Revell Republic Cruiser with lights

The styrene for the spine from the hanger bay to the nose is complete. Just waiting for the glue to dry before hitting it with putty.

I then reviewed more screen captures and saw that the hanger bay provided with model is not deep enough. So out came Mr Dremel and I cut off the top of the moulded box which holds the hanger piece is placed into.

The hanger bay had to have its depth increased by about 7mm. I also cut out much of the rear and forward walls of the box as this is where the main lighting comes from.

More styrene to come because there is no crane and the walls of the hanger are missing a lot of detail.
 
No pics to show at the moment. Have been busy drilling holes for the FO while waiting for some inspiration on how to rebuild the hanger bay.

I now think I have a pretty good idea for the hanger. I pulled out two boxes of left over parts from Warhammer 40k models I made quite a few years ago. Many interesting things are lurking in the boxes.

Stay tuned.
 
The hanger bay has started being built after I made a few drawings. At the moment I am working on the side walls.

The walls below the original hanger piece are 0.25mm sheeting measuring 48mm x 6mm. The ribs are 0.64mm rods, which will be cut once the glue has dried.
 
Many thanks for comments folks. It gives me a boost of encouragement at times when it feels I am stuck on how to do something.

Now we are getting into some small stuff. The front and rear wall of the hanger bay are all but complete. I only have 1 blurred screen capture of the front wall and relatively decent ones of the rear wall and part of the ceiling. So I have done a little ad-lib.

The walls are slide in plates made of 0.25mm sheet and the ribbing 0.75mm rods. What detail I could add was made from o.25 and 0.75mm bits of sheet left over from detailing the trench. The odd shaped lumps are made from the bottom of resin 1/35 scale U.S. style water jerry cans.

When looking at how the hanger was lit, I noticed a plate suspended from the ceiling, and the light source was projected from between the ceiling and the plate. That is why there are so many shadows in the hanger, there is no direct ligthing.

So I drilled a 5mm hole in the middle of the ceiling through which I will poke in a white LED.

Things may look a bit shoddy at the moment but once the walls are glued in place in the hanger painted, it should be a different story. :wacko
 
The front and rear walls of the hanger bay are now glued in place. I made a test run of the rails that the gantry will be suspended from. I used 1mm copper rods.

When I was happy that they were parallel with the bay, I removed the rods and started work on the plate that is suspended from the ceiling. The plate is fixed to a beam that runs the length of the hanger. To make some space between the ceiling and the beam / plate, some styrene sheets were laminated then glued on the ceiling against the front and rear walls. This gives a bit of a gap of 2.25mm between the ceiling and the suspended plating.

To make sure that the white LED didn't sit too far past the ceiling of the bay, I laminated 6 x 0.75mm chips and glued them to the roof of the hanger, inside the hull.

To make sure that the light from the LED would reflect and provide the shadows as seen in the movie, I CA glued some alluminium foil to the top of the beam and plate. To test the lighting I used blue tak to fix the beam to the blocks at front and rear walls.

The last 2 images are a test of the lighting. More stuff to be added next week as I will be away for a few days.
 
Well it has been a couple of weeks since the last post. Anyway, I am back and have made some progress. The hanger bay is all but complete. I won't be building the gantry until the end of the build as it will be quite delicate. An undercoat was sprayed onto the bottom half of the ship so the greeblies now look rather good, I hope.
The rails for the gantry are in place but won't be painted for a little while. I added some sheeting between the hanger and rear trench after looking at some more screen shots. The sheets have been puttied and some scribing done. It will get an undercoat tomorrow.
The rear spine has been assembled. Lots of detailing is needed for this part of the ship.
I managed to get another piece of the bream trench drilled for the FO but, the #80 bits I had broke. 4 in 2 nights. They were made of a cheap allow. So I found another supplier who only sells hardened bits.
Sorry for some of the photos, I am still working out the macro settings for the camera.
 
I finished drilling the holes for the 4 forward bream trench pieces, over 270 holes. I thought I was ready for threading the FO into the pieces but then realised I had forgotten to rebuild the nose of the ship. It was one of those "Doh !!" moments.
The piece that comes with the kit looks nothing like what it does in the movie.
So I had to saw off the front of the piece and started with the good old styrene again. I still have some work to do before it is finished, but here are some shots of the original piece and the rebuild.

Enjoy!
 
This build is really looking great! The lighting looks pretty sweet too. Can't wait to see the finished product!
 
Scratchy said:
This build is really looking great! The lighting looks pretty sweet too. Can't wait to see the finished product!
Click to expand...

Many thanks for your kind words Scratchy. The nose should hopefully be completed by the weekend. I didn't know how difficult it is building such a complex thing at so small a scale. Even if it is only rebuilding a small part of a larger model. I am enjoying it however as I am developing skills I never had before.

I'm also watching your build with great enthusiasm.

Cheers.

Dave.
 
Work on the nose of the ship is almost completed. So far 28 pieces of styrene have been used. More to go...
I looked at about 8 screen captures from the movie and found that there was no consistancy from one shot to the next regarding the details of the nose. So I did the best I could.
I have test fitted the nose and forward side trenches to see how everything fits and what else needs to be added. In one of the images below are a number of red lines showing where more detail has to be added before I am satisfied.
After that will come the threading of the FO..At last !!!!
Enjoy.
 
clancampbell said:
Looking really nice!
I love this level of commitment to improving a bog-standard kit!

Rich
Click to expand...

Many thanks for your kind words Campbell. I agree, building straight from the box isn't that much of a challenge, particularly for this kit s it originally came with about 80 parts.

By the time this puppy is finished I imagine a few hundred modifications and additions will have been made.
 
Well the nose is finished, one week over schedule. But it was worth it.
The hardest thing about this piece was trying to bring together the different variances I mentioned earlier. I think the compromises and guesses look rather quite good in the end, even though it is yet to be primed and painted.

Overall there were 44 pieces of styrene used of varying thicknesses....I am starting a count on how many extra pieces I am adding to the kit just for curiosities sake.

The images below show firstly the difference between the out of box piece and the rebuild. The next two images are of the nose placed onto the ship. Sorry about the slightly blurriness of the second of these pics. Finally, I am now cutting out various parts of the nose and hull to allow for the threading of the FO.

Let the FO madness begin !!!

Enjoy
 
Revelation - or not ?

Am now starting to thread the FO into the forward 4 trench pieces. Before just putting them in and leaving some protuding from the outside for the undercoat and painting I thought that there has to be a better way.

I don't know if this will work for every model the uses FO but, as a test I lensed the end of some the FO that will be seen on the exterior of the ship. My reasoning for this is as follows;

1. The lensing effect allows for a "stop". That is, because the edges of the end of the FO are flared, when pulled back towards the LED, the flaring stops the FO from being pulled through the hole.

2. The FO can be protrude about an inch or so to allow for the painting of the piece that is being lit. Just make sure to cover the lensed part of the FO with some type of tape so the paint doesn't cover the lense.

3. If paint does end up on the lense, you only need to cut off 1 or 2mm of the FO and re-lense it. After that, pull the FO back into its hole and then white glue the back end of the FO.

I did this using a 30 watt soldering iron, just touching the end of the FO to make the lense. I pulled the 5 test fibres back where they would normally be cut then did a lighting test with a white led covered in shrink wrap tubing.

This method I believe will make it easier to to have FO sitting in recessed places. It also reduces the amount of waste FO that occurs using the the only other method I know of - cutting the end off the exterior FO once the painting has been finished.

If this is nothing new to anyone, fair enough. I am just testing different ways to do things without too much waste and tedious cutting.
 
Partially failed revelation

Well, after a couple of days feeling like I was running a chop shop removing the retaining walls for the forward trenches (am I not supposed to be building ?), and threading lensed FO (making a wig?), the forward right trench was finished as a test.

The FO is a mixture of 0.25mm and 0.5mm diameters.

The lensing of the smaller FO worked well but, the 0.5mm seems too bright. I also saw a few areas of this trench piece that need more FO :wacko

This means more FO for the other pieces :eek

Anyway, here are some progress pics. As you can see in the last one, the lensed 0.5mm fibres washed out the the image.

any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
I ordered a Panavise and it arrived on Friday. Makes drilling the holes for the FO soooooo much easier.

I highly recommned this piece of kit to everyone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

starks
Revell 1/2700 ISD... work begins
2
Replies
32
Views
2,036
starks
starks
barrie
Take one tiger, and then run with it.
Replies
5
Views
534
barrie
barrie
Analyzer
1/72 RazorCrest - Revell vs AMT (Round2)
2
Replies
31
Views
4,547
Analyzer
Analyzer
PVmodels
First post: Revell 1/29 X-Wing - Red 5
Replies
5
Views
1,164
PVmodels
PVmodels
G
1/1000 TREK adversaries
Replies
17
Views
925
Gregatron
G
Back
Top