Pyro X-Wing kit WIP

I'm making the fuselge as RED 2.Since I don't have a good reference of the left side,I used a full scale X-wing photo to scribe the panel lines,so the panel lines are not so accrate.

If I'm doing something wrong,please let me know!

Thank you

Hi!

As always you have done a good job on your Pyro kit.
I' m looking forward to seeing your progress!

And Thanks Jason!
You were able to help my CCX-RED2 build by your high res-pics of BLUE ONE.

I think you'll find that all the solid cast parts have a certain degree of shrinkage. But also this console is not the original ILM version. ( wish it was). I shaved off all the unnecessary detail to bring it back to basics. Also just add a few shims of styrene to the front to hide the gap.

Jedimaster,
Yes,the parts on the console are different from ILM version.But I can understand about 10 years ago people wanted more realistic detail so,more many details were added.

I used 2mm strene sheet shim in frot of the console I will add a little bit more.
Thank you.



Kevin,

It's nice to discuss about X-wing again with you! And thank you for the kind word!
I didn't know that the console was CCX/salzo version.Your black cast
X-wing fuselage seems to have an ILM console,but in your comparison picture,your black
casting X-wing fuselge looks smaller than even solid pyro kit.

Is your black one comes from same the fuselage?If it's the same,your Black one should be former generation and cockpit was removed and molded for next version,but the pyro kit fuselage is bigger.I'm confusing.

Yeah, so what I have in the cockpit is the unaltered original, IMO.

By all accounts, including one from the guy who was the X-Wing project manager at ICONS, this was pulled from a mold made of the production fuselage loaned to them by John Eaves. At this point in its evolution, the canopy has been cut away, but the cockpit has not yet been carved out. In the story, the fuselage that Eaves got from McCune had already been constructed. He wasn't given a raw resin pyro "kit" fuselage in two halves, but a single pyro fuselage build-up. You can even see what appear to be paint chips in many places on the surface of what he got.

So, Eaves had to remove the canopy in order to make a mold of the fuselage containing the original cockpit. What I have is a TC-1630 casting from that mold.

Also, if you look at the floor of the cockpit and at the very front where it meets the top of the fuselage, you can see where someone has filled all the voids there with clay in order to keep the RTV out of the body. One of the ways I know this fuselage was ultimately used as a pattern is that there is still blue RTV in many of the bubbles in the resin.

So, the modified CC/Salzo/Cerney cockpit is longer than what you see in the pattern, but only because it was extended at the front and rear. A whole bunch of new greeblies were added to the longer part of the rear of the CC/Salzo/Cerney cockpit:



However, when I measure individual parts in the pattern and compare them to the same parts in the casting, they are larger on the pattern. There are also parts on the original that have been shaved off and replaced with completely different parts on the CC/Salzo/Cerney version.

Here's another pic:



Hope this helps.

Good questions guys.

Ever since I discovered that the TC-1630 pattern came up a bit short compared to Frank's solid fuselage casting I've talked to several guys who cast a lot of stuff and the consensus is that the TC-1630 is actually intended for thinner stage pouring and layups, and while it has low shrinkage in thin cross-sections it actually gets quite "hot" when it's used for very thick parts. The hotter the resin gets as it gels, the more shrinkage you get in the casting, generally.

This is why the wing patterns I have, which are also cast in TC-1630, are the exact same size as the wings Frank started with. They have a much thinner cross-section, and so the resin shrank very little.

What I think happened is that because the solid fuselage requires such a large amount of resin that ends up being very dense, the TC-1630 actually shrank a little bit more than the resin Frank used to cast his solid fuselages. The data sheet for TC-1630 does say that it can shrink more in thick sections.

It's the same reason why Frank's hollow fuselages are larger than the solid ones even though they came out of the exact same mold. More resin, hotter cure, more shrinkage.