Here it is all finished, along with some facts and figures about the actual rocket.

Size and Weight of the Saturn V:

Height: 363 ft. taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Fully fueled weight: 6.2–6.5 million pounds.
 

Engineering Challenges

Combustion instability in the F‑1 engines was solved by detonating small bombs inside the combustion chamber during tests to study flame behavior, an example of “engineering by controlled destruction.”

 

The Abort System

The Saturn V’s abort system was called the Launch Escape System (LES) — a brutally powerful, purpose‑built rocket mounted on top of the Apollo Command Module. Its only job was to yank the astronauts away from a failing Saturn V in a fraction of a second.

The LES consisted of four major components:
Launch Escape Tower — the long, truss-like tower on top of the capsule.
Escape Motor — a solid rocket producing 147,000 lb of thrust to pull the capsule away.
Pitch Control Motor — small motors that tipped the capsule “nose down” so it would arc away from the Saturn V.
Jettison Motor — used to discard the tower once it was no longer needed.
It was essentially a rocket on top of a rocket, designed to overpower the Saturn V’s acceleration instantly.

When It Could Be Used: The LES protected astronauts during,
1. Pad Abort: If the Saturn V caught fire or exploded on the pad, the LES would fire and pull the capsule away at 15–20 g.
Apollo had a pad abort test (PA‑1) that proved this worked.

2. Early Ascent Abort: During the first 2 minutes of flight, the LES could pull the capsule clear of the Saturn V’s plume and debris.

3. Mode II / Mode III Aborts: As the rocket climbed, the LES could still be used until the vehicle reached thinner atmosphere. After tower jettison, the Service Module engine handled aborts.

How Violent Was It: The LES was the most aggressive abort system ever flown. It accelerated the capsule faster than the Saturn V itself. The escape motor burned for only a few seconds but produced enough thrust to throw the capsule a mile away almost instantly. Astronauts trained for the g‑loads, but everyone agreed if it ever fired for real, it would be the worst ride of your life, but you’d survive.

Why Saturn V Never Needed It:
Across 13 Saturn V launches, the LES was never used in an actual emergency. The Saturn V’s reliability record is one of the reasons Apollo succeeded.

 

Payload Capacity

To Low Earth Orbit: 310,000 pounds - still the largest payload ever delivered to low earth orbit.
Towards the Moon (Trans Lunar Injection): 95,900 pounds.
 

Here you can see a close-up of the clamps holding down the stands.

Launch Record

Total launches: 13 (1967–1973).
Success rate: 100% payload delivery, with one partial failure (Apollo 6).
Crewed lunar missions launched: 9, sending 24 astronauts beyond Earth orbit.

Historic Missions

Apollo 8: First crewed mission to orbit the Moon.
Apollo 11: First human Moon landing (1969).
Skylab: Final Saturn V launch placed America’s first space station into orbit.

 

I put the knots of the fishing line on the backside of the rocket.

Manufacturing and Logistics

First stage built by Boeing (New Orleans).
Second stage by North American Aviation (Seal Beach, CA).
Third stage by Douglas Aircraft (Huntington Beach, CA).
Massive components were shipped by barge through the Panama Canal to Cape Kennedy.

Staging and Engines:

The Saturn V had three liquid-fueled stages:
S‑IC first stage: 5 × F‑1 engines, LOX/RP‑1.
S‑II second stage: 5 × J‑2 engines, LOX/LH.
S‑IVB third stage: 1 × J‑2 engine, which restarts for lunar injection.
 

Here it is resting on it's shelf in my office. This was a quick and easy project but it was also a fun one to build.

Legacy

The Saturn V remains the benchmark for super-heavy rockets; only NASA’s SLS or Space Launch System, has since carried humans beyond low earth orbit. Three unused Saturn V rockets survive in museums today. Ending production and destroying tooling is widely considered one of NASA’s greatest strategic mistakes, forcing later heavy‑lift programs to start from scratch.