Tom's U.S. Ba-da-boom.

[Model Man]

What was I gonna do? Tell him to leave?

I took that shot around Febrauary and of all those kits only the 3 trek ships are done.

[Model Man]

After near six months away from this kit, I am putting the top coats on now!



I did the brass pass this morning which came out great with a few minor touchup points.






These two shots show off the dynamic of the paint in light very well.
This one shows off the extremes that light gets pushed to canceling out the mid ranges.


Whereas this one shows a broad and beautiful band of mid range tapering off into the extremes.


This evening I did a gray pass which turned into a dark brown/gray of sorts. The night shots came out quite yellow. I shoulld have WB'd!





There are three more passes to come:
1. Light gray panels and upping the dark brown.
2. Base White again over some brass panels.
3. Bright white on a handful of panels.
4. A couple maroon racing stripes would be a nice touch, but I'm doubting it at this point. Some red pinstripe tape gave me the idea when I saw it on the panels...

I have to hit the hobby shop for some white and gray paint -I don't have any at this point!

www.twinlitworlds.com/modelwerx/html/kits/kit063_nukeusplatform.html

[lunadude]

WOW!!!

Love the colors! Good to see the painting going well.

The multiple views are good too.

[Clavius]

I fixed your site link. You had a line break in your URL tag.

[Model Man]

Thanks Clavius.

One crappy thing I quickly discovered is that everytime I taped over the brass/copper (I will use the words interchangeably), some of the color would pull up with the tape. Once was ok. Do that three times and the copper is fading in many places. I will have to do another pass. Also, I picked up a couple shades of subtle gray so will be doing that this week. I jinxed myself thinking I would have it done by sunday night in time to start up on my new job.

[Model Man]

Two weeks now. Sorry for the delay folks. I really wanted to knock this off two weekends ago.

Instead I took down a few easy paint jobs and worked some putty on other kits. And all in a effort to avoid taping this model off again! I now have several premixed grays and am otherwise ready.

I will be taping the French bomb simultaneously. They will finish together.

Maybe this week I can tape and spray one night. Remove in the morning. Tape the next night and so on. I would be done by the weekend in that case. But I should know better than to make calls like that as I usually jinx myself.

[Model Man]

Almost two more weeks? jeez! I thought I was almost done with the airbrush pipeline, but decided to bring 5 other kits up to speed and call them done. 4 of them are waiting for the 5th which needs a couple more tubes of putty this week and I will have all seven knockced off... soon.

2 Revell Vipers
2 Nukes
1 Alien Face Hugger
and
2 character prototypes (for a franchise I am designing/producing).

[Model Man]

So, I taped up this and the french yesterday morning and did a 1st pass of paneling on each. For this one, the first pass invovled me eliminating the brown paint. I was experimenting last time and they got carried away.

Now that that is done, there is a second round of paneling to be done. That is followed by the final brass round.

As paint pulled off the french sat when I untaped it, I am not risking either by rushing into the next round. I will do a second round today, but it will be later to max the curing time of the first round. I will then wait until next weekend to finish the brass pass.

Read today's french entry for for details on the lack of pictures.


And that is all...

[Model Man]

I won't be doing anymore tonight on the model. I am going to give it days to cure before taping again.

One fun thing was drilling the exhaust holes into the four vents. I've forgtten my nomenclature... I used a #65. Three rows: 5-4-5

Looks perfect on the camera side. The aft side I used to experiment on the right diameter, number and technique.

I will look to post pix tonight for both models.

[Model Man]

It may have worked. I got a semi-clean impression off the one RCS and baked the clay for about 40 mins for its size.

It's still cooling, but I tried a few impressions. The first came out great! The rest I tried all had twist in them as I pulled them out.

If there is some kind of slicker that the mold could be coated with, then no stick would occur to cause malformation in the impression.

Then it would be bake, dress, glue and done.

I will pursue this as it is a mod that can be done anytime. I also want to experiment for other kit mods. mwuhahahahaha!

To note:
Sculpy hates enamels.
It also hates being under-baked and then worked with files, sandpaper and razors.

[Model Man]

Baked test impression.


Resulting casting.


Casually dremeled, one side


Casually dremeled, t'other side


I think this can work!
To note is that the piece is itself asymmetrical. A master cast w/o the thrust outlets so that those can be drilled later would be best.

This can be done anytime down the road and will not stop me from completing the airbrush work now in progress.

Note: I will have to test enamels on this piece to see how much sculpy really hates enamels.

[Model Man]

As I now finish Frenchie, I see that the Americans are no where near where they need to be in this arms race.

I also need more time for consideration on how I want to proceed. I want this nice. To do what needs to be done requires more time than I canto allot, backing up other pipelines that need to get moving.

Therefore, the American team hereby withdraw from the race, ceding the finish line to the French. The Chinese are now up with their entry and the Americans will come back to compete with them.

What needs to be done:
- Accuratize nose details

- Acquire ball and spoke for the P/S Probes (machine gun turrets)

- Finesse the bridge base seam

- Clean further the 4 vent areas I drilled

- Accuratize what should be the aft RCS by molding the fore and casting a reasonable dupe.

- Re-panel most of the colors. As I will likely have a different set of grays when I get back to this, I may eliminate what is there now.

The next post will be pix of the current status. It'll be a few months before I get back to it. It saddens me, however, the time and skills acquired will better serve the end result.

[Model Man]

I happened across some plastruc that reminded me of the nose detail. It's close and needs mods.

Watch me slice and gouge plastic and resin in the following vids attempting to accuratize the nose!

pt01 Overview 5.5 min
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQKAfrnTkA

pt02 Gouging 3.5 min
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cYT2JlTNqY

[Model Man]

part 3 Nose Job 8 min
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-vJ0hG_vpQ

I found the plastruc I wanted for the nose details.

[evapodman]

Since I've started on my own U.S. bomb, I've noticed several major differences between the resin kit and studio model, mostly on the structure that sits atop the main body.

After much soul searching I've decided to try and correct as much as possible of the resin kit. So far I'd replaced the details under the pair of wings and I now see I have to do the same to top side along with repositioning the " hole" on one side.

Also the structure that sits on top of the wings needs to be increased in height by 1/4" so the the ends will be square at 1,1/16".

This means I will have to make new RCS thrusters for at least one end. I don't know if I will put them on both lacking firm info on this.

Luckily except for some external details on the main body, that part is relatively ok. I know this kit had to be based largely on the drawings from the Bizony book and screen grabs but I feel that this is another model that should be done by AJA models so that it will be as accurate and detailed as possible.

[evapodman]

Well now that AJA models has announced a U.S. satellite that will be acccurate it kind makes all the work I have done to the Mad Dogs kit irrelevant. I plan to get the new one when it becomes available and maybe use it as a reference. Until then I'm shelving all work on it.

[tagdot]

If we all waited for a more "accurate" kit of any of kind model to come along, (based on our perceptions as well as available resources), we wouldn't be buying or building anything just in case a "better" version comes along one, two or ten years later.

Scott's smaller Aries 1B is an example. He is in the process of reworking the kit to update the accuracy that wasn't present in the original release 10 years ago. But at the time, it was the only one available and was a big seller. On Ebay it still is.

Don't fret about all of the work you put into the American satellite. You enhanced your modeling skills and made a beautiful display piece to show off!

[evapodman]

Thats the chance we take in this hobby, that a more accurate and better model will come out after we have already bought one.

I bought the Aires I-B shuttle several years and saw the inaccuracies that Scott is now fixing. I also got the Y-wing from SMT and 3 years later Fine Molds comes out with a studio accurate model. And when they sell a 1/48 scale kit I will buy that one too.

I now plan to use the AJA model as reference to try and correct my Mad Dog kit as much as possible. It'll be a while since Adam has other kits before it, so I will just shelve it until then.

[Model Man]

Once I've got the new Aries in hand, that will signal the beginning of a 2001 fest for me. I'll be rigging my Frenchie with a stand, super detailing the chinese sat, polishing off this kit, kicking into my EVAPod and of course getting the Aries underway. By then, the German should be released as well. Six kits? Did I say 'fest'? Frenzy may be more accurate. ;D

[tagdot]

Like you I also need a 36 hour day so that I have time to build my kits. I acquire them faster then I can build them. Of course work also cuts into my modeling time.