finished at a launch in 2 weeks. I always like to allow at least week from painting to launch because the soft paint does not survive the 4 to 5 hour van rides very well.

My goal was the black and white 1/4 checkered test round pattern I had seen in White Sands V2 photos. I painted the whole bird white at about 12 noon because the humidity would be the lowest. Additional logic was that the white would not show the blush the humidity caused as much as the black would. After barely covering the rocket in 3 cans, It came out OK (fair with only a dull blush).

Now the tricky part. I decided to do the black paint in our garage so I could control the humidity. I left the connecting door to the house open for several hours with the outer garage doors closed. At midnight the garage was not much more humid then the house, probably down to 70%!

I masked and painted all the black areas at in one shot. Two cans of Krylon later It came out perfect. I let it flash off, stripped the masking and clear coated the whole thing to bring the gloss up in the blushed white that was applied outside.

Wonderful! My plan had come together It looked great. Well, after spraying over 5 cans of paint in the 3 car garage I started to have concerns. I was wearing a mask to paint with but the air now was thick with solvent fumes. I was afraid I would wake up the family with the explosion if I made a spark, or at the least with he fumes seeping into the house.

I opened the roll up door that was about 8 feet from the rocket. Just as the door reached full open, CRASH the still sticky rocket fell over on its side on the dirty garage floor. The door opening into the overhead track was just above the rocket (I thought). But to my dismay it just hit the tip of the nose and pushed it a few inches.

Well, man was not meant to do perfect work anyhow, that is for the divine beings. I quick touch up (the next day of putty, sanding, and repaint left it with only minor blemishes. Now I don't have to worry about the first scratch!

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