Film Can Spaceship

[mung]

It is no surprise to discover that with a large number of unfinished projects... I started a new one.

I always liked the Livery Ship from the original series of Battlestar Galactica. The myth was always that the three disc like structures on the top were made from motion picture film cans. The reality is that they were made from wood and perspex. I thought it would be fun to make a spaceship using actual film cans and I managed to get hold of a couple of large 16mm plastic cans for free.

Pictures below show the original studio miniature.

As usual for me, I am not making a replica of the BSG Liberty ship, I am just using it as inspiration, a starting point for my own freely interpreted design using components I have on hand. Originally I was going to make do with the two disc shapes for my model as that's all the cans I could get hold of but at a model kit swap and sell I found an old AMT Reliant model kit very cheap and I instantly thought that this could provide the third disc like shape and a bridge section for the front of my film can spaceship model.

The picture below shows an early arrangement of parts I was considering to build the model. The two film cans are happily made from styrene The Nerf Nitron disc gun (also made from styrene) I found in a charity shop minus the magazine for 2 dollars. I thought it would make a suitable fuselage. the other two discs at the bottom are a couple of wheels made of ABS from an old vacuum cleaner. I planned to add them to the underneath of the film cans. The other two parts were possibilities for a command section and engine pod. These were subsequently rejected with the modified Reliant kit a replacement for the bridge and a larger plastic (acrylic) jug for the engine section.

The Nerf gun has been butchered to remove the handles and trigger section. All the resulting holes will be filled with styrene panels.

The Reliant has had the rear top section cut from the saucer section and lifted with the whole thing increased in depth overall. It is now reversed and minus the engines. The docking bays have become the windows for the bridge. It weirdly looks a bit Millenium Falcon-ish which I wasn't expecting.

12 volt lighting has been installed and a bridge interior back wall detailed and painted along with some 1/72 figures from a Hasegawa Morser Karl KIT.

The back wall has been painted and weathered, installed into the bridge and sealed up with no further access.

To be continued...

 

[mung]

The main hull uses a length of 19mm (3/4 inch) pine to which 15mm water pipe flanges have been bolted top and bottom for support mounts. Sections have been cut away to fit the two halves of the Nerf Nitron. DC power connectors have also been added for connecting up the lighting and a switch to separately turn on and off the 12 volt LED downlights I am using as engine lights.

The Nerf Nitron has a convenient battery door which I have modified to allow some access to the wiring and switch.

I made up some 10mm foamed PVC discs which are screwed to the pine spine with a large mudguard washer. PVC pipe reducers are then push fitted over these to provide the mounting points for the film cans and the reliant bridge which all have mating holes in the under surfaces.

To allow the wiring for the bridge to pass through the front disc had a slot cut into it and a slot in the bottom of the PVC reducer.

The engine section was bolted to the end of the Pine with a couple of aluminium brackets. The brackets are screwed to a piece of 10mm plywood superglued into the bottom of the jug. The jug bottom was slightly domed so it was cut away where the brackets fit, the plywood providing a flat surface to screw to securely.

Foamed PVC sheet 10mm thick was employed as a rear engine bulkhead. It was covered with a layer of 0.5mm styrene to allow for easy gluing of detail parts later using the normal solvent.

The engine nozzles are made from drilled out toy truck wheels surrounded by a pop up sprinkler part with the interior thread machined off in the mini lathe.

Six mm foamed PVC was employed to support the LED downlights with the whole structure a push fit into the engine jug to allow for removal and further detailing.

The engine lights were tested.

To be continued...

 

[mung]

The BSG Livery ship has a cross beam with twin landing pads at the front. I decided to do a similar thing but at the rear. I used a smaller width of pine as a cross beam screwed to the main spine. The landing pad pods are made from the surrounds of the battery powered push-lights I usually use the inner domes for dish antennas and tank ends. The clear dome is another mystery part from my stash of shapes. The yellow parts are leftover parts cut from the wheels of a Wall_E truck toy.

I decided to attempt to make sprung pads that would compress on landing. Ive had these toy plastic shock absorbers for many decades and finally found a use for them. They are push fitted onto short lengths of 7/16 inch brass tube which is glued into a hole in a square of 10mm foamed PVC. At this stage the model sits quite well on these springs which only compress about half way. However as I add more detailing the model is going to get heavier and will probably bottom out once the model it is finished.

The front landing pad is conveniently located into the hole left by the missing Nerf disc magazine. It has a red part cut down from a babies toy that is just the right size to fit.

The Nerf gun is only long enough to reach the rear landing pad cross beam so other parts from the stash have to make up the shortfall. One part I am using is the winch housing from a crane toy. One of the issues which is always a bit of a pain when using second hand toy parts is removing the stickers. They are usually pretty old and the gum has crystalised making removal quite difficult. I scrape away as much of the paper as possible with the edge of my 150mm (6 inch) steel rule and then clean of the residue with wax and grease remover on a rag which usually does a pretty decent job.

This particular part also needed a slight cut out where it overlaps the rear pad cross beam. To do this sort of thing accurately I use a small dremel cutting disk in the drill press with the table adjusted to the correct height.

To transition to the engine jug on the underside of the ship the orange crane housing is followed by a chopped PVC pipe 45 degree bend and then a green part from a reticulation controller that once funneled all the solenoid wires into a conduit.

On the upper surface the crane part is followed by another Nerf part from a Nerf Vulcan.

Returning to the modified Reliant bridge section I completed all the detailing.

To check the result I masked up the windows and hit it with grey primer.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

 

[StevenBills]

You sir, are a machine.

SB

 

[mcusanelli]

Unbelievable, as usual I’m blown away by your creativity!

 

[Searun]

Great construction sequence pictures. Interesting to see the weathering manically pulls your added details together. You must be able to visualize this in advance since multiple modules show consistent realistic results.

 

[mung]

Great construction sequence pictures. Interesting to see the weathering manically pulls your added details together. You must be able to visualize this in advance since multiple modules show consistent realistic results.

yes, it takes some practice but you have to try to ignore colour and only see shape and texture.
You don't really know for sure until the primer goes on.
In my early modeling days I would often spray the primer to see where more work needed to be done and then scrape it away in the areas that were lacking and add further detailing.

 

[mcusanelli]

This ship reminds me of the old’Project UFO’ from the ‘70’s, the model work was done by Brick Price Movie Miniatures- it looks very much like it came from them!

 

[joberg]

yes, it takes some practice but you have to try to ignore colour and only see shape and texture.
You don't really know for sure until the primer goes on.
In my early modeling days I would often spray the primer to see where more work needed to be done and then scrape it away in the areas that were lacking and add further detailing.

Yep, after all those years working with different colors greeblies I don't need to spray a coat of grey primer; I know how it'll look in the end
Great work as usual and eager to see your next update!

 

[Searun]

Yep, after all those years working with different colors greeblies I don't need to spray a coat of grey primer; I know how it'll look in the end
Great work as usual and eager to see your next update!

Maybe you guys become colorblind? Must keep the shrink entertained on ink blot tests.

Seriously, how can anyone look at a multi color toy gun and see the body of a model space ship!

 

[joberg]

Maybe you guys become colorblind? Must keep the shrink entertained on ink blot tests.

Seriously, how can anyone look at a multi color toy gun and see the body of a model space ship!

It's just that you see other forms/possibilities into everyday objects or existing toys

 

[mung]

Generally I look for basic geometric shapes, spheres, half spheres, cylinders, cones, truncated cones, cubes, pyramids etc. I usually build ships from arrangements of these basic geometries. I do not very often pick up a thing and think that's a space ship.

 

[Analyzer]

I love it!

 

[publiusr]

The photo of the raised Reliant hull could be a Stargazer follow on.

It could have been a bridge all its own.

 

[mung]

As I am currently unemployed I have been able to put in a lot of build time on this project.

I realise that I have not shown the general layout of the whole model, so to rectify that omission here it is in its full length with all the major sub-assemblies in place.

One of the jobs I tackled was the landing pads. The pads themselves are made from two layers of 10mm foamed PVC sheet. The bottom layer was designed in LibreCAD and printed out full size on paper which was then glued to the PVC with UHU stick glue and cut out on the bandsaw.

.A disc was then cut out of the same material on the drill press (at the lowest speed) and then sanded on the disc sander with the table set to roughly 10 degrees to make the edge slightly tapered.

The discs were then drilled out to 1/2", superglued to the base plates and some Evergreen 1/3" tile textured sheet glued to the underside.

I then made a connecting piece from 1/2" solid PVC rod which is press fit into the pad and hooked up to the spring landing strut with a pin made from a short length of brass tube.

I also started detailing the rear landing cross beam. On the top surface I used the cut-off front grip from the Nerf Nitron. Underneath I used some classic kit parts form the Hasegawa 1/72 Leopold which can be seen all over the 1978 Battlestar Galactica studio miniatures. A bunch of piping was added using solid ABS rod bent using a heat gun and some made from single solid core electrical wiring.

The blue part seen in the picture above is a dial from a washing machine. One other interesting part I used which you can see on the top of the landing pods is the white plastic reels from inside an old VHS video tape.

I have placed a 1/72 figure next to the pad to show the scale. The model has turned out to be reasonably lengthy and measures 1290mm long which if you divide by 25.4 will give you inches, so nearly 51 inches or 4 feet 3 inches.

The other major construction was the film cans themselves. They have been raised up to make them thicker by about 12mm. The tops have the addition of the cut off sides from 3D printing filament reel with the centre cap of an old vacuum cleaner's wheels added on top.

I have also detailed the sides of the film cans with more still to be done on the top and bottom surfaces.

Other areas have begun to receive detailing here and there with a start made on the engine pod.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

 

[publiusr]

Magnificent…

 

[Muzza]

We are going to need bigger tables

 

[JamesM242]

Outstanding!

 

[joberg]

Beauty all around

 

[mung]

The next task was detailing the backplate of the engines.
The inner nozzles are made from the rims of a rubbish truck toy with outer rings made from the screw on caps of pop-up sprinklers.
The inner thread of the sprinkler has been machined away on the mini lathe.

Followed up with a hit of grey primer to check the result.

I then moved on to detailing of the top sides of the film cans with 1mm and 2mm plates of styrene sheet arranged around the 3D printing filament reel sides. I then added some scribed panels and a sprinkling of kit parts.

After finishing the top section of both cans I sprayed one with primer to check, was satisfied with the result and sprayed the second can.

Progressing on from that I turned the cans over to detail the undersides.
Here I followed the same procedure except that after spraying the first can with primer I felt a little more detail was required so scraped and sanded away the primer in the spots I wanted to add more nurnies.
This I did to both cans and then sprayed primer once again over the new nurnies to check and then repeated the primer application on the second can.

I then decided to detail the landing pads. They were removed by pushing out the brass tube pin.
Evergreen textured sheet was used along with some tank trackshoes.
The top details are the wheels from the Tamiya 1/35 scale British 25 pounder field gun kit.
I cut the spokes to remove the wheel hub.

Next it was on to completing the detailing on the engine pod and the rest of the long skinny Nerf gun hull section.
The picture below shows the finished top of the engine section.

Below is the underneath of the engine section.

Rear landing pod cross beam top followed by underside.
The piping is a mix of solid ABS rod heat bent, for the larger diameters and single strand solid core electrical wiring.

Then a few photos of the rest of the Nerf Nitron hull finishing with the front panel kit part detailing.