Moon Bug Part 7 completed.

 Note: Google informed me today that they deleted my original "Moon Bug part 7 completed" post as it didn't meet their guidelines, something about malware and viruses. I have no idea what they are talking about and there seems to be no way to ask exactly what was the problem. If there was any malware or a virus it certainly wasn't put there by me. I find it really irritating that without any warning they just delete something that I put a lot of effort into and then don't have a mechanism for any helpful discussion. How am I supposed to prevent this happening again if I have no understanding of why it happened in the first place?

So now I have to re-create the post, luckily I also post on the RPF so I have a record of the original text.

Last time the model was at the primer stage, so the first job was to devise a paint scheme. As is my process these days I took a grey primer photo into photoshop and fiddled about until I came up with something I liked. As the vehicle has a whimsical comic book outline I wanted to do a colorful paint job to go with it. This is what I came up with.

I then decided to design up and make some decals to add to the graphic nature of the finish. These I designed in Inkscape which is a free open source vector graphic editing program. I have always liked the graphic elements that Chriss Foss would apply to his gouache painted spacecraft book covers of the 1970s'. Referring to my Chriss Foss art book I availed myself of some of his genius and some of the decals do bear a very strong resemblance to his work. Here is the decal sheet.

One of the problems with DIY decals is that inkjet printers can't print white so if you want white in your decal you have to use white decal paper. That then means the carrier is white and you have to carefully cut around each decal to remove the extraneous white around the edges. Of course you can use clear decal paper which means you don't have to be as precise when cutting out the decal as the borders will be clear and will not be visible once applied but any white areas on your design will come out clear. If it is a big decal you can paint a white area where you want the white bit to be but for small decals I think it would be too hard to get the white painted areas that accurate.

I printed onto white decal paper and once cutting out the decals and applying them with much setting solution found that little white edges showed up which wasn't exactly what I wanted. I have since found some online tips for using white decal paper, where the edges of the decal should be coloured with a permanent marker to get rid of any white bleed once applied. Too late for me but a good idea for any future project that needs custom decals.

Paint was car paint from touch up spray cans with varying shades mixed up once decanted into airbrush jars and airbrushed on. Weathering was my usual method of a wash of Tamiya flat back diluted in much methylated spirits, wiped off with a metho soaked rag in the direction of the required streaks and drybrushing with white students acrylic. I then also added some oil paint colour modulation and a dirty brown pin wash.

One of the things I tried out on this model was painted panels lined out with a fine permanent marker pen. Models from Terrahawks recently came up for auction with accompanying photos and they had a surface that used a similar technique to very good effect.

My conclusion is that I prefer to have panels that are in the very least scribed into the surface if not actually separate from the underlying surface and glued on individually. I prefer the way light hits an actual edge with both a highlight on one side and a shadow on the other.

One thing I added to the model was a couple of dummy whip aerials on the top blisters at the rear. They are made from bicycle gear cable with a couple of plastic kits parts for a mount and a termination at the top. They should wave about fairly realistically when the vehicle is in motion.

Finally here is the finished model.

 

Thanks for looking...

More soon...

 

Stretched Sabre spaceship part 3

 I have been working on detailing the wings starting with the inside surface.

 The next step was to devise some sort of tech outer surface that looks like it could be the source of the propulsion system. I started by looking for some sort of interesting textured sheet and thought of hexagons. The only thing I could find was a hexagon textured PVC sheet online at gaming terrain model suppliers but I could not find more than 1 sheet from any one supplier and did not want to wait for overseas postage.

I looked in a craft store for anything that might do the job like some sort of stick on vinyl, couldn't find anything I liked but came across a large Fiskars Hexagonal punch that could punch out an accurate hexagon shape. Trying it out at home I found it could only cut paper, not even thin cardboard let alone 0.5 styrene. I have other Fiskars small punches that happily punch out 0.5mm styrene, the larger ones are unfortunately not up to the task. Oh well... I cut a paper pattern using the punch that was then stuck to some 2mm styrene to make a cutting template. On the back side I double sided taped a piece of old fine sandpaper to provide a non-slip grip that would prevent any irritating slippage whilst cutting out hexagon shaped pieces of Evergreen 0.5mm thick grooved sheet.

The wing panels were first lightly scribed with guide lines to help with alignment and then the Evergreen panels stuck into position. Using the masking tape technique to then make a pattern for the plain 0.5mm styrene edges where the half tank sits in the middle of the wing. The outside of the grooved panels was then filled to the edges of the wing with plain 0.5 styrene hexagons which were then cut back to the wing outline once the solvent had set.

Each panel was rotated by 120 degrees to the adjacent panel for some added interest. I have run out of the grooved Evergreen sheet so I could only complete one wing. Once I get some new stock I can complete the other wing. I think I may need to add few small kit parts to the outer surfaces to totally finish them off.

Below you can see the completed left wing in position.

I did some work on the engines, gluing them in position and adding some model kit parts along with some single solid core wire piping on the back face.

I also fired up the engine lights to see the effect of them working.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

Stretched Sabre spaceship part 2

I modified the wing supports where they meet the fuselage plate by removing some of the Foamed PVC and adding a couple of large blobs of epoxy putty where the screws will go in. Before the putty was added I spent some time sanding the Hanomag chassis end of the wing support to sit at the correct angle on the side of the fuselage. This was a fiddly job as I had to match the curve of the fuselage as well as making sure the wing supports ended up perfectly horizontal. Once I was happy with how they sat I roughed up the epoxy and the mating styrene surface, superglued them and drove in the screws. Styrene cement was then flowed around the Hanomag chassis to fuselage sides junction. I had already put a doubler of 2mm styrene around the screw holes in the fuselage side plates as reinforcement and used washers under the screw heads to spread the load. I am satisfied that the wings are now pretty strongly fixed and should survive the odd knock without coming off.

The other bonus is that now the Hanomag chassis is glued to the fuselage plates it has stiffened up the whole removable side plate and the rear tab and two cap screws are sufficient to fix the whole thing firmly in place.

Now that all the major construction has been completed I could now assemble the main components and get a look at how it is coming along.

 I am reasonably happy with the way it is looking so far. I think it has managed to remain close to what attracted me to the idea in the first place and I remain motivated to carry this on to completion.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...