1/700 & 1/350 scale BH Cygnus builds

And the spire. The Palomino is missing parts; there should be a third disc on the nose antenna cluster. Same thing happened here, a ring is missing where the lower array of probes terminate in midair. Got to get to the bottom of that.

Again this was too flexible and the final piece will need to be brass tube with the antenna clusters printed as sleeves; that will allow for fibre optics as a bonus. Another problem is that small round items like the "saucer" antennae tend to elongate during printing. I will have to compensate for that on the mesh files.

Still that's what these protos are for, and it is fun to see how it will look. Incidentally the complete tower is about 14" tall.
 
Holy smokes! That is VERY cool!! How tall is the finished tower?

**EDIT**
Never mind on the "how tall" question. If I would have actually READ your post instead of drooling over your pics...HA! Man, when you said it was going to a big model, you weren't kidding!!

The Palomino is also very nice! Is that all one piece?

Also love the painting. How exactly are you painting it..base coat of black first?

Nice work! I'm anxious to see more!
Dave
 
Thanks guys! Dave, the Palomino is two pieces - upper hull, and lower hull face and engines. The painting is really dodgy - I sprayed these with black ultra-high-temperature engine paint first off (It's meant for my fire engine, lol). That's then daubed with verdigris craft paint, then daubed again with an ammonium chloride solution. It oxidises the copper particles in the craft paint to give instant faux verdigris. Very crudely done but the medium is forgiving.

For the final pieces I'm going to try for more of a patinated bronze base - effectively a dark metallic brown with some brassy highlights - then apply the verdigris effect liberally on top of that. I need to experiment a bit as I'd like to airbrush the craft paint if possible. It is very viscous so that will be a bit of a trick.

Simon, thanks for that! Believe it or not I'm not happy with it; some pieces vanished off the mesh during production and the small probes are too tiny to print well in WSF. It will work fine in Frosted Ultra Detail, but since that can print details half the size of the elements I built the girders from, I'm going to rework it. The girders around the base are hollow but you can barely tell. The next version should have engine girders you can properly see through. :)
 
thanx guy's.took a while but i'm here.cygnus looks sooo accurate.i'm really interested in the paint treatment martyn.i would like to try this out myself.will talk to you a bit more about it.another technique i want to try out is simulating salt water weathering on aircraft models but lets not digress from the cygnus.i've been researching airbrushing craft paints and lot of different opinions but quality of paint and thinning seems very important.although in the case of the cygnus i think the look generated by trial and error (dirty airbrush style) would look good.
 
Yeah dude, any time. If this Sunday is good I will try and bring the pieces down to show you? I was just too damn sick last Sunday, sorry. The paint is quite thick but should be sprayable if thinned, it will just require a number of layers. Daubing it on by brush is a bit of an ordinary look really, but nothing beats the real copper oxidation effect. You can get "rust" paints too, by the way. Real iron, really oxidises, looks great. Great for PC rust mods.

Well, I've finally wrapped up my bridge tonight and uploaded. I still have some tweaks needed on the spire and base of the tower, but that can wait. I was kind of forcing myself to do the main jobs on the bridge - smallest, most detailed, most fiddly area by far and it got to be a bit of a pain TBH. I'm glad to be going back to work on the bow now!
 
Martyn, I'm disappointed. I thought I told you to add Anthony Perkins' internal organs strewn about.

Seriously though, that will look amazing inside the bridge dome! I think I might just make a piece with the walls, floor and two large spheres. Just enought to indicate something there. I don't think much else will render at my scale.
 
will let you know bout sunday,might be out and about with my boys.i'll try and go to the craft shop this week and check out these paints and the rust additives.
yeah,anthony perkins guts would look good!funny though,i reckon he was a robot as well,ha ha.i hope your gonna do those coloured ball things.maybe use miniature lava lamps.he he.
 
Hehe. Dave, they are there, you just have to look hard. :) (Maybe I'll just paint a small red stain in the dangerous electrical shaft doodad.) I'm unsure how well this will print, I'll try it in Ultra but it is really pushing things. And the dome is cloudy enough that it will be hard to see anyway. I'll polish the dome a little but I rather like the cloudiness, the originals seemed to be that way too. Certainly at the observatory end the domes were extremely cloudy.

No worries Rod! Yeah, the bridge is in two pieces, floor with seats, elevator and and Maximilian Schell, lol, and wall with dome struts and coloured sphere displays. They're just coloured for the render, but the material I'll be using is "frosted ultra detail", which is translucent.

The spheres are both hollow; I'll tint them and try to get fibre into them. There's a big display on the floor behind the elevator which will also light up. It would be nice to do it for the two big rectangular screens at the front of the wall, too, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it.
 
sunday's looking good now,will go through the library and dig out all my cygnus ref material and see if there is anything that might help.
 
Rod, thanks for your time today and the ref stuff. I remembered what we got interrupted on - paint. After the paint dries, you hit it with a solution of ammonium chloride. It chemically ages the paint via oxidation - either verdigris for the copper-based paint, or rust for the iron-based. Here's a local supplier: Speciality Finishes* - they are down your way too. I might have to check them out as Bunnings doesn't stock it any more. Other places like craft shops will have similar products.
 
Incidentally, Dave and I are both getting stuck into our bow builds. Here is mine so far. Dave's a bit further along, my engine is only a quickie mockup and the support strut for it is roughed out, also a nightmare to model.

We are both hoping to have parts done in the next few weeks. This section is huge - mine will have to be broken down into about 12-18 major parts.

Whoops, pic too large, will have to edit from the PC a bit later.
 
oh by the way everyone,i've seen these parts first hand.simply stunning!!!this is taking modelling to the next level.very inspiring.keep up the great work guys.
 
Thanks Rod! Your Randy Cooper Sandcrawler ain't half bad neither; like I said today you should post it.

Here's them bow pics.
 
Here's where I am with the bow. Martyn, it looks like you're ahead of me. I have the engines done, but no support structures, and there's still a lot of it I haven't gotten to yet.

I'm supposed to be receiving some parts for the center section this week, but I don't know if the holiday will delay delivery. I'm trying to scrape together the money to order one of my fuel module sections to keep things in the pipeline...
 
I've always wondered what the "hardest space ship to model" would be and I've debated it over the years -- but I always knew the Cygnus would be the hardest and most impossible. Miles of miles of girder frames. In fact, not so much a ship as a mesh framework.

And when I see this, there are no words to describe how awesome this is looking. WOW, just, WOW.
 
Thanks MM! It certainly is one of the most interesting sci-fi spaceship designs of all time.

Not much going on at the moment -- waiting for more parts to arrive. I finally sat down and drew out plans for the center section lightbox substructure. I've sent them off to be laser cut from sheet acrylic. Also just backfilling parts I need more copies of. Hopefully I'll be wrapping up the center section in a couple of weeks or so. Then I can focus more on the bow and stern...
 
Finally got in some more parts. I had laser-cut parts made for the center section frame. I have a shot of all the pieces, plus them fitted together with framing slipped on. It's going together really well! Let me know what you think...
 

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