Studio Scale B-Wing Starfighter Build Thread

[thibkaji]

The vacuum forming machine is now complete! This is very exciting, as now I can finally start to create the shells needed for most of the B-Wing’s forms.

Here she is (with the medium platen)! I’ve loaded in a sheet of styrene and placed my cockpit shell buck onto the platen. This here is my first test of the machine.

And here’s my first pull

I’m very impressed by this first pull! Worked perfectly to create the shape of the cockpit canopy half.

Here are some pics of the shell with the buck removed and trimmed from the larger sheet.

I next cut out the canopy window sections out of the shell and fit it to the cockpit — looks pretty good to me!

I did a little more trimming and connected the cockpit to the cockpit/pod section:

I’m very happy with how things turning out. I now need to get more styrene sheets, .060” thick, in a large enough size to fit over the 9”x12” platen. I can get 36”x36” sheets from work for like $10 a sheet, so I’ll wait until mid-week to pick those up next time I’m in the office. In the meantime, I’ll probably spend some time making the smaller 6” x 9” platen, as well, which is a better size for this shape anyway, and for some of the other shapes.

I’ve also created templates for the engine housing half and the wing gun housings. They’re dimensionally correct, accounting for 1mm thick styrene on top to bring to final dimensions.

I’ve got some hardwood gluing up right now so tomorrow I can start carving out these shapes. Exciting!

I’ve also done a bit more work on the smaller wings. I found an aluminum piano hinge that has dimensions really close to what I need, close enough for me to use it.

I cut that sucker up into the correct widths and test fit them to one of the wings.

I used some apoxie sculpt to attach the hinges to the wing bottom.

And that’s where I am! I closed up the wing with tape but have to work out the internal support structure before I glue everything down around the hinges.

I’m also working out an aluminum shape to place under the central mounting block that the hinges can attach to. I might switch over to plastic for this, but aluminum would be best I think.

That’s it for now! I should have updates much quicker now that the vac-former is ready. TIL next time!

 

[joberg]

Wow...that first pull was fantastic...I'm amazed that there wasn't any webbing on it at all Love your vacu-form machine set-up...don't mind if I copy it

 

[Ogibendogy]

That's an efficient looking vac setup. Filing that idea away for future use! Your progress looks great

 

[thibkaji]

Wow...that first pull was fantastic...I'm amazed that there wasn't any webbing on it at all Love your vacu-form machine set-up...don't mind if I copy it

Don’t mind at all! and yeah, I was pretty impressed with that first pull, though def learned about the importance of flaring the bottom so it angles out a bit and doesn’t go straight down. Makes it easier to extract the buck from the shell. I’ll be making a bottom flare on the wing housings, though the engine cowling is already angled so I expect that will be fine with only a slight flare.

 

[swgeek]

For getting bucks out of the vac-formed pulls, an air compressor is your friend.

 

[thibkaji]

For getting bucks out of the vac-formed pulls, an air compressor is your friend.

Thanks for the tip! I’d read that but haven’t tried it yet. I’ll give that a try on my next pull!

 

[thibkaji]

Ugh, I stayed up WAY too late tonight, but I was in a groove working on the lower half of the cockpit and wasn’t paying attention to time. Gonna hurt getting up in 4 hours for work, but oh well!

So I had another successful pull on the vac-former for the bottom shell, and I was off to the races!

I measured so many dimensions between the ref pics and the Bandai kit to line up where to cut out the nose for the bottom shell. I think I got super close on it.

I checked the fit of this shell to the top, and while alignment was off very slightly, it wasn’t enough to matter. Some of that is due to the cockpit interior being slightly too wide, so it’s bulging the top shell. I’ll sand that down in a bit.

With that done, I spent some time working on the armor plating for the sides and bottom of the cockpit. The sides hide the seam where the two halves were joined and will help to strengthen that joint.

Made two of those, and one for the bottom. Glued the two halves together, and then added the armor plates. I think it turned out pretty good!

I marked on the nose where the extra plate cover and the Midway gun gets mounted, but looking more closely at the ref pics, I think I need to cut out the nose on the top shell. It’s clearly missing on the completed model, and the rounded sheet stock and Midway gun cover up the hole and mount to the front of the cockpit interior. But that’s for another day.

Last pics of the assembly before I head to bed.

That’s all for now, will likely have more this weekend to share. Gotta get a hold of some rice lights, too, so I can begin wiring up the cockpit.

Speaking of, Does anyone have a source for loose or prewired (wires on the terminals and a resistor) rice lights? Like 1.8-2 mm dia? I can only find lights in strings that I’d have to cut up and I’d prefer to not deal with that headache!


Alrighty, til next time!

 

[swgeek]

Looking great!
You might want to try JKL for lights.

JKL Components Corporation: Diverse Lighting Products and Solutions

JKL is located in Southern California and has been serving the global electrical and electronics market with quality lighting solutions since 1972.

www.jkllamps.com

 

[joberg]

Looking spiffy for sure! Keep up the great work

 

[thibkaji]

Looking great!
You might want to try JKL for lights.

JKL Components Corporation: Diverse Lighting Products and Solutions

JKL is located in Southern California and has been serving the global electrical and electronics market with quality lighting solutions since 1972.

www.jkllamps.com

Thanks for that recommendation, Will def take a look. I was also directed to Evan Designs for a decent LED bulb selection.

I just found out another name for these bulbs is “grain of wheat”, and that returns a lot more search results. 3mm seems standard, so that’s what I’ll try first.

 

[thibkaji]

I said some updates might come quicker now. Worked on the lower cockpit as bit more last night, adding some missing parts that really beef up the gun section.

I noticed this before, but you can see here that the shell of the upper cockpit is cut to slip around the front of the inner cockpit assembly:

This also means the Midway gun is glued directly to the front of the inner cockpit section. I did the same, shown here with a partial cutout around the midway part, which is glued to the inner cockpit front and not the shells. I’m also test fitting the nose cap, which covers over gaps around the Midway part after cutting it up.

I don’t have in-progress pics of me cutting out the nose, but here’s one with the nose cap fitted and attached. You can see below it where it’s now partly notched out.

With that done, I started adding in the Bismarck/Tirpitz parts to the bottom shell/gun assembly.

This piece here

Goes in here

The two other parts go on the bottom of the gun assembly. Here’s the first larger part:

And the second on top of that one:

And a test fit — looking good! I even added a hose from a Tamiya 1/12 F1 kit, though that’s not attached yet.

That’s all for this mini-update. Next one should involve lights!!

 

[joberg]

Really looking F.A.B.

 

[stevielewis]

It's looking pretty sweet!

 

[thibkaji]

OK, I don’t have the grain of wheat lights in yet, so I switched gears and started working on the engine cowling section instead. I had glued up some pieces of wood a week or so ago, and now it was time to put it to use!

I used the templates I’d made to get the basic shapes onto the block of wood. I built in a small buffer at the bottom to help reduce webbing.

Here it is as I shaped the buck.

Once I was happy with the dimensions and smoothness of the surface, I made a few pulls.

I had thought about creating the angled section at the front as part of the buck but opted not to so I could make adjustments as needed.

Here’s the two pulls together. Really shows the general shape of the engine cowling section.

Let the fun begin! First figured out where to cut the front angle for the intakes, then cut the end off and marked out where it shapes around the engines:

Repeated for the other side:

I then started making measurements and cutting out the armor plating for this hull section. During that process, I realized I’d cut the front angled section too short. This was mainly due to how I cut off the back of the shell — my measurements were now off!

So, I took the cutoff section and glued it back on and recut the front end. It’s now correct, and so I continued attaching the armor plating, matching each notch, cutout, etc, to the existing reference/Bandai B-Wing.

Once it got further along I cut out the hole in the top where the mounting arm will need to go through to the mounting block and then continued adding armor plating.

One of the nice things about having the buck is it gives you a perfect surface to support this shape while I glue things to it. Very convenient!

With the armor mounted, I began some work on the intakes. The top/outer section is pretty simple, and I was able to use my template to make it. Glued a piece of sheet stock flush to the front and then mounted that in the engine cowling.

The reference images show a small band of material around the edge where this panel meets the housing, so I added that, too. Helps to hide any gaps where these are joined

I then made the top panel that hides the mount point:

Back to the intakes, you can see in the reference photos that the bottom/inner intakes are thicker than the outer one — this is due to the two halves of the housing having the bottom of fhe intakes on each. Also of note is the very center section looks like it juts out from the rest of the intakes, but I think this is a removable section that wasn’t pushed back in on the filming model.

The reference is telling me that the center-most vertical fins span across the two halves when assembled, so I’ll hold off on those for now.

To get the bottom pieces that stick in for the center of the intakes, I created a small spacer out of some .06” stock and taped the thinner stock to be glued to it. This let me maintain proper alignment of the parts to be glued and kept them level and square to the housing.

While that was setting up I grabbed one of the engine housing vents I assembled in a prior post and connected it to the housing. To get the right height, I used two .04” thick strips glued together (that’s how it is on filming model) and attached to the sides of the vent assembly. This was quickly glued into the housing.

And here we have this assembly with the front intake sections and the vent assembly.

And with the top plate, too!

I’ve started working on the plating for the other engine housing half, which requires all the same adjustments/fixes that this side required. Additionally, every single armored plating panel is different, so it takes some time to measure them all, convert them up to the right scale size, draw them out, add notches/cutouts, and then glue them into place. Very tedious work! I’m a few panels in right now, and hoping to wrap those up by mid week.

I gotta say, I’m very happy with how things are turning out. After attaching the armored plating, the whole assembly gets more rigid and holds shape well. And it looks like a B-Wing’s housing!!

Once I’ve got the other half done I’ll work on fitting the rear engine mounting plate, which will inform where the center mounting block needs to go. This will help determine where other mount points are, which I’ll need to do before I start cutting out slots in the sides of the housing to go around the armature parts. I think once I get to that stage I’ll start work on the bucks needed to form the upper neck section and start getting things together on the upper half of the ship.

Til next time!.

 

[joberg]

Wow...what an update Love the way that you've discovered that the buck was helping you with the paneling

 

[Ogibendogy]

You make it look so easy - are you sure this isn't the fourth or fifth B-Wing you've built?!?!?

Seriously though, looks great.

 

[thibkaji]

You make it look so easy - are you sure this isn't the fourth or fifth B-Wing you've built?!?!?

Seriously though, looks great.

You’re just seeing the fourth or fifth time I had to rebuild this part to get it right!

 

[thibkaji]

Back with another small update. I finished up most of the starboard side of the engine cowling, and the two parts mate up to each other pretty darn well! Still a few more details to add — I’ll get to those at some point before I join the two halves together. The pics don’t show, but I did install the Ferrari venting on the starboard cowling.

I next worked a bit on the forward vents/vanes. I pretty much just cut out some large triangular shapes from .030” stock, and made the center vane out of .06” horizontally and .04” vertically. I went to .04” vs .03” because I felt the .03” was too thin, and looking at it all now I’m going to have to go back and thicken up all of the canes to .04” stock and the center to .08”. I’ll probably just glue some .010” material to the .030” — I don’t feel like recreating the parts! Also, none of this is glued in — that’s for after the two halves get assembled.

I said last time I’d work on the engines, and I definitely did so! I took my existing engine mounting plate that I knew was too large and began trimming it down, as well as cutting out notches to go around the rear engine venting.

Once I had the plate fitting better, I marked where it would mount inside the engine cowling and then glued in scrap pieces of stock to create mounting tabs/stops for the plate.

Here we are with two halves together!

I have a little gap filling to do here around the inside where the plate mates to the housing, but not too much.

I next added the engines to start working out the spacing. Of the bunch, the two light gray engines look to be in the right position, but the green ones are definitely positioned wrong. You can see they’re not all square to each other, and the green ones need to move a little up and diagonally toward the venting assembly. I’ll work on repositioning this weekend.

But even still, it feels great seeing those engines in place! One step closer.

I also started drawing out the plans for the next set of bucks I need to make. These are for the next assembly from the engines to the cockpit. I’ll need to also make (probably from ABS) a small add-on at the top to help give some support for the F-14 missiles and neck shells when they get mounted.

Next up though will be to reposition the two green engines, drill a larger hole through the middle to allow for the armature support to mount, add small collars at the base of the engines, add any decorative greeblies to the rear engine plate (really aren’t any), and then work out the mounting of the armature within the engine housing. Lots to do, and not much time before Wonderfest!

Til next time!

 

[stevielewis]

 

[joberg]

Great to see those engines in place Are you going to vacu-form the wings as well?