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Yes, the 1:144 scale kit. A bit over 1 m long....
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After the work on the Greenstrawberry ad-on kits is done I can care about the main kit itself. As I want to support the ship from the starboard side, I added a bulkhead to the lower half of the rector module which carries a 5 mm x 5 mm square brass tube that'll accept a 4 mm x 4 mm carbon fiber rod which will act as support. Then I glued the two halves together and everything got clad with surface panels. It's a technique I know from the Moebius Galactica kit and here it works just as well. The front got the coupling structure that consist of five parts that got glued together. Straightforward work....
I also put the lower und upper halves of the command sphere together and added the back plate. Looks O.K. but will require some additional work, as the inner structure came at the cost of flexibility and shape, which in the end created some seems. But the hangar and cockpit are well worth the effort. And again....brass tube for the carbon fiber rod, this time a hollow one that will also accept the power cables.
In the middle of the ship's spine sits the antenna array. Again a rather unspectacular glue-together job. And again....brass tube for the carbon fiber rod.
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Worked on the antenna array of the Discovery. The kit parts are a simple glue together job and the result is rather nice. One can easily go with the kit version but the Greenstrawberry ad-ons really make the part shine. The Base got some panels, the sides of the main mast as well. The receiver masts got PE struts and on the backside of the little dishes some ring stuff...., latter can only be installed in a very calm moment. The Base sits on a 7,8 mm diameter cylinder that is not in the kit. Greenstrawberry would do this with a rolled PE cylinder, I did it with a 3D-printed part....much more solid.
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Progress is slow, not because I'm lazy, but some of the assemblies just take allot of time. As example: The ion thrusters. The kit itself provides 11 plastic parts per thruster. Upper and lower half, upper and lower ring, thruster plate and 6 panels. On top of that we have a allot of PE from Greenstrawberry: 3 Parts for the grids, 2 x thruster cladding, 16 baffle plates, 3 details on the thruster plate, and 9 access hatches on the reaction chamber --> 33 Parts. Makes 46 parts/thruster or 138 parts for all three. Took a while.
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I wasn't lazy, but I have to admit that th elast lap was a hard one....60 containers and 10 spine elements, 350 styrene pieces in total. But now I have everything set up to start final assembly and paintimg.
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The paint job of the Discovery is not complicated, its just allot to paint. The Discovery was put together in orbit. Parts assembled in clean rooms, into the rocket and off to space. So no weathering as such. Just a flat white base color, a light gray panel here and there and some gray pin wash for the groves and recesses. Just takes a while. Currently the big pieces are drying. Then the 60 containers. Fun...
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The heat slowed my down a little bit, but I wasn't lazy. It's just tremendously monotonous. 60 containers that got to get primed, 60 containers that got to get painted in flat white. Took a while, was an exercise in patience, and quite allot of paint went through the airbrush.
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Some progress....after painting the fuel containers, they were installed on the center spine. After that I started working on the display box. I have a double-T steel bar supporting the ceiling of my apartment. I want to integrate the display box into this bar that I also use as book shelve. For that I build a 1,4 meter long wooden box and painted the outside black. Here are pictures of the mock up of the Discovery in the box. Next I will fix the supporting struts and then cover the inner box with a layer of glass fiber. After that the inner box will be painted with Black 3.0, the second darkest black after Vanta Black. Deep Space, I'm coming,....
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Beautiful.Of the approximately 40,000 men who served on U-boats in WWII, it is estimated that around 28,000 to 30,000 lost their lives.Comment
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New Update after quite a while....
I had a major mishap with the interior of the display box. I want to paint the inside black, as black as possible, to create the impression of the ship floating in space. So I ordered Black 3.0 second or third darkest black after Vanta Black. And the paint didn't work. Perhaps I should have airbrushed it on, but in the end it was uneven, showed white areas, like salt crystallizing on the surface. Tried to paint it over with a standard flat black, which caused strange reactions between the two acrylics. In the end I pored acetone into the box, scraped the paint out, sanded all the surfaces and went for a rattle can flat black Now it looks O.K.. But it annoyed the hell out of me, so I had to put project aside for a while. Hence the late update.
Painted the command sphere panels in various gray tones and blended everything with flat white. Took pictures of the movie as reference. Hard to say if I hit the right base tones as the movie model was hammered with bright light to create the fard shadows of space. Now matter what, I like it....
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That is a cool model, if it were a bigger scale you could turn it into a surface RC and maybe a sub.Comment
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You detail freak! I'm lov'n this work.
DavidWho is John Galt?Comment
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You call me a detail freak....well that's a word from the lord of detail freaks. Thanks Dave....Comment
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Great work. Where you going to put that monster?Of the approximately 40,000 men who served on U-boats in WWII, it is estimated that around 28,000 to 30,000 lost their lives.Comment
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In have a steel beam supporting the ceiling of my apartment. It's H-shaped. I've fabricated a wooden display box, that fits into one side of the H and which will be the new home of the discovery. So soon I'll ha've a spaceship flaoting under my ceiling.Comment
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