TV Stand Starship part 1

 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.

Actually before commencing the detailing on the sides I started by prepping a large 1/35 scale Leopold Gun truss for the underside of the starship. This is another kit I found cheaply on FB marketplace that  I have had for a few years with out coming up with any ideas on how to use it.

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.

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.

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. 

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...

Container Spaceship part 8

 I have completed the sixth and final container pod for the Container Spaceship project.

For a bit of variety and with a nod to the Hunter Gratzner spaceship from the movie Pitch Black I made a double decker storage tank pod. The profile echoes the shape of the existing containers.

 

Some of my scruffy thumbnails coming up with a design for the tank pod.

The tanks are  two lengths of 75mm PVC pipe with heat formed 2mm styrene elliptical vessel heads at each end. I first made a buck from 10mm foamed PVC by spinning it on my mini lathe with a long M5 bolt, washers and nut as a mandrel. It was shaped with a sanding stick and then skinned with thin super glue wiped on using a disposable rubber glove as it slowly rotated on the lathe. This skin was then fine sanded and re-applied and fine sanded again.

 The dome shape was then stuck to a circle of 6mm foamed PVC to increase the height and then stuck to a base of scrap plywood. The diameter was made to be about 3mm less than the OD of the PVC tank tubes to allow for the thickness of the 2mm styrene when heated and stretched over the buck.

Another piece of scrap 9mm plywood with a roughly 75mm diameter hole was used as a support for the 2mm styrene while heating withe a heat gun and pressing over the form when soft. To adhere the styrene blank to the plywood I used drops of  thick super glue which as I only needed 4 caps worked fine the fewer drops the better for removing it once cooled.

 Styrene when heated will initially start to warp and wrinkle slightly before it then tightens back up and appears rubbery when wiggled or tapped. The rubbery phase is when the heat is removed and you push the styrene over the buck so it is pressed up through the hole and let it cool.

The first one I tried was 1.5mm ABS and it just bubbled and sagged straight away so I switched to the 2mm styrene and they all came out well. Each cap was cut off using a flush cut Zona saw and the edge squared off on a flat sanding board. They were then superglued to  each end of the PVC tubes.

 

The rest of the structural formers of the pod were designed on Libre CAD and printed out full size on paper and stuck onto 2mm styrene for cutting out, first drilling out all the corner radii with a step drill.

They were assembled with 2mm thick 8mm wide styrene cross members and 1mm x 8mm styrene strip edging.

The detailing panel comprised some reject resin printed parts I was given and a part from a disposable camera along with some random kit parts. The Universal Greeblies on the end of the tanks were part of the reject 3D printed parts and are probably at least 5 times the diameter of the kit parts from the 1/72 Hasegawa Leopold kit.

It was sprayed with primer grey to check the final result of the construction. It has the same 4 magnets as the rest of the containers so it can be clipped into any of the 6 positions under the hanging deck.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...