Container Spaceship part 12

Started in 2016, the container spaceship project is finally done. It has been worked off and on (mostly off) for around nine years.

It has been a big task painting and weathering this model as it is reasonably lengthy at 1515mm (roughly 60 inches) and each container was a separate paint job in itself.

The main ship colour is white primer stained with an oil wash made from burnt umber and a bit of black. The containers were also sprayed using various colour spray cans I already had on hand. 

An assortment of  homemade and plastic model kit decals were applied along with small rectangles and circles cut from self adhesive vinyl in black , white, blue and red. where the decals had to go over matte paint I painted on a layer of coat of clear gloss first. Once the decals were dry I sprayed over them with a squirt of matte spray. I do not like to cover the entire model in matte spray as real objects tend to have varying levels of glossiness over their surfaces. A perfectly matte surface seems too artificial to me.

Panel edge chipping was all hand painted with a small brush.

Inside the engines I sprayed some Tamiya clear orange around the rim of the lights in an attempt to give a more graduated edge to the glow of the engines.

As a reminder, this was the original inspiration for this project found in an August 1991 Hobby Japan magazine apparently from a Tomy toy line called Z Knights.

This means it was 34 years ago that I first thought about making a model inspired by that illustration.

I am glad it is finally finished.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

Container Spaceship part 11

It's finally time to push this project through to completion.

Its been more than a year since I last worked on this and the remaining job was to detail the container hanging deck.

I came up with an idea to detail the hanging fingers with a sort of T section. As there are 24 of these fingers I wanted to automate the process so decided to model the parts in Onshape and 3D print them using my FDM printer. Ordinarily I am not a fan of the layer effect you get with FDM printing but figured in this case given that it is just a small shadow casting detail I will probably get away with it.

There were two different versions to make along with mirror images of each. They were superglued to the white foamed PVC the hanging deck is made from. 

24 small kit part wheels were also added to the ends of the fingers.

A plethora of kit parts was added to the interior of the truss along with some tubing which hides the electrical cable for the lighting. Around the centre of the truss I made a trapezoidal box to hide where the electrical cables meet at a terminal block. This was quite difficult to fit as I had to get from one end of the truss to the middle section through the truss centre every time I needed a test fit. The styrene box was also covered in kit parts.

Similarly where the ends of the truss join to the front and rear pod I also added a cluster of kit parts.

Then as is customary, to check the work, I sprayed some grey primer.

The following pictures show the pods in position. They can be put in any spot on the hanging deck and removed just as easily as they are just held on with strong magnets.

The picture below shows the engine lights turned on. They are shining through a layer of masking tape and grey primer.

The only task left to do is paint the ship and the six containers.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...