Another Salzo V3 Build

[Bigturc]

Hello builders,

I recently bought a Salzo V3 and began working on it as soon as I could. I'm now done sanding, cleaning and soaping the parts, the next step for me is perparing the build and make sure I know exactly what I need to do!

So now, I have a few questions for all of you experts out there. I'm fairly new to the SS world and this is gonna be my first build and paint job. I've been monitoring all threads endlessly to gather tips and tricks .. hey, we all need to begin somewhere!

So here goes nothing:

1. I'm planing to light the engine on my Red, I've already drilled holes through the engine (around 1/8) but I'd need tips on what to use and what I should or should not do, ie to protect the resin from the heat etc ... is there prefered materials to use? LEDs? Where to get the wires through the fusillage through the wings? etc ...

2. I've read people talking about sagging .. is it even possible for a Salzo to sag over time? The casting is pretty light, but it's the first I'm handling, so I'm still curious .. Also, I've read another thread about metal framing for the kit ...

3. Paint job. I plan on shooting the whole bird with black primer, than the base coat and then using Tamiya acrylic paint w/ mate clear coat. Anything else I should be aware of .. For now, I'm not looking for any paint tricks, that'll come in time and I'll use Guy's awesome thread for reference (thanks again Guy!).

4. I'm still clueless as to how to fit the wings to the W shaped part .. I've seen (I think in REL's thread), he used small brass tubing? Would this just hold using Zap a Gap glue only or there's some other tricks I should be aware of?

5. Also, about the wing, what is the proper position on the mounting frame? Dead center horiz. and vertically?

PICS are available here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bigturc/albums/72157658596383216

Thanks for anyone's time on these!
Al

 

[Guy Cowen]

Hi mate, I cant help you with the wiring stuff as I've never done that. Regarding the wings I have always just used a good CA (superglue) never bothered with the pinning as I'm always rushing them, but it would make sense to pin them for added security.

I ballsed my wing position up so I would recommend that you send Mike Salzo (mslz22) an email as he's producing a set of instructions for the V3, this will give you an accurate wing placement, its hard to describe how to place them without a pic to show. Look at the build of the latest Red 5 done for Kurt, this will give you a good visual of how the wings are placed for a hero look. I would recommend if you want it to look like the prop is now then a good few coats of black Primer, & a coat of matt white before the grey base coat. Dont make the grey too dark & it needs to have warmth to it as well, some grey's look a little blue so try & avoid this. I double check but I mainly used Flat white/Medium grey, Sky grey , with buff or deck tan to get my mix. A good 50/50 mix of white & grey as a start point then add color to warm it up. For the Red markings I used Flat red with a few drops of orange & medium brown, this seems to look pretty accurate to the original. German grey is another great color to use on the Red 3 for darker area's & weathering. Hope this helps?

 

[mslz22]

I'm catching up on a couple of things and i will be getting to some instructions in a week or two, it will actually give me a chance to build something for myself:lol....in the mean time take a look at the pic to see the orientation of the blocks, note that they need to be pulled out to the stops that are on the inside of the blocks, they will stop at the inner fuselage wall and will appear to have the same approximate gap at the top and bottom wing. Or you can have them pushed all the way in and flush with the fuselage, the later of these is closer to the "pyro" and the first option mimics the "hero" with the mechanism.
thanks
mike

 

[ave4uevoli]

definitely use LED's for the engines and fiber optics for the cockpit. Some people solder the LED's themselves. Other's use Hyperdyne's light kit... and I remember Gunpowder here had a video once of red lights that flicker like engines..

 

[Bigturc]

Guys,

Thanks for the answers! Mike I had seen that answer on Guy's thread I think, really useful, thanks again!

Keep em coming guys! Much appreciated!

 

[Bigturc]

Hyperdine's light kit .. I love the sound of that .. I'll try to contact Jim!

For the leds in the engine .. do we need to cover the resin w/ foil or something like that to prevent it from heating? I just wanna make sure I don't end up having a boiled X on my shell! That would be pretty stupid!

And unless there's one anywhere else, I plan of making a tutorial for the lighting system for others to refer too .. that'll be my first contribution here if it ever makes sense to do so?

 

[Bigturc]

So I thought, I've always seen paint thread for the V3 ... but never really a build thread. Now, mind you, perhaps it's because it's not a kit for the newb, thus no one needs a build thread .. but I'm a newb to all this, so I thought there would certainly be others ...

Here's some shot of the kit out of the box

 

[Bigturc]

Kit has been cleaned up and teeth brushed with soap to remove all release agent

 

[Bigturc]

This is one of the pieces that puzzled me .. the fitting of that piece was nowhere close to go around the engine intake cylinder, and after studying pretty much all builds here, I figured I had to "make" it fit. Hopefully, I was right?

Fitting has been done with a sandpaper curved around my finger and sand, test, sand test ...

Here's a comparison of the part out of the box with my sanded to fit part

 

[Bigturc]

One wing built (temporary with the blue stuff for poster) for a global test fitting and to get feedback if anything could have been done differently.



Now, I have a few more questions:

1) The bottom engine bell is longer then the engine plaque .. on reference pics, it sits flush on the outside .. must I remove some len to give it the proper look?

2) The 4th picture shows 3 issues for me.

• A. Is the greeblie at the right height? Pics are too small for me to see this, so I'd like your input.

• B. The 1/16 rod trench is pretty dirty, should I clean this all up with a file or something? Cause I'll certainly be in trouble to make the part fit there properly.

• C. The truster don't sit flush on the wing, can you confirm I'll need to sand one of the two support and have it at an angle?

I also predrilled the holes in the trusters for lighting the engines .. still, I have NO IDEA how to do this!

 

[JPolacchi]

Looks good so far.Is this your first/only S.S X-Wing build?I was wondering...which is the better S.S kit?I've been wanting a S.S X-Wing,but I don't know if the original Captain Cardboard kit,the Salzo V2 or the current Salzo V3 X-Wing is the better of the three kits to get?I'm not even sure if a Salzo V2 is available anymore?

 

[Bigturc]

Thanks J .. yes, this is the first garage kit that I build.

Considering the V3 is currently in production, I`d definitely say that the CC and V2 are not available anymore .. but again, I might be wrong .. I`m sure Mike can chime in about this.

I`ve read everywhere in the other threads that this is THE X to get .. so I went for it!

 

[-... . .- --..]

Yes, the V3 is definitely the way to go - all new fuselage and all new wings, considerably more accurate.

Great build, so far!

As for some of your questions:

1) The bottom engine bell is longer then the engine plaque .. on reference pics, it sits flush on the outside .. must I remove some len to give it the proper look?

This is because the bottom engine intake isn't deep enough, IMO. This is why on a lot of builds you'll notice the lower engine intakes aren't flush with the upper intakes, and there's a noticeable step between the two. On the original miniatures, the leading edges of the top and bottom intake half-rounds were flush.

A. Is the greeblie at the right height? Pics are too small for me to see this, so I'd like your input.

Not sure which greeblie you mean.

B. The 1/16 rod trench is pretty dirty, should I clean this all up with a file or something?

Yes. The stuff that drops in there isn't thick enough to hide all the cruft in that part of the wing casting.

C. The truster don't sit flush on the wing, can you confirm I'll need to sand one of the two support and have it at an angle?

This is just one of those areas that will need tweaking to make everything nice and straight. One way is to cut off the "connector" tube that's supposed to fit inside the hole in the back of the main engine intake. Or you can leave the tube there but make the receiving hole a smidgen larger than the one that's indicated there so that you have some play in positioning the rear engine alignment.

 

[Bigturc]

Great info! Thanks for the quick reply and for your input, that's much appreciated!

1) As far as I can tell, both my intakes (bottom & top) have their edge flush. So I guess I'm left with the "sand bell deep end" solution.


A. I mean the part under the thruster that sits on the back side of the wing. My question was, what is it's exact placement? And from the ref, I'll need to trim it's right side since it's overshooting the wing and would interfere with the mounting frame?

B. Trim it is!

C. So I take it normally, both the little support should sit perfectly perpendicular to the wing and it's inaccurate to turn the thruster sideway (where as everyone seems to do it that way). I'll see about that one .. since those holes give a great support for the thruster (really tight fit) and I would hate having a gap in there too.

 

[Bigturc]

Mmm .. close to 200 more views, and no answers to my questions ...

Here's more anyway...

3. I'm looking at what I'll have to glue vs what I'll have to paint .. and the first question that comes to my mind is: To what point do you assemble the bird until it become more complicated for the primer/paint to put on? There's definitely a line .. if it was just me, I would have primered all parts black before any gluing .. but for some reason, people don't do that .. Ex. The canons, should I build them completely before primering? Won't the ring over the other part make the primer job more complicated to reach under?

4. Is there anymore detailed shots of where exactly goes the 4 grills that come with the kit? Do I event need them? I couldn't spot them on any build here ... Only on the MR Red 5, and saw they went in the wings, on the outside back part of the engine, cut in half?

5. The small piston-like part that go at the end of the 1/16 rod, do we need to trim the base that it comes on to make it sit directly on the wing or is the base supposed to be kept and you glue it from the base to the wing? If so, the rod won't fit exactly on the piston, but will be lower into the wing ...


6. Should I even post all these questions? Or it's just the wrong forum to do so?

 

[mslz22]

4. The grill get cleaned up and cut in half, and then they do go on either side of the phantom engines at the back of the wing.

5. the piston part should stay on it's base, the 1/16 rod should go from the end of the piston (centered on the kit part) to the floor of the trench at the tip of the wing, this means the rod will not contact the floor of the trench most of the way. I'm not sure how they did it on the heros but on the pyro the void under the rod, between the rod and the floor of the trench, was stuffed with clay, i would not do that but that is how i determined that the rod was not supposed to sit on the floor of the trench, and why that is not cast into the wing.
thanks
mike

 

[Bigturc]

Awesome Mike!
With my limited ref at hand, how the heck could I have found this information!

And by the way, thanks for including 4 of these grills as they brake quite easily (if not already broken)

As a reference for those who wouldn't know what parts we're talking about (if there's such person on this forum), here it is.


Here's another pic with the wing built, the top one has the part glued on, the bottom part is temporary as I wanted to be sure I really needed to trim the u-shape out of the bottom piece ... Again, some build shows the right side trimmed off while other show more of the left side trimmed so that you don't need to trim the right side .. and again, my screen refs are not clear enough .. argg


As you can see here too, it was suggested to clean the inside of the wing "trench", that I did with my utility knife.

 

[Bigturc]

Well, I always wanted to have this bird lit .. and I have long forgotten my electronic stuff from high school .. A quick search online and I have found some kit between 70$ and 150$ .. God, way too rich for my taste ...

So today, I had some free time and I ran to a local electronic store, asked some assistance, explained the project, bought some leds and resistors, a soldering iron and ran back home.

I know nothing about electronic, so bear with me here again (yeah, this build will be quite a learning curve) ... quickly checked online, tried to remember left from right and positive from negative, what's voltage and stuff .. I've read a couple threads here too and found this: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz. Then I was off .. some youtube on "how-to solder"! An 30 minutes later ...

A simple assembly
9V battery (-) -> 1/4W resistor -> 2V Red LED -> back to 9V (+).




Quick test


Now, the goal of those shot are to check if I wouldn't have done anything wrong here. This is nowhere near final as I'm gonna deassemble this for proper mounting in the wings. I also want to add some filters for the lights .. to diffuse it more .. I saw one of REL's build that had this .. and I have some plexi/acrylic here, I was wondering if sanding it mate, cutting it into shape and fitting in in the thruster would do it?

I also notices some bleeding through the resin .. but I guess the black primer outside (and probably inside) the thruster and the base coat will hide all that?

 

[JPolacchi]

That's awsome!I hope I can do something like that.I'm retarded when it comes to electronics.Do you have plans of lighting the cockpit as well?I think if you use acrylic/plexi-glass that if you sand one side of it(or both if you want?) to frost it up, that should be ample to diffuse the light and with a good coat of black inside&out that your bleed through issues with the lights will be no more.

 

[mslz22]

Looking great, just to address a couple of things in the thread, the cleaning of that treach is a good idea, but may not be needed, the piston part should cover that blob, in fact that piston was originally cast into the wing and i popped it off in the 2nd round of molding, so what you see there is the glue residue from the original configuration.

Also for the half cylinder that goes under the Satrurn V part, that was made from a casting of the Sealab part, so if i am correct, even though it is a little smaller in diameter from the Saturn V part, it should be the correct part. I can still mold and cast the old style one from the V1 and V2 (which was scratchbuilt not a kitpart) if you prefer that look, just let me know.
thanks
mike