I tried rolling it under a #11 blade, but it kept being squirrley and getting away from me. The cuts weren't as clean as I'd like.
SB
SB
1:24 X-Wing Red 3 **WIP**
- Thread starter StevenBills
- Start date
What I use for cutting small to tiny diameter brass and steel tubing is a jig vise miter cutter:
Just clamp your tubing in this and make the cuts with a jeweler's saw - you cut along the face of the vise (which is super-hard tool steel). The upper openings are for making 45 degree cuts and the lower openings are for 90 degree cuts.
This is a French-made Asic model, which are stupid expensive (but it's an investment... and you get what you pay for). There are budget models that I am sure would work just fine for your purposes, but they're still rather pricey. Not sure if you're looking to drop a wad of cash just for a few pieces of brass tubing. But again, it's an investment and you'll have it in your arsenal of tools, and it's something that's pretty handy to have.
Thank you for that suggestion! And yes, those prices are a bit insane! But this gave me an idea! I can model something similar and 3D print the jig. It's okay if it doesn't last very long, as it only has to last 10 cuts. I am waiting on a new hot-end for my printer right now, and hopefully that will be delivered this weekend, and then it's off to the races.
In the meantime, I drilled out the holes in the fuselage:
I also glued the gun shrouds on. I know that I said that I was going to leave this until the end, but I just couldn't resist. I made sure that they were oriented correctly to the rest of the cannon body and then hit them with some CA glue. Almost a shame to cover it with paint...
Had some warmer weather this week, so I went out and hit the wings with some primer. It's amazing how just a hit of primer pulls it all together. All of the resin parts, the brass, the FDM printed parts, etc... It's really cool! And it gets me jazzed about getting a base color on this thing!
It's just a little update, but that's all for now! Hopefully I will get some actual progress this weekend. Fingers crossed!
Stay tuned!
SB
Antsnest
Sr Member
One of the biggest uses of my FDM printer is making jigs, templates and guides to help with building other stuff. It's so much easier to CAD things up accurately, especially when you are dealing with tricky angles or you need to repeat an action or operation.
An invaluable tool I could not do without now!
Thanks for the feedback, guys! I kind of cheated on this a little. I found a little pipe cutter online but didn't know when it was going to show up. So I modeled something similar to that jig, and was going to print it tomorrow when the parts to fix my printer came, but the mini pipe cutter showed up today. Did the job great. Now my work on the other hand...
Not great, but not terrible. Excited that I'll be able to actually make some headway on this now! If the weather is nice tomorrow afternoon I'll take the fuselage out and hit it with some primer and let that dry for a bit. Then I need to make a spot in my basement for painting this beast. I ordered some more Archive-X paints, but it seems they got lost in the mail, so I'm in the process of sorting that out. Luckily I have plenty Reefer White to get me started. Any tips on using AX paints? Can I thin them with IPA like I do Tamiya acrylics?
SB
Not great, but not terrible. Excited that I'll be able to actually make some headway on this now! If the weather is nice tomorrow afternoon I'll take the fuselage out and hit it with some primer and let that dry for a bit. Then I need to make a spot in my basement for painting this beast. I ordered some more Archive-X paints, but it seems they got lost in the mail, so I'm in the process of sorting that out. Luckily I have plenty Reefer White to get me started. Any tips on using AX paints? Can I thin them with IPA like I do Tamiya acrylics?
SB
Little update today. I have been busy getting the fuselage into painting shape, rescribing panel lines that I had messed up, getting rid of printer marks, etc... BUT! The wings have been ready for paint for a week or two, so I thought what the heck, why not paint these while I'm still working on the fuselage?
So I went downstairs, hooked up the air compressor and airbrush, all ready and excited to try out my pricey new Archive-X paints. What a disaster!
I found my bottle of Reefer White, shook the living daylights outta it, oozed* some into the airbrush cup (*oozed is really the only right word for this. This stuff is so dang thick in the bottle, I was very surprised to see), grabbed some of the AX thinner/retarder, and thinned it about 50/50. The paint being so thick, I thought that's the least I could do for it to shoot smoothly. Luckily I shot a piece of cardboard first:
The paint seemed to bead-up on the primer that is on the cardboard (it's the same primer I have on the X-Wing as well). Huh, I thought. Maybe I thinned it too much? So I dumped the cup and started over, oozing some from the shaken bottle into the cup. Thinned it with less AX thinner, maybe 70/30 paint/thinner. The stuff is so thick at this point, I'm doubting that it'll even shoot through the airbrush.
Exact same results.
Goes on splotchy and beads up everywhere. SO, I tried AGAIN, with even less thinner:
Same thing again. Splotchy, and it definitely still looks too thin. (Don't worry, I immediately wiped the wing off after I took this photo). Grrr.
I have read up a lot about these paints. I know that they are thick, I know that you need to shake them forever, etc... I'm not a painting n00b. I've been airbrushing for years. Built many models with Model Master enamels, Tamiya acrylics, Vallejo acrylics, etc...
But I need help here. I'm stumped. My air pressure is just about 18 psi (I usually shoot Tamiya around 15 psi), I have tried thinning it in varying amounts, all to no avail. I really wanted to give this paint a shot on this model, but not if it's going to behave like this!
Thoughts/prayers/words of encouragement/suggestions are welcomed
SB
So I went downstairs, hooked up the air compressor and airbrush, all ready and excited to try out my pricey new Archive-X paints. What a disaster!
I found my bottle of Reefer White, shook the living daylights outta it, oozed* some into the airbrush cup (*oozed is really the only right word for this. This stuff is so dang thick in the bottle, I was very surprised to see), grabbed some of the AX thinner/retarder, and thinned it about 50/50. The paint being so thick, I thought that's the least I could do for it to shoot smoothly. Luckily I shot a piece of cardboard first:
The paint seemed to bead-up on the primer that is on the cardboard (it's the same primer I have on the X-Wing as well). Huh, I thought. Maybe I thinned it too much? So I dumped the cup and started over, oozing some from the shaken bottle into the cup. Thinned it with less AX thinner, maybe 70/30 paint/thinner. The stuff is so thick at this point, I'm doubting that it'll even shoot through the airbrush.
Exact same results.
Goes on splotchy and beads up everywhere. SO, I tried AGAIN, with even less thinner:
Same thing again. Splotchy, and it definitely still looks too thin. (Don't worry, I immediately wiped the wing off after I took this photo). Grrr.
I have read up a lot about these paints. I know that they are thick, I know that you need to shake them forever, etc... I'm not a painting n00b. I've been airbrushing for years. Built many models with Model Master enamels, Tamiya acrylics, Vallejo acrylics, etc...
But I need help here. I'm stumped. My air pressure is just about 18 psi (I usually shoot Tamiya around 15 psi), I have tried thinning it in varying amounts, all to no avail. I really wanted to give this paint a shot on this model, but not if it's going to behave like this!
Thoughts/prayers/words of encouragement/suggestions are welcomed
SB
Your X-wing looks amazing! I've used some Archive -X enamel paints in the past, and yes they are extremely thick. You should think of them as a concentrate. You'll need more thinner than 50/50, though I don't remember what I used. If I need more thinner, I just dump more into the cup and remix it until it sprays the way I'm looking for.
That said, the bubbling looks weird to me, is the AX thinner an Archive X product? Almost 30 years ago I tried thinning my first ever bottle of Tamiya paint with water, and that's what it looked like.
That said, the bubbling looks weird to me, is the AX thinner an Archive X product? Almost 30 years ago I tried thinning my first ever bottle of Tamiya paint with water, and that's what it looked like.
Thank you! Yes, these paints are extremely thick. I actually posted on the Archive-X FB page asking for some advice over there, and they said that 50/50 is waaaay too thin. So I found some small cups and just dumped in a whole bunch of paint, and very slowly mixed in some of the AX thinner until it had the consistency of whole milk. I then spent last evening spraying the model with the base reefer white, and it looks okay. I kept getting paint drying in the tip of the airbrush, which caused some splatters in a few places. Today I am going to disassemble my airbrush and give it an ultrasonic bath, and then finish hitting the wings and fuselage with the base color. It didn't cover all that well, even for how thick the paint is, and I almost went through an entire bottle of reefer white. Is that normal? There's a lot of surface area on the X-Wing, yes, but it took over an hour of painting just to get somewhat good coverage on the base coat. I forgot to take photos of that though
Anyway, I suppose that as I work with these paints a bit more, that I'll get better with them. I just really like the Tamiya paints because I can thin them with IPA, which helps them dry really fast. By the time I'm done cleaning my airbrush I can usually unmask the part I just sprayed and it's already dry to the touch.
In the absence of photos from this painting session, I'll post this one. After my hand was all cramped from airbrushing, I got my TIE Bomber model that I 3D printed and took this photo:
SB
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Little update this evening. Base coat with Reefer White. You can see a few splatters here and there. Hopefully those'll blend in a bit with the rest of the weathering once it's done. The white looks pretty warm here due to the evening sun coming through the window.
And two photos under artificial lights with a 5600K color temperature:
Weather seems to be good for the rest of the week, so I need to prime all of the smaller parts (nose cone, exhaust nozzles, cannons, etc...) and get those painted as well. I should probably go over these parts again with the Reefer White color. Now that I'm looking at these photos, I can see a few spots where coverage wasn't too good.
SB
And two photos under artificial lights with a 5600K color temperature:
Weather seems to be good for the rest of the week, so I need to prime all of the smaller parts (nose cone, exhaust nozzles, cannons, etc...) and get those painted as well. I should probably go over these parts again with the Reefer White color. Now that I'm looking at these photos, I can see a few spots where coverage wasn't too good.
SB
Analyzer
Master Member
That sucks your having such issues with the Archive X stuff
I have never used it, but I imagine it is similar to using Vallejo paints (not model air, but the regular acrylics and adding thinner) which can get kind of thick and also hard to get the right proportion of thinner/paint
I have never used it, but I imagine it is similar to using Vallejo paints (not model air, but the regular acrylics and adding thinner) which can get kind of thick and also hard to get the right proportion of thinner/paint
Yes, I guess it just takes some getting used to. I definitely don't feel like I have much finesse over the spray pattern, density, etc... like how I do with other paints. I guess that just comes with more experience!
And speaking of that, I got some color on this bird finally! I was really looking forward to this, because I had made up some stencils in Adobe Illustrator for the wing markings, and cut them out on some low-tack vinyl on a Cricut machine. It almost feels like cheating!
Instead of spending hours masking these markings (am I just slow?), I was able to apply the stencil to all four wings in maybe a half an hour!Masking off the three stripes:
Masked off fuselage. I also went in and looked at reference and applied liquid mask (with a ripped sponge and a plastic pencil-looking thingy) where appropriate. It's definitely NOT exactly how it looks in the reference, but it's close-ish:
Then I put on my big boy pants and mixed up some Caboose Red for the markings:
Success!
The vinyl masks worked perfectly, didn't bleed around the edges, and came off perfectly! This is definitely how I'll be doing these from here on out!And some fuselage shots:
Super happy with how it's coming along, paint woes and all. I have seen this called the "Clown Car Phase," and that's completely accurate
. Tomorrow I will be masking off for some more colors, and keeping that bottle of liquid mask close! Red 3 seems to be more chipped up than the other X-Wings in Red Squadron (although I could be wrong). Can't wait to get some more color down! It has really come alive for me now. It's not just the primer gray color that I've been staring at for so long!More to come soon! Thanks for looking!
SB
modelerdave
Sr Member
That looks fantastic.
Matt8888
New Member
I love all the very fine details, great job !Thanks guys! Jaitea I can't wait to see how it turns out as well!
As stated above, I wasn't in love with the idea of this being an all-resin build because of warping and how heavy the parts came out. Here is just the cockpit section in resin. You can see where it cracked and a few layers have separated.
View attachment 1774991
Plus, most of the droid strip would have been a separate part from this, which would support a lot of the weight of the wing mechanism, and I just wasn't convinced that some epoxy would be able to hold the parts together. So I went into MeshMixer and combined the cockpit part with the back of the fuselage where the droid strip would sit (this wouldn't have fit on the build plate of my Saturn, anyway).
View attachment 1774992
You can see here in the cockpit section that it had waves all over it. By doing two passes of filler primer and various passes of sanding, it completely obliterated all of the panel lines, etc... I kind of knew that I would need to re-scribe all of those anyway, but I was still only about 75% happy with the FDM parts.
View attachment 1774990
View attachment 1774989
So I spent the better part of Christmas break calibrating my printer, trying to get rid of the waves, the over-extruding, etc... After I got it going again, I re-printed the cockpit and droid strip combo, making a few modifications to the part along the way. I added a slot under the strip where I can access the wing mechanism and the electronics, as well as making a spot for some magnets to keep the droid strip secured.
View attachment 1774994
The new part came out great, and I'm really happy with how the printer is working. Had to take a break during the holidays to watch ESB with the fam:
View attachment 1774995
After that brief distraction, it was on to the wings!
This is a weird/distorted closeup photo to check the striation lines. I'm printing the parts as .12mm layer height so that as much detail as possible is retained:
View attachment 1774997
And here's a shot after some filler primer and some wet sanding:
View attachment 1774998
Hopefully this week I can get all of the wings sanded and primed, and then start gluing the rest of the engine bits on! These parts have been printed in resin and they all came out great:
View attachment 1775000
And here's Biggs' R2 unit, just along for the ride (he doesn't know how this all ends up!)
View attachment 1775001
Stay tuned for more, and thanks for looking!
SB
