Building an A7l replica Apollo Moon Suit

Here are the progress pictures I promised….

Pressure Gage casting

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Sorry for the long time between post. Been working on getting the right arm of the ITMG just right. Its been several nights work. My approach has been to make a pattern, apply it to the cloth, and then test fit each piece. There are eight pieces just in the shoulder and upper forearm. And of course, each piece not only has to look right, but has to fit right to the last part.

Working from photos only, this leads to lots of discarded parts that are “just not right”.

The shoulder is a very complex arrangement of cones that are compound tapered. (what? compound what?) Yeh, its even harder than it sounds. Working out the geometry of each part in relation to the others while maintaining the stitching in the proper places is to say the least, taxing.

Ok, enough complaining. Suffice it to say, I am making progress.

I had planned to post some pictures of my shoulders and arms, (the suit, not mine…) but my son has my camera with the pictures on it. Perhaps tomorrow I will put them up.

On an other note: my friend Johan sent a very good mold of the pressure gage to me. I am working on a reliable method to rout out the face to allow a piece of Plexiglas to be inset with a gage face photo behind it. It seems promising, but I will have to make a template to guide my Dremel tool. My free hand attempts have been less than spectacular.

I promise to have a really informative post full of photos next time. (no, really!)

Remember if all else fails, try S.C.E. to AUX

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I am still not happy with the elbow joints, I think I will explore some different options this weekend. I haven’t made a lot of progress this week, lots of other projects demanding time.  I hope to have something better to report soon.

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The flex hose seems to have the correct size and feel, the photo shows a test fit. I have since lengthened the arms a couple of inches. On my last suit keeping the arms short enough while getting the shape right was a problem. It seems I over compensated the first time here. But thankfully I left the hoses a little long, and overlapped the fabric farther than I thought I needed. Now the sleeves (where the glove disconnects attach) hit about mid forearm, just as they should.

I spent a good bit of the evening working on the lower half of the suit. Adding the batting to the legs and hips to give it the “pressurized” look I want.

I hope to find some suitable boots soon. Then I will re-join the top to the bottom and install the rest of the hardware. Then its on to the real work: The ITMG

The work up ’till now has been easy, just concerning myself with the shape of things. On the ITMG or “Integrated Thermal Meteoroid Garment” I want every snap, stitch, pocket and piece of Velcro in the correct spot. It will require a much higher attention to detail.

Well if you’ll excuse me, I have some more batting to add to the lower half. Oh, and some nylon strap and some snaps…maybe some boots…and…

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Picked up the ribbed flex hose today, 5 inch ID. Looks like it will work great!

I turn to the portion of the suit I have sewn, now I see the arms are all wrong, so out comes the seam ripper!

Looking at the photo of the pressure garment in my first post, you can see that at the shoulder there is a wonderful rotating joint just above the start of the elbow joint. This makes one of those mysterious bulges in the ITMG, and starts a transition to a smaller diameter on the arm.

Now I would love to come up with a nice rotating joint for here, and given enough time I probably would. But for this suit, I just want the shape of the joint. So a portion of an eight inch metal elbow from the heating department of the local home center. Cut to approximately the correct shape with tin snips. Will do the trick.

But of course, this replaces a good portion of the arms I had previously sewn. But hey thats how it gos when you are trying something new. So not much progress today, mostly de-construction. With tomorrow being Saturday, I may get something accomplished.

Oh… by the way, I did sew a seam on the IV gloves last night. I just folded about 1/2 inch of fabric long enough to go around the glove, on itself twice and stitched it. Then pined it to the glove covering the backward seam I made. Then stitched it to the leather and to the fabric.

I’ll try to have some pictures to post tomorrow

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Spent some time the last couple of days thinking about how to reproduce the convoluted joints on the elbows of the pressure garment.

As seen in this photo my friend Johan was kind enough to send me, the joints are just slightly larger than the glove disconnects. The disconnects are 4 inches, so I would put the joints at 5 or so.

While scrounging around I found some round foam caulking filler that looked just a bit larger than the ribs on the joint. I thought I could sew them into some black cloth and make a tube out of it. The results looked promising, but not quite right.

So I showed my contraption to my wife who said ” looks good, but why not just get a hose?”

Well, slightly easier said than done. A 5 inch ribbed hose that has enough flex to allow ease of movement. Not something you find at the local hardware. Lucky I have an industrial hose and fitting reseller near my office.

I spent my entire lunch hour with a kind salesman going through samples until I found what I wanted. Its not perfect, but should definitely work. Poor guy, should have seen his face when I said I wanted two whole feet of it. He had to order it, I can pick it up tomorrow after 4:00.

So until then, I think I’ll revisit the IV gloves, I think the connection where the cloth meets the leather needs the fabric on top of the leather with a nice double stitched seam there.

Oh, on a different note, if you are reading this blog, please register as a user so I can track the number of readers I have. Thanks!

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I am expecting some better documentation on the pressure garment, so until that arrives I thought I’d work on some of the smaller items. The IV gloves or Intra-Vehicle gloves are todays project. I have been unable to locate a good source for the black rubber bladders, so we need to get a little creative.

So first head for the local home center or hardware and buy a pair of the large black chemical resistant gloves. You will also need: a small piece of thin black leather (Large enough to cover both palms and backs of both gloves) about 16 inches of 1/2 inch black nylon strap and buckle. Also something to represent the glove side disconnect. I use plastic castings.

The first thing you have to do is make a pattern for the leather that acts as the palm restraint. Here is what I did: I took an old pair of gloves, while examining the pictures of Armstrong’s IV gloves on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, I laid out the cut lines to make the restraint. I grabbed my scissors and cut the fingers and thumb off. Then I adjusted the holes to match as best I could the restraint area. (You only need one glove for this) Then I split the seam on the sides so I could lay it out flat. Trace this onto the leather and flip it over to do the other glove.

Stitch around the openings, and stitch up the sides. A strong sewing machine helps.

Next you want to cut two small vertical slits, just big enough for the nylon strap to slip through. One on the palm side, just above the thumb and one just inside below the “pinky” or smallest finger opening. Slip the strap through the slits, keeping it on the palm side. Then attach the buckle on the end nearest the little finger. Wrap the strap around the back of the hand and pass the free end through the buckle so it lays back over itself. attach Velcro to hold the loose end of the strap to itself.

Now on to the white nylon cloth. the circumference of the glove side disconnect is 14 inches. And the distance from the disconnect to the bottom of the leater is about 6 inches.

There are several seams and stitching deatails on these small parts, so in order to have plenty of clothe to go around: cut two pieces 24″ by 8″

Measure up 5/8th to 3/4 inch from the bottom and lightly mark with a pencil. This will end up being the bottom seam. Measure 15″ from one end and fold the cloth back on itself. Pin and sew a seam here. Fold about 1/2″ of the shorter piece back on itself about half way and make a seam. Tuck under the loose end of the short piece and sew it down making a third seam.

Insert the disconnect in the end of the black glove and wrap the cloth inside-out around the glove and connector. Pin the ends together tightly and sew up the seam. Turn the cloth right-side-out and slip it over the glove an pull it down over the end of the disconnect covering the black glove.

Slip the leather/nylon strap assembly over the glove and cloth. Pin the leather to the cloth and remove to stich on the machine.

You now have a pretty good representation of an Apollo IV Glove. Lather, rinse and repeat for the other glove.

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After a couple of request for a detailed record of my trials and tribulations while building an Apollo A7l reproduction from the ground up. I was convinced to start this blog.

I hope to maintain a reasonable amount of construction info here. As well as cover my mistakes, and how I overcome them. (assuming I do…)

This first entry will be brief as I collect my thoughts and take some pictures of what I have so far.

My latest suit promises to be the most detailed yet, and I am trying some new construction methods. Starting with the base structure. I hope to build a three part suit mimicking the original, where as the ITMG will be covering a pressure garment shaped base structure. With a liner inside.

The biggest issues with the last suit seemed to be maintaining the proper shape while keeping the detail high. The monolithic construction was the cause many problems, that this time I hope to avoid.

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