Griffworks
Well-Known Member
Once upon a time, there was a show called Battlestar Galactica (1978), which started Lorne Green, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict and a bunch of other talented - and a few not-so - actors. It was a pretty kewel new show and featured - what were at the time - cutting-edge visual effects, highlighting some pretty kewel and extremely iconic spaceship designs. One of the episodes, The Magnificent Warriors, featured some re-used and slightly re-worked footage from the from the movie Silent Running (1972), starring Bruce Dern. They added some visual effects of Vipers, Raiders and explosions on top of the stock footage from the movie.
I had loved the original movie and BSG - even as cheesy as most folks consider them these days - and once I got back in to modeling BSG in early 2002, I wanted to add as many canon ships to my collection as I could. My scratchbuilding skills weren't all that great - still aren't - and so I kitbashed a few ships, adding in a few others. Then TNS BSG was aired and added a whole new excitement to that desire.
Fast forward to around 2007-ish. I found out about a company called Larsen Designs / MiniModelMadness and that they had an interesting variety of ships. One of them was the Valley Forge, in mixed media form - it contained injection molded plastic girders, resin main superstructure, some brass and PE parts and a couple of really small wooden balls. Well, I got a copy and built a modified version of the Valley Forge kit . Well, mostly built it - I never did completely finish the Agropods. Anyhow, I called it Agroship 08, for lack of a better name at the time. This was after I had started scratch-bashing Agroship 13 (still lacks a better name, yes).
Anyhow, I never really liked the design that I built, having used some extra castings from a scratchbuilt 1/2500 scale Daedalus-class starship from Stargate: SG-1 - built by a fella with the username of Chief400, which won a Merit or maybe a Bronze at WonderFest - , which I slightly modified and glued directly onto the main superstructure. It looked alright, but not nearly as kewel as I'd have liked. Then I found the following and decided to go with something based off a sort of conglomeration of them all.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to build or obtain some sort of engine section reminiscent of the Mineral Ship. To a degree, I thought that need was met sometime in 2009 with the 1/2500 scale Mineral Ship from ARVEY Model Products. However, I only wanted the engine section, so was too cheap to purchase the complete kit when I'd likely never use the other parts. I had asked if I could purchase just an engine section of the kit, but never got a firm response and this went on for a couple of years....
Well, about a week ago, I got in contact with the new owner of AMP - Jon at Commander Models - and inquired about purchasing just the engine section parts. He was kind enough to send me a set of seconds castings of just the engine parts - gratis! Woo Hoo! :cool
I just received those parts yesterday (Friday, 17 Jan) and got to work last night. I think I put about 2 hours or so of actual work into cleaning up a lot of the extra flash and such on the parts, removing the stuff off of Agroship 08 that I didn't want to keep there, building the new girder assembly and making the modifications to the parts that I wanted to do. Below are the results.
Raw parts after some cleanup.
I re-used the Daedalus-class engines, as I didn't want the engine section too look too much like I'd just pulled it from a Mineral Ship - even tho that's essentially what I did.
I cut the join section off where it had been added to the "original" superstructure, sanded the ends smooth, did some minor fit-related modifications and then glued them in-place. I'll prolly be removing the side detail and adding something new, as I don't think that I can get the damaged side w/all the voids and pinholes cleaned up properly.
I then assembled the aft girder assembly section, using Evergreen tube stock - I forget the diameter - as the central core, cut a bit into the center superstructure and the engine section, glued a piece of .030" sheet stock to the front of the engine section when I discovered that I hadn't centered the hole properly and needed to "dig" a bit more in the opposite direction and then glued it all into place. It's pretty solid, as I made sure that the girders were flush wherever possible and did the same w/the tube stock. Tho it is a bit "butt-heavy".
I want to finish up the work on the two Defenders I'm working on before returning to this, but it will likely be next highest on my priority list. The Mojo told me to get this much done, tho, so I did!
I had loved the original movie and BSG - even as cheesy as most folks consider them these days - and once I got back in to modeling BSG in early 2002, I wanted to add as many canon ships to my collection as I could. My scratchbuilding skills weren't all that great - still aren't - and so I kitbashed a few ships, adding in a few others. Then TNS BSG was aired and added a whole new excitement to that desire.
Fast forward to around 2007-ish. I found out about a company called Larsen Designs / MiniModelMadness and that they had an interesting variety of ships. One of them was the Valley Forge, in mixed media form - it contained injection molded plastic girders, resin main superstructure, some brass and PE parts and a couple of really small wooden balls. Well, I got a copy and built a modified version of the Valley Forge kit . Well, mostly built it - I never did completely finish the Agropods. Anyhow, I called it Agroship 08, for lack of a better name at the time. This was after I had started scratch-bashing Agroship 13 (still lacks a better name, yes).
Anyhow, I never really liked the design that I built, having used some extra castings from a scratchbuilt 1/2500 scale Daedalus-class starship from Stargate: SG-1 - built by a fella with the username of Chief400, which won a Merit or maybe a Bronze at WonderFest - , which I slightly modified and glued directly onto the main superstructure. It looked alright, but not nearly as kewel as I'd have liked. Then I found the following and decided to go with something based off a sort of conglomeration of them all.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to build or obtain some sort of engine section reminiscent of the Mineral Ship. To a degree, I thought that need was met sometime in 2009 with the 1/2500 scale Mineral Ship from ARVEY Model Products. However, I only wanted the engine section, so was too cheap to purchase the complete kit when I'd likely never use the other parts. I had asked if I could purchase just an engine section of the kit, but never got a firm response and this went on for a couple of years....
Well, about a week ago, I got in contact with the new owner of AMP - Jon at Commander Models - and inquired about purchasing just the engine section parts. He was kind enough to send me a set of seconds castings of just the engine parts - gratis! Woo Hoo! :cool
I just received those parts yesterday (Friday, 17 Jan) and got to work last night. I think I put about 2 hours or so of actual work into cleaning up a lot of the extra flash and such on the parts, removing the stuff off of Agroship 08 that I didn't want to keep there, building the new girder assembly and making the modifications to the parts that I wanted to do. Below are the results.
Raw parts after some cleanup.
I re-used the Daedalus-class engines, as I didn't want the engine section too look too much like I'd just pulled it from a Mineral Ship - even tho that's essentially what I did.
I cut the join section off where it had been added to the "original" superstructure, sanded the ends smooth, did some minor fit-related modifications and then glued them in-place. I'll prolly be removing the side detail and adding something new, as I don't think that I can get the damaged side w/all the voids and pinholes cleaned up properly. 
I then assembled the aft girder assembly section, using Evergreen tube stock - I forget the diameter - as the central core, cut a bit into the center superstructure and the engine section, glued a piece of .030" sheet stock to the front of the engine section when I discovered that I hadn't centered the hole properly and needed to "dig" a bit more in the opposite direction and then glued it all into place. It's pretty solid, as I made sure that the girders were flush wherever possible and did the same w/the tube stock. Tho it is a bit "butt-heavy".
I want to finish up the work on the two Defenders I'm working on before returning to this, but it will likely be next highest on my priority list. The Mojo told me to get this much done, tho, so I did!
