Been working on a walking tank, but this one has three legs, based on the idea that the British Empire might have back engineered from Tripods left behind after "the War of the Worlds"...
...I started out with a selection of acrylic Christmas baubles, one of which was 160mm across, and three at 80mm across, three halves of which became the upper legs, with the help of three disposable plastic wine glasses, the lower legs came from a set of plastic vases, and the feet are the other halves of the 80mm baubles:
And that's what I had after a little bit of work, the sockets for both the legs and the ankles were push moulded in 2mm styrene:
The rather crafty way of articulating them was arrived at after I'd spent two days thinking of increasingly complicated ways of doing it: it being a further push moulded disc on each joint, trapping the socket moulding between itself and the hip or ankle:
Really pleased with the way it works, I'll probably use those non-scratch felt pads you can get for furniture feet to stop the paint from scratching when it's painted.
The knees are just old fashioned hinges, with 3mm threaded rod running though a set of 40mm Christmas baubles, all held together with brass dome head nuts:
Then came a door:
Which opens:
Of course, I then realised how difficult it would be for the crew to get on and off, so I made a folding ladder:
Then, in a moment of madness I decided to make an etched brass spiral staircase to get between levels:
The basic shape, which folded up to make this:
To which I added a handrail:
View through the door:
And a quick mock up of the upper level:
I will hopefully be etching a six segment flor panel for this, in a mesh style, so you can see the lower deck through it.
I left this project for a while to finish off the Aerial battleship, but have been quite busy again in the last week, firstly putting some details on the legs:
^A flange with nuts and bolts on the shins, to make it look more industrial, and also some bracing on the upper legs:
And a door over the ladder slot:
A large grill on one of the other two sides:
Behind which sits this engine:
Also, a latch on the door:
The wheels are HO/OO train wheels with the flanges turned off!
On the other side is another engine, based on the notion that Martian technology has three point rotational symmetry:
And here they both are, in situ:
An interesting exercise was making sure the legs didn't foul the engines!
More soon!
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