Moska
Sr Member
Hello friends.
A few days ago, I started working on my Nostromo model.
Although I'm not used to working on vinyl kits, this kit looks pretty good. The details are very well defined in the vinyl pieces. The biggest problem with this material is that it tends to warp, although this can be corrected by applying heat to the pieces. Still, I don't fully trust its stability and its tendency to curl on larger, flat surfaces. I might add some sort of structure inside to help keep those surfaces flat.
Of course, I intend to include lighting on the engines, landing gear, windows… What I still don't know how I'm going to do is properly illuminate the observation bay. It's really small at this scale, and the material isn't the most suitable for fine work. If I don't end up finding a good solution, it won't be illuminated. I'd rather leave it that way than do a botched job.
Parts like the landing gear, sensors, antennas, and so on aren't made of vinyl, but rather come in plastic sprues like the standard kits. However, they're not styrene, but ABS plastic.
To start the work, I focused on the ABS parts. The biggest problem they present is that the push points for removing the frames from the mold are very pronounced and are in many inconvenient places on the parts.
I decided not to use fillers to correct this problem. I used the frames to make rods the same diameter as those ejection marks, and I cut thin slices that I glued with superglue over those marks (green arrows). This way, I can see more clearly. I'm finding it very useful to have a clear final result when sanding and shaping to correct these flaws (green circles).
I'm finding a tool I recently purchased from one of those Chinese online stores (Ali...) to be very useful. It consists of sandpaper of different grades on a flexible base and pre-cut into small circles. These circles are glued onto metal supports and used with any rotary tool. The smaller and more manageable the tool, the easier and more comfortable it will be to use. I'm using this sandpaper mainly to roughen up the circles I added to remove the mold marks. But it's also very good for smoothing small surfaces. It's much more convenient than doing it by hand.
I'm also adding small pieces of metal rod to the antennas and parabolic sensors, as they are very basic on the kit parts.
I'm going to discard the longer antennas on the front and sides of the ship because I'm very concerned about their fragility (in addition to the problems with mold marks). My intention is to make them out of metal with styrene detailing. I'm going to use capillary tubes. Steel, so I think I can also use fiber optics to illuminate its ends, just like in the movie.
That's all for today. I'll continue posting my progress on this project.
Thanks for watching.
Rafa.
A few days ago, I started working on my Nostromo model.
Although I'm not used to working on vinyl kits, this kit looks pretty good. The details are very well defined in the vinyl pieces. The biggest problem with this material is that it tends to warp, although this can be corrected by applying heat to the pieces. Still, I don't fully trust its stability and its tendency to curl on larger, flat surfaces. I might add some sort of structure inside to help keep those surfaces flat.
Of course, I intend to include lighting on the engines, landing gear, windows… What I still don't know how I'm going to do is properly illuminate the observation bay. It's really small at this scale, and the material isn't the most suitable for fine work. If I don't end up finding a good solution, it won't be illuminated. I'd rather leave it that way than do a botched job.
Parts like the landing gear, sensors, antennas, and so on aren't made of vinyl, but rather come in plastic sprues like the standard kits. However, they're not styrene, but ABS plastic.
To start the work, I focused on the ABS parts. The biggest problem they present is that the push points for removing the frames from the mold are very pronounced and are in many inconvenient places on the parts.
I decided not to use fillers to correct this problem. I used the frames to make rods the same diameter as those ejection marks, and I cut thin slices that I glued with superglue over those marks (green arrows). This way, I can see more clearly. I'm finding it very useful to have a clear final result when sanding and shaping to correct these flaws (green circles).
I'm finding a tool I recently purchased from one of those Chinese online stores (Ali...) to be very useful. It consists of sandpaper of different grades on a flexible base and pre-cut into small circles. These circles are glued onto metal supports and used with any rotary tool. The smaller and more manageable the tool, the easier and more comfortable it will be to use. I'm using this sandpaper mainly to roughen up the circles I added to remove the mold marks. But it's also very good for smoothing small surfaces. It's much more convenient than doing it by hand.
I'm also adding small pieces of metal rod to the antennas and parabolic sensors, as they are very basic on the kit parts.
I'm going to discard the longer antennas on the front and sides of the ship because I'm very concerned about their fragility (in addition to the problems with mold marks). My intention is to make them out of metal with styrene detailing. I'm going to use capillary tubes. Steel, so I think I can also use fiber optics to illuminate its ends, just like in the movie.
That's all for today. I'll continue posting my progress on this project.
Thanks for watching.
Rafa.
