Old Spaceship model Part 2

This is  the oldest model I still have. It was made in 1985 or 1986. I was working as an industrial model maker as briefly described in my previous post, and was much more confident in trying out some new techniques. It is heavily inspired by some concept work that Chris Foss did for an unfilmed version of Dune seen in the book 21st century Foss. It was mainly the striated colours that I appropriated for my own shaped spacecraft but most people recognise the Fossian influence. In fact it was this model along with another spaceship I no longer have, that I took in a suitcase with me across the country to Sydney, at the end of 1986, in  an attempt to get work in special effects. The attempt I might add was successful.

The model was shaped out of a block of green polyurethane foam and then skinned with glass cloth and polyester resin. After lots and lots of sanding and primer and spray putty and more sanding, more primer more spray putty, more sanding... you get the idea..I ended up with a reasonably smooth shape. Model kit parts were sparingly applied. Recessed sections were superglued into holes cut into the skin. The engine nozzles were some smaller scale pvc pile guides as described in the previous post, with added strips.

You can see some damage from having been dropped.  To be expected after all these years and having had small children when the model was displayed on a shelf.

The interior nozzles were parts from a Micronaut toy from the late seventies.

The attitude thrusters were the wheels from a micronaut toy.

The patterning was done by spraying the model red and then freehand painting liquid mask on the bits I wanted to stay red, then spraying blue.
Very faintly seen in the photographs are panel colouring variations. It took forever to apply hundreds of tiny masking tape rectangles which were then over sprayed by a light dusting of white to produce the lighter shaded panels. It should have been a heavier application as it is barely visible. A few random small decals were applied along with lots of the kerning marks from rub on letraset sheets to represent windows.
The model is 650 millimetres long.

Old Spaceship model Part 1

I thought it might be interesting to look at some of my old Spaceship models starting with this one. While this model is not strictly an RC vehicle, it is most definitely SCI-FI and it proves that I do sometimes actually complete a model. This was made in the early 90's so its about 20 years old and  the length is 880 millimetres.
I have never been interested in building replicas of famous craft, I always wanted to build my own designs, and I particularly find enjoyable the process of arranging found objects into something new. You get arrangements of shapes that you would never have come up with if you just sat down with a pencil and paper and tried to design it from your imagination.

The front ball shape command module was from a baby's toy that rolled along the ground with small coloured balls inside. The window section is an upside down front of a 1/25 American car kit.

The neck was made from some PVC pipe which had been heated at one end and stretched into a cone shape. These PVC shapes were sourced from the industrial model making company I used to work for early on in my working life. They were reject pile guides made for a 1/33 scale North West Shelf gas platform model. In Western Australia there were a lot of these "plant and piping" models being made for the many resource projects in this resource rich part of Australia. When I started there in 1985 I was working on the plant and piping models for the Argyle diamond mine project. The models were built as part of the engineering design process and featured all the complex pipe runs through all the plant areas. The models were used as a double checking process, to check that all the engineering drawings were accurate and to see if there were any obstruction  and clearance issues. The piping drawings were all isometric, just bent lines with dimensions. Sometimes errors would crop up, A pipe going through the middle of a steel girder or machine etc. The engineers would visit and have little 1/33 scale men on rods to poke about in the models to check head clearances and so on. All the piping and vessel parts would be from EMA, they used to have a massive stock of the stuff. Of course all this is done with a computer these days... ho hum.

 The little dome shapes are plastic fishing float cut in half, glued to small plastic jelly molds. The main rear hexagon was a plastic terrarium with a plastic bowl glued to each end. Note the plastic coffee stirrer detail, the paddle shape with three square holes. Can you still get these?

The engine bell is an acrylic cup. Inside the bell (not shown)  is an acrylic plastic tap handle.

Underside. There is a famous railway girder bridge kit part lurking there, a Thunderbirds model detail classic.

The round vent shape is the vent from a Millennium Falcon model kit. Nothing is sacred in the quest for detail parts.

 The paint finish is just the usual primer grey with some orange accents. It is heavily weathered with an application of my special "Poo Juice" mix which consists of roughly one part Tamiya Flat black to 5 parts Methylated spirits. This is liberally applied to all the nooks and crannies and left to dry. It is then wiped off with a metho soaked rag leaving it only in the panel lines and crevices. This will only work if the underlying paint does not dissolve in alcohol, so acrylic car primer and turps based Humbrol enamels are fine but other water based hobby paints which are alcohol based (like Tamiya) are no good. In fact even the enamels and the acrylic car paints need to have been dry for at least a couple of days before wiping over with alcohol ( metho). After this has dried completely I then dry brush white students artists acrylic paint over the raised areas. The student acrylic is very thin and transparent, so it just ends up lightening the raised areas in a pleasing manner. I use a palette of wood for the dry brushing which helps to suck up some of the moisture in the paint, making the dry part of dry brushing a bit easier and I use a very stiff oil paint brush. This is probably pretty crude for those used to subtle pastel shading on military models but in my experience of models for film and TV, you need to really exaggerate the weathering for it to show at all. The old rule of thumb when estimating what would ultimately be visible on the screen for model making was to squint your eyes, if it isn't visible when doing that, it wouldn't be visible on the screen.

Explorer Part3

Further progress has been made on the Explorer's suspension. I got a set of the purple springs for the Revo, which are the hardest springs they make, but unfortunately they were still unable to take the massive weight of the body without instantly drooping to the deck. It has taken a long time to mull over the solution to the problem. I found a set of springs at the hardware store which were of the correct inside diameter of 7/8ths of an inch and made of larger diameter wire and were much stiffer than the purple springs (tested by squeezing between the fingers, not very scientific but its all I got).

 I cut them in half with a dremel cut off wheel as they were too long. Then whilst holding securely in a vice, heated the last turn of the coil at the cut end with a gas torch till cherry red and hit it gently with a hammer to square off the end. This roughly squared end was further squared up on a disk sander. the final length comes out just long enough to enable full compression of the suspension before the springs coils fully touch each other. I disassembled the old springs mounted my new mega stiff springs, mounted the body and... it sank into the swamp, ...er drooped to the deck but only just.

I still need more spring power, I could add another set of shocks... that idea was considered but rejected on the grounds of complexity. The inboard shock system of the Revo makes this rather difficult, there being no standard shock towers. The solution came to me after flexing the suspension over and over thinking about the problem. I had a look through an old box of assorted springs I have had for years. Along with the usual compression type there was also an assortment of expansion springs and there some of considerable length and stiffness. Attached  from the rocker arm to a point at the end of the top arm, as shown in the photos, they work providing just that extra support needed, no more droop.

Spring unexpanded, suspension uncompressed.

Spring expanded, suspension compressed.

A start was also made on the hull skin panelling. Some grey primer to see if it is working and some spot putty to fill some seams.

  The door panel was also installed.

That's it for now. More to follow.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.