Discovery

Dexter writes: Thought I would share these pictures of my finished Space Shuttle Discovery model with you. It is a 1:72 scale that stands just under three feet tall. I spent a long time off and on working on this and I am finally done. Some of you may not know this but, the tank and boosters were salvaged from a similar model I built way back in 1986. While I was in New York earlier this year I found the tank and boosters in my Mother's attic. There was still a sticker in my handwriting that said "December 24, 1986". I was 13 at the time when I built that one. Well, it was in pretty bad shape with lots of glue where glue shouldn't be, and the tank was a completely the wrong color with a "knockdown" type texture on it. Yes it took a lot of work including separating the pieces, sanding the tank down to the original plastic, cutting the boosters up to get them straight, adding strips of plastic to repair and build up some areas, but it was worth it. The Shuttle itself is a new model (2004) and is also a 1:72 scale so, it was a perfect match. This came all white unpainted. It was a painstaking process to cut and mask all those areas from just photos I found on the net. You can see some of the detail work on the last pic where I added not only the yellow foam on the booster, but the discoloration of new and old tiles on the belly of the shuttle, along with airbrushing the variations of grey on the wing leading edge. The patch you see is an authentic mission patch from STS-121 (July 2006).

Base kit: Monogram
Scale: 1/72
Model by: Dexter Pinto
Photo by: Dexter Pinto