I came a cross the outer plastic (ABS) casing of a large stand for a curved television/computer monitor at work which was going to be thrown out. I thought I could turn it into a spaceship project and after having it sit around in my workshop for a few weeks I had an idea of how to use it.
What with the procrastination of getting around to painting the tank hull spaceship and my persistent eagerness to try out a new idea I couldn't resist jumping in and starting the project.
The TV stand casing is made from two panels which measure 765mm long by 330mm wide and 40mm thick.
First think to do was add a support structure. As is fairly typical for my spaceship projects I added a length of pine to which I bolted some sturdy galvanised 15mm water pipe flanges. The pine is superglued to the roughed up (with coarse sandpaper) interior of the top surface of the casing.
The bottom surface received some further blocks of pine to make up the thickness and a terminal block for the 12 volt electrical wiring inputs and out puts to the future engines and bridge section.
Some slots in the bottom surface were filled with evergreen grooved sheet and a rear wall made from 2mm styrene glued in place before the two halves were assembled with some PVA glue between the two layers of wood.
For the engine pod I am using two Takom 1/72 Yamato main gun turrets. Out of the three holes in each turret where the guns originally poked out will be the engines. At this stage I didn't have a clear idea of exactly what the engines would comprise.
The bridge support section is made from the conning tower of a toy submarine. Ahead of the conning tower is a grey plastic housing from a kitchen timer. At this point I was planning to add something on top of the conning tower which will become the actual bridge deck. Again I was not exactly sure what this would be but was confident that a trawl through my parts boxes would yield something suitable. Worst case scenario is that I would have to knuckle down and scratch build a shape from styrene sheet.
In the picture below I have started to detail the top sloping sides of the TV stand casing. Among the usual kit parts, styrene sheet and evergreen textured sheet is some green slide mounts I found when moving house a year ago. They are made from the right sort of plastic and glue with solvent well.
One issue that can cause problems is cementing styrene to ABS. While they both dissolve with the solvent I use (methylene chloride) the dissolved plastics tend not to intermingle and the styrene parts can fall off over time. I have found if you rough up the surfaces to be cemented they mix together better and stick well. In this case for the larger panels after roughing up the surface under the part to be glued I use a couple of drops of super glue in the centre and then use the solvent around the edges.
Firstly I cut away a section of the sides to give me a flat base to glue to the flat underside of the TV stand hull.
After a trawl of my parts collection for a suitable bridge candidate and trying out an assortment of shapes I decided I liked a backwards tank turret best. It may be a Merkava or an Abrams turret, I cant remember which.
Similarly to the Space Barge project (one of my many incomplete projects) I filled the under side of the truss with detail, except in this case it was twice as large as the two 1/72 scale Leopold trusses I used for the older project.
It was sprayed with primer before gluing in place as the access through the holes would be pretty poor once installed.
More top surface detailing followed along with the skinny vertical sides.
I also started filling in the top surface plating using 1 and 0.5mm styrene sheet.
Also to be tackled was the engines. Eventually I thought about adopting the layout of thrusters from the Discovery One from 2001 a space odyssey, particularly the hexagonal arrangement. In my case I will have six engines but with six hexagons, one nozzle per hexagon instead of Discovery's two.
I decided to 3D print the basic structure of the three joined hexagons and will add detail plates on top.
12 volt "eagle eye" cob leds fit into a recess in the hexagon to provide the engine lighting. I made a scrap styrene jig so that I could glue the 1/25th scale truck rim nozzles centrally to the hexagon.
More tiny detail will be added to the engines later along with some sort of engine tube to extend out of the gun turrets.
I added a strip of opal perspex behind some drilled out holes to make a row of windows. Behind the opal perspex is a piece of 12 volt LED strip light (6 leds long) to provide some window glow. I use the most closely spaced led strip I can find so you get more light per centimeter.
Thanks for looking.
More soon...
