And it irks me!
This weekend, I made a huge error that almost caused me to have to trash one of the Lunar Patrol gliders.
And it occurred on the very last build/finish operation.
Last Friday evening, I mounted each of the gliders on a building spike consisting of motor casings glued to a piece of cardboard. This was so I could apply a light coat of Future to the glider top-sides to seal the decals.
Saturday afternoon I went to remove the gliders from the spikes. One slid off easily...the other one was stuck fast to the motor casing. Apparently, some of the Future had seeped in between the body tube and casing, virtually gluing the two pieces together.
No problem, I thought...I can just twist it off. No deal. It wouldn't budge.
And in the process of trying, the upper motor casing broke off from the rest of the spike.
To my chagrin, only 1/16th inch of the casing remained protruding from the glider. Not enough to grab on to with any type of pliers.
Now what? I found a length of dowel and tried pushing the casing out from the other end. Fail! That thing was stuck fast.
Next I tried drilling out the ceramic nozzle large enough to fit a sturdy hook inside the casing and attempt to pull it out.
That didn't fly, either.
I realized that any further attempts to remove the casing using any of these methods would likely result in breaking wings and fins off the glider, severely damaging the body tube, or both.
I put the model down on the bench and walked away, resolving to brainstorm another way to solve this sticky problem.
That night, while in bed around 2 a.m., I popped wide awake and thought about that glider. I envisioned a solution that just might work!
The next morning, I hustled down to the basement shop, found a short piece of scrap BT-20 tube, one of my painting wands consisting of a motor casing glued to the end of a dowel, and one of my woodworking mallets.
Before attempting the operation I had planned, I ran an X-acto knife blade around the joint between the glider tube and stuck motor casing to break the surface seal.
I placed the body tube section over the tiny bit of exposed motor casing and butted it up against the glider tube.
Standing the assembly vertically on the work bench, I slid the painting wand down the front of the glider tube until it contacted the stuck motor casing inside.
One sharp rap with the mallet on the end of the painting wand dowel was enough to break the motor casing free!
Phew! Now I didn't have to trash anything and set back the Lunar Patrol completion date based on the time it would take to build and finish a new glider.
As for damage control, there were only some very tiny dings at the very end of the glider tube. A little sanding and paint touch up was all that was required to make things good again.
Here is a pic of the glider, the kit of 'extraction' tools, and the offending motor casing.
A little bit of Yankee Ingenuity to correct a stupid Yankee Mistake!
