TIE Bomber Scratchbuild

The art of this WIP is one of the most accurate scratchbuilding I saw!!
Thanks a lot for sharing it Keiko
 
Hello everyone.

Time for another update. Things are kind of going slower than I'd anticipated - not because the actual modeling is taking longer, but because I've been awfully social over my holiday, leaving less time for modeling.

Nevertheless, the work continues to progress at some pace. In the background of some of my earlier photos, you could see some brass pieces being worked on for the pistons that go forward and rearward from the wing hub on the centerline of the wing. I've continued with them and other wing hub details as you'll see in the photos. I'm getting ready to mold the wing to make a duplicate for the other side. It's just so much work to get one done that I don't have the energy to scratch build it twice. Other parts that I need two of compared to my one master, such as the rear cone of the fuselage will be going into rubber as well as soon as the wing is done. Even the brass struts which I made 4 of will be cast simply because resin is easier to work with for the final fit-up.

Cheers,

K.


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Hello everyone,

Overdue update time. I've had less time the past couple of weekends and even though my updates tend to be pretty incremental, I didn't have enough to really show without it being ridiculous. Nevertheless, here I am now, moving onward.

First up is the finishing of the inner wings. Here we see the shaping work to make the last little details, those I call the "brake shoes" fit on the inner wings. Since the whole "pulley and leaf spring" assembly was just a little bigger than perfect, I had to be really careful to make the shoes fit in the smaller space. In the end, I'm happy with how it turned out and even more amazed that I didn't sneeze and lose something in the doing.

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With these installed, the inner wing is done being built. I have a line to scribe around the inner circumference and that's all. No more parts to make though. So happy!

Thanks for looking.

K.
 
Next up, I moved on to the outer wing. There wasn't much to do there - just the addition of minor strip detail around the circumference and small details from a Junyo aircraft carrier on the front and rear edges of the outer hub detail. This is where things got weird.

As you know, I've based my wings on the 1/72 Finemolds kit of Vader's TIE. This kit is a version of the 1977 studio miniature of the same ship. However, the TIE Bomber used parts from the ERTL version of Vader's TIE, which was not as accurate as FM. Therefore, to make my TIE Bomber match the ILM studio miniature, I have to "de-tune" the FM kit's resemblance to the original studio miniature and instead make it more closely resemble a less accurate copy of that same studio miniature. Did all that make sense? Maybe pictures will help.

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With this, I have about 1/2 an hour of strip work to do on the outer edge of the outside of the wing and a line to scribe around the outer edge of the inside. Then it's into rubber for casting.

Cheers,

K.
 
Hi CM,

Yes, I'm planning to mold and duplicate the wing since it was so much work I don't want to do it twice. I'm far from expert at mold making, but I'll do my best and take some pictures along the way as usual.

cheers,

K.
 
Glad to see you posting / sharing again Keiko .

Gotta admit though , seeing that #4 pic in post #145 made my eyes water ! :facepalm ... you’ve got b***’s of steel my friend !

:thumbsup
 
Thanks for your comments guys, it's keeping me going. Yes, it was a little scary cutting that outer hub off of my good wing. Luckily I got through it okay. The hardest part was actually re-drilling the six tiny holes in the very center of the hub after my sanding to height of it had eliminated the first ones. I was operating at the end of my visual abilities, even with strong glasses and a magnifying glass to boot.

I plugged away happily over the weekend with some good progress. Since I'm planning to mold the wing to represent both wings, I more or less superimposed all of the detail for both wings onto this, my one master. This means that after molding, I'll have to remove some details from each, but I wanted to do that now since it's much easier to work with liquid cement on styrene than with CA glue on resin. So, some of the lateral ribs that lead to the long ribs on the circumference of the outer wing will be removed after casting, as will some of the other raised details around the wing. Putting this stuff on was all quite fun and not very hard to do.

I also finished the scribing and other forgotten inner wing details. I am now 100% done the wing and will mold it next weekend.

Thanks for looking as always!

Cheers.

K.

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- ‘ Putting this stuff on was all quite fun and not very hard to do ‘ - :wacko :confused ... not if your name isn’t Keiko ! :lol
Exquisite work yet again mate ! Couple of questions if I may , is the super detailed wing the only part you’re planning to make copies of for personal use ;) , and how can I get a set ..... of those micro - punches as well ?

:cheersGed
 
Hi Ged,

Practice makes perfect! Maybe I should have said the outer wings were some of the easier details to add. Just lengths of strip, one layer deep, not parts on parts with time needed for each layer to cure before adding the next. It might look impressive in its finished state, but it was truly not so bad. A few of the other bits on the wings were just stretched sprue and maybe a disc or two from the punches. It went pretty fast. Not as fast as the 1/2 hour I'd mentioned as an expectation earlier, but not so bad either. Definitely not "3 attempts on the pulleys" bad, or "75% rejection rate on embossed wing panels" bad!

The punch set is a "Waldron Subminiature Punch and Die" set. I first read of it in Finescale Modeler 25+ years ago. Every year, I used to put it on my Christmas list, and finally my wife came through about 10 or 15 years ago, when we were finally learning about online shopping. I remember she was relieved on Christmas day when it was the right one, because she said it had been quite expensive. I just did a quick search and found it fast, and sure enough, it is quite expensive - $100 range. Ah well, money well spent. Mine has seen a lot of action and I couldn't live without it!

With respect to copies, I am actually planning on making molds of the whole ship. I'm not planning on selling it as a kit, but I am making a copy for my wife. I was trying to keep that a little quiet because I don't have the time to go into sales and didn't want to disappoint anyone. However, I figured it would eventually become a logical question to ask.

Cheers,

K.
 
Daniel! Nice to see you on the board!

It's getting there - I've moved off the wing back onto the minor stuff around the fuselage per that list I sent you. The end is in sight!

cheers!

K.
 
Hello everyone,

Minor update only this weekend. We had a serious dump of snow and I spent quite a bit of time digging out the driveway. We live in a rural area and have a very big driveway, approx. 50 m long. It then became a beautiful winter wonderland: -20°C with sun and no wind, which is typical for Western Canada.

After all that was done, I settled down for a bit of modelling, but no molding yet. With the wing now 100% done, I'm going back to the rest of the ship and revisiting all the parts that I wasn't 100% done yet, finishing them up. I worked on the rib details for the fins of the wing spar, as well as drilling all the rivet holes on the fuselages. For this latter task, studying references and marking all the locations was at least as time consuming as the actual work. Had to be done though!

Photos as usual. Nothing big to see, but proof I did something!

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Thanks for looking as always!

K.
 
Wow. Just wow. You have really helped me visualise a lot of these bits which helped with my own builds thanks for sharing. Having finished the building stages of my TIE shuttle i have also started a bomber.
 
Hi Guys,

I'm glad you're liking the model. I'm getting close and pushing myself a bit to keep the progress going. I'm working my way around from the ship putting those finishing touches on everything that was 90% done. Each major subassembly it seems needs a bit more work. I think as I went through constructing each of them, I got most of the way through before having a mini-burnout and moving on to another part of the ship. Now I have to go back and get every part to the 100% mark.

Small update tonight - I finished out the final sanding on the wing spar and got that part to 100% before moving onto the cockpit fuselage. There are numerous little details on the top and bottom that I'm now adding. They are virtual mirrored images with the top having a few extras details beyond that on the bottom.

I'm looking forward to seeing CM bang out a Bomber before I'm done this one! Man I'm slow.

Pics as usual.

Cheers,

K.
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