First up I reinforced the 3mm aluminium plate with some 3mm thick angle, pop riveted on. The weight of the flat top was sagging a bit after pressing on it while detailing the top surface of the flat top. Next some 10mm thick foamed PVC sheet formers were positioned and some 2mm black styrene sheet was added longitudinally.
67mm OD PVC tube was cut up on the bandsaw and superglued to the sides of the black styrene box to form the curved sides of the top of the hull.
The hull was carefully profiled with a Dremel sanding drum to match the curvature of the dome/half sphere which was masked up and superglued to the front end of the hull.
I then filled in the compound curve section of the lower hull with foamed PVC leaving about 2mm left for car putty to form the finished surface.
Car Putty was then applied. When the filler was still at the leather stage unwanted lumps were cut away with an extended Olfa snapper knife, then after fully set sanded with a sanding stick, a piece of 6mm plywood with 80 grit wet and dry sandpaper spray glued on. This was repeated with rapidly decreasing amounts of filler about 4 times to eventually fill in all the low spots.
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| The Blue tape covers a DC power connector installed flush with the bottom of the hull. The other hole is for the support pipe. |
The dark line shows the point where the hull is split. It hooks on at the top with a tab that fits into a slot and is retained at the bottom with a screw that goes into 3 layers of 2mm styrene. I didn't have this split originally but found I had no room to remove the ribbed cover under the flat top that is held on by a magnet to access all the wiring. I think it will be better to have the cockpit section removable to work on anyway so its turned out for the better. I will install a plug and socket for the electrical power to the cockpit lighting.
Here is the model the right way up so far with a few shamefully unfinished projects in the background.
I was attempting to get this finished for the Wasmex scale model show which is in April but I don't think I will make it as there is still a lot to do. Hopefully I will have it done by Supanova which I believe is in June.
Thanks for looking, more soon...
Inspirational. Even the unfinished projects in the background are inspirational. You capture that late 70s early 80s Holywood model vibe with a skill that I envy.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words.
ReplyDeleteI was obsessed with miniatures in the late seventies and early eighties. As part of a design course I had to do Art History so for my final treatise I wrote a History of Cinematic Spaceship Design and Construction. I filled it with all the photos I could find and cut out of magazines , books and even my original Star Wars movie program (there was no internet or google image search then). It enabled me to have all the pictures in one place and really study what I felt worked and importantly what didn't. So I put a lot of hours into the study of the subject and its all I ever wanted to do and luckily I did manage to do it professionally in '87, '88 and '89 and I loved every second of it. It was a dream career sadly truncated by the nineties with the onset of CGI.
I love computers and there have been some great effects, but I genuinely feel CGI has done some unexpected harm to the art of effects photography. In my own photography I really feel like working with physical models gives you a much richer understanding of how things fit in a frame, of how dense they should be, of perspective and composition and lighting. Technical limitations help you appreciate subtle suggestion over flashy display as a story device. I really wonder if a return to model making might be just about overdue. Maybe the combination of classic modeling technique with modern photography has something to say that we haven't heard yet.
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