Federation Commander

[djdood]

Thanks Paul.

I was starting to wonder if anyone was even reading these. It's more of a journal-type thread, so no harm if nobody cares, but it is nice to hear some encouraging words.

Over the weekend, I made quite a bit of progress on several projects.

On the master for the Federation oCA -
I re-routed the "engine trenches" a bit more. The second (better) one is pretty much ready to proceed with next-steps on (just a minor "nick" to fill in with greenstuff). The sloppier first one was cleaned up and had the "waviness" removed, but is now much too wide. I'll fix this by adding greenstuff to the edges and then run that through the routing jig one last time (should be much easier to get a straight rout line in putty as opposed to hard pewter).
No new pictures on this one.

On the Klingon FD7 Fast Battlecruiser -
I epoxied on the brass wings.


Once the epoxy cured, I then covered their edges and surface defects with greenstuff.

(Most of this putty will be filed and sanded away, to leave a smooth, final shape).

I also cut the engines into two pieces and planned out how much I am going to space them out, filling the gap with greenstuff. This is to make the engines longer and look more powerful (since it's a "fast" ship).


On the Federation HDW re-build -
I built the "lower hull" module up with greenstuff, around the brass pins already epoxied into the two engines.


I'm having some doubts that the greenstuff will provide a strong enough mounting for the "neck" and the rest of the ship. I might file off the top couple 16ths of an inch and replace that portion with thin brass sheet.

On the Gorn CF Fast Battlecruiser -
Much progress was made on this kitbash. It's nearing completion.

I finished filing out the "groove" for the brass wings part to sit in. This left the main hull very weak and prone to sagging (it's got two heavy lead bubbles at either end after all), which i had to address later.


I changed the shape of the "wings" to make them a bit less wide and have a more raked "go fast" appearance. I also scribed in the "shuttle pad tracks". I then drilled and added two pins in the "groove" on the main hull to fix the location of the "wings" and drilled corresponding holes in the brass piece.

[Wings are shown held in-place, with the "stock" lead wing for comparison].

I then used some other, thicker, brass stock to fabricate some "stringers" to span over the wing part and brace the main hull. When it tries to sag under its own weight, the vertical faces of the "groove" will now press into the ends of the stringers and be prevented from going any further. Once glued into place over the wings, the stringers also served to fill a large portion of the "grooves" void, reducing the amount of greenstuff needed to fill to match the main hulls lines.


The mini was acquired without engines, so I'm using pewter Gorn BC engines from an ADB kitbash pack. However, I want the engines to have a visual indication of their increased power (it is a "fast" ship).

Using two conveniently matching-length pieces of small brass tube stock (from a bag of miscellaneous brass tube bits-and-bobs I bought last year), I added some larger "intercooler" housings to the two engines.


I did chuck both pieces into the Dremel to give them beveled edges and make them look a bit more "techno".


I also added greenstuff fillets to the forward edges of both to blend them into the engine nacelles a bit more.


My final steps yesterday were filling in the "groove" under the wings with greenstuff.


I then filed the rear portion of the center hull into a "wasp-waist" narrower shape (inspired by John Schneder's master for the Gorn DNL).


At this point, I need to file and sand the greenstuff over the wings/bottom-of-the-hull, pin and epoxy the engines to the main hull, add greenstuff fillets to both engines, and add phaser dots to the wings along with shuttle pads. Then she's done.
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[Starsuperion]

I love this thread..
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Live Long, Prosper, and Party!

[djdood]

Minis Build-Blog:
It's been a few weeks. I had to pack up my work-space to get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday and I'm just now getting back into mini-making.

My copies of the Klingon F5W are one their way and I'm looking forward to seeing how the mold and casting turned out. I'm also looking forward to getting some play-time in with them later this year (the F5W is a kick-butt little ship).
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The Gorn Fast Battlecruiser (BF) is finished, and ready for priming and painting later this year (once the weather permits spraying again).
[shown here compared to a "stock" battlecruiser hull]

The rest of the pictures of this mini are HERE.

Other than a BDH conversion I want to do, I'm pretty much done preparing my Gorns and they're all ready for prime and paint.
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The rebuild on the Federation Heavy War Destroyer (HDW) is also completed.

Painting this one will be a bit more involved, since the upper portion was already painted and partially weathered (only missing some painted details and decals). I'll need to mask that off when I prime and paint the new lower engine assembly and touch up the prime and paint on the "neck'.

The rest of the pictures of this mini are HERE.
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I started some improvements on my copy of the Romulan Shrike Light Dreadnought a couple of nights ago. The wings on this guy are pretty thin, and I'm worried about them getting bent during use on the gameboard (big heavy engines and thin wings are bad juju).


To fix this, I essentially "laminated" the wings. "Doublers" were cut from thin brass sheet stock and then epoxy glued to the bottom surface of the wings (after both mating surfaces had been roughed up/cross-hatched.

Now that the epoxy is cured, I will add some greenstuff putty to blend in the edges of the doublers and also to clean up the surface on the upper face of the wings (making them nice and flat).

I also added Squadron putty (basic talcum and binder putty) over the upper and lower surfaces to address the "orange peel" surface texture my copy was covered in. The top needs to look good as a presented surface, but it's especially critical for the bottom to be as smooth as possible, as I intend to put a large "Bird of Prey" decal on that face (uneven surfaces cause "silvering" and other defects in decal adhesion).

The rest of the pictures of this mini are HERE.

I have some conversions I want to do for the Romulans (SaberHawk HDW, JayHawk BFF), but I'm nearly done preparing this empire for prime and paint.
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I bought some very, very fine photo-etched aluminum grille parts at my FLHS this past weekend, so I am hoping to finally finish the engines for the Federation Old Heavy Cruiser (oCA) this weekend. I have a considerable amount of work to do on them to make them acceptable - add greenstuff putty and re-rout the inboard trenches (truing them up and correcting the waviness), add the grille details inside the trenches, add the "reactor loops" from brass rod, scribe the small groove aft of the "bussard domes", and add the 3 small pads under the dome with brass chips.
No new pictures of this guy lately.

My Feds are a mixed-bag. A (very) few are painted and finished. Several are painted, but still missing details and decals. Most are at least primed and base-coated. A few stragglers are still in bare-metal, but I'm in no rush on these. I want to get the oCA into ADB for production and then wait for copies of that one before doing my final batch of Fed painting.
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I've been filling time between other projects with getting my Kzintis reassembled. All of the them were stripped last year, due to a really poor color choice of rattle-can paint. During the stripping, the glue and putty work was attacked by the Easy-Off. So, they all get a "clean slate" and I've been improving their clean-up work and adding some putty-work here and there to remove sink-marks, etc.

I'll also be converting an old lead SL2200 Kzinti BC into a Fast Cruiser (CF) and various other simple kitbashes (BFF Battle Frigate, HDW Heavy War Destroyer, etc.).

That's it for now.
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[OGOPTIMUS]

Once again, just great work Will.

The Gorn Fast BC is cool. I like the new engines. Wish you had kept them hanging outthe back, but I can understand since it's got to be stable on the table and not just sit on the shelf.

I also like that new hull for the Fed HDW. I have three of those sitting around and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. Both your kitbash and Jeremy Grey's are appealing to me.

I'm guessing whomever sculpted the Shrike and King Condor took different approaches since my KC has really thick wings to support those engines. This of course makes them nearly impossible to bend back into shape if they get skewed somehow.

I wish I had the time patience and talent for that type of master sculpt mini work (not to mention the minis).

I'm in sort of a rut right now, working on a FASA Constitution refit, among some others that I need to paint. My cat, of course, found the table and spilled my paint brush water onto some primed minis and now I have to strip and reprime them.
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O.G. OPTIMUS


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[Scoutdad]

[djdood]

@Paul -
Thanks for the kind words.

Regarding the paint-water cat-astrophe; That really sucks. One more reason I'm glad I'm a "dog person" - my furkids stay on the floor.

I'd say you have plenty of patience - that massive Fed Sixth Fleet project you completed was proof of that. It's all about where you spend your energy - Note that I only have 4-5 fully-completed minis (all painted, decaled, and clear-coated). Most of mine are in various in-between stages, as I am ADD in a big way. When my latest box of fun from ADB shows up on Friday, I'll be distracted, yet again...

@Tony -
That takes the cake. If I did that on fully-completed minis, you would probably be able to hear me cussing clear in Tennessee.
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[djdood]

Minis Build-Blog:

Still waiting to work on the Fed oCA master. I need a nice uninterrupted block of time to do the greenstuff work and subsequent re-routing on the engines (can't stop, once that gets started). Too much day-job and holiday-preparations to allow for that, but I'll be on vacation next week and then I can finally get this sucker done.

In the mean time, I've stayed busy by converting the last of my old lead Gorns I acquired from eBay auctions. All my Gorns get modified to move the engines up over the hull (the way the modern casts are). This makes them much more usable as play pieces (the old ones with the engines hanging out the back were w-a-y too prone to damage; nifty display models, but I don't do my minis up for display).

A Battlecruiser (which I'll use as a Command Cruiser), another Light Cruiser (I wanted at least one more SL2200 CL to complement the one I've had since 1986), and two more old DD's (which I will be using as Frigates). These all got the engine mounts modified, holes drilled for brass pins, epoxied on, and then greenstuff putty fillets added to fair them in.

The Romulan Shrike is essentially finished, with all the greenstuff putty on the wings sanded and polished. Once I replace some phasers I sanded off, that one is ready for primer. While I'm doing that, I'll do the same for my King Condor BB (which is also essentially ready for priming).

I'm also chugging along with getting all of my Kzintis reassembled (they were all stripped and broken down for a complete "do-over") and doing the prep work on my recently acquired Klingon F5W War Destroyers, shuttles, and fighter minis for Feds, Klingons, and Hydrans.

Cleaning up cast copies of the F5W, I've learned some things I hope to do better on subsequent masters (the HF5 I intend to do would be the biggest recipient of the "lessons learned"). It's a pretty good mini, but there's things I'm wishing I had done better on.

Those fighter and shuttle minis are amazing - so much detail on something so tiny. They are a royal pain to file and sand, but well worth the effort - I can't wait to paint these.

The Klingon FD7 Fast Cruiser got some final file and sanding work done on the wings and engines. I then scribed the "cooling vanes" on the inside of the engines (into the greenstuff) - this is only the second time I've used my scribing tool (the first was on the master for the FedEx).

I still need to do the greenstuff work on the top surfaces of the engine "wings", to add their thickness and the cooling grilles. (Right now the "wings" are just brass sheet and a brass rod stiffener between the hull and the engines).

I made myself a custom tool for that task. It's a tiny little "comb", made from lengths of brass rod, sandwiched between two brass sheet chucks. The ends of all the rods were rounded off and the exposed ends are all in a straight line. My plan is to use this to carve the "cooling grilles" into the greenstuff putty before it sets up. We'll see if that works, next week.

Outside the SFU, I also got my OGRE Mark V miniature up on its tracks for the first time (I've owned it for nearly 5 years, but never assembled it until now). That one got set up with the "eyeball" tower removable, with brass pins to hold it in place with friction alone (to avoid damage in transport). I also reinforced the heck out of the joint at mid-body (brass-pins through the connecting tab, tons of epoxy glue, and a greenstuff blob over all that).

One of these days, I need to strip all my other OGRE minis (the old paintjobs are terrible) and re-do them with my spiffy current tools and paints. Oh, and decals. I could do decals for those now... Muhahahah!
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[djdood]

Whew.
I just finished cleaning up a dozen Federation F-18 fighter minis. My eyes need a break!
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[Scoutdad]

[djdood]

Essentially no flash at all. They just have the usual gate/vent tabs and sprues. If your not super-picky, 10 seconds with a hobby knife will have them ready to paint. I spent a few minutes on each to smooth out the faces a bit (they have that very tiny "step" pattern all computer-grown masters do).

Given the size, they're among the cleanest minis I've ever seen.
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[djdood]

I always think I'm going to get "down time" over the year-end holidays... silly me.

There was never the uninterrupted block of time I wanted to reserve to do the loud Dremel work I need to do on the Fed oCA master, so that is still pending. I'm hoping for this weekend, because I want that one off my workbench and into the mail.

I did have lots of little chunks of time where I could sit down and niddle on this and that. Over the course of the last couple weeks (in between feasts and family dramas) I got my copies of the Klingon F-5W all cleaned up (gifted 3 to my groups Klingon) and cleaned up my Fed, Klingon, and Hydran fighters.

I added the sanded off phasers back onto the Romulan Shrike and it's ready to go onto a stand and into primer.

I also was thinking I was done getting my Gorns ready. A last check of my BF kitbash against the ship card showed an error I made. I missed the extra wing phaser-1's (they replace the plasma-F launchers that are normally coaxially mounted with the big S-types). Looking at that got me thinking about the rest of my Gorns...

The minis all show the "classic" design and often don't necessarily reflect refits that came later (refits that were invented 20 years later in the real world, in some cases). More often than not, this is usually just a couple of phasers and can be ignored. Looking into this got me thinking about other ways my Gorn minis might be improved though.

In a lot of cases, one Gorn mini is used to represent more than one similar hull. This works for 99% of people. However, given how much I've put into them already, I couldn't see just leaving things at a "not quite there" state. The sticking point for me is the big plasma launchers. Several ships have large centerline launchers that aren't on the minis, as they aren't on one of the hulls it represents (all of them have the "wing" launchers, obviously).

Since I have unique minis for each hull, I decided to make the weapons on the mini, match the cards. I have a pair of old lead SL2200 Gorn light cruiser minis, so those will be my CL's. For the similar (and more commonly used) HDD hulls, I am adding the centerline plasma launcher. I am doing this using greenstuff putty. The putty is being built over a stump of a short brass rod (to keep it from getting knocked off).

All three HDDs have been drilled-out and had the pins placed. On one HDD, I had removed the upper 360-degree phaser "mound" so I could use that mini as a CL - with the recent acquisition of a classic lead CL mini, I could return that HDD mini to being an HDD and rebuilt that mound around a brass pin (with the end of the pin exposed as the phaser).

My Gorn medium cruisers are getting similar treatments. They all have pins in place and are awaiting the putty work. One had already had a centerline mount added early last year to represent the big plasma-R on a strike cruiser - that mount will be enlarged with more putty to better display the "oomph" factor a plasma-R should have (the ship is literally built around the launcher and supporting equipment).

Aside from my Gorns, I also made major headway in getting my Kzintis reassembled and seams filled. All my large hulls are now ready to go onto stands and into primer. Several saw major improvements since the last time they were painted - I removed a lot more mold lines, filled gaps, etc.

I still have a bunch of smaller hulls (DW's, DD's, FF's) I need to work on, as well as several old lead cruiser hulls I am resurrecting, courtesy of drone booms I acquired from a benefactor who shall remain un-named for his own protection. One of the old lead frigates will be kitbashed into a BFF in the process. I might (or might not) also do a kitbash of an DWH.

One thing I finished last night was finally getting the repairs done on my U.S.S. Republic miniature. Given how few minis I actually have done, it was kind of sad to have one unusable due to a (re)-broken engine mount. Even a steel pin couldn't keep the thing on (it just spun around the pin like a top), so now the supporting strut was very carefully drilled out to take two parallel brass pins, glued to each other, with a long "tab" that goes into the engineering hull.

Despite some drama with a bad epoxy glue mix, I think this one is reassembled for good now. I need to do some cleanup work on the glue and then I can try to touch up the paint and put her back on the game board.

If it had been any other mini, I probably would have just given up and chucked it into my spare parts box. However, this mini is the very first mini I ever bought (for any game) and thus is also my very first SFU mini. I have had it since 1985 and I'm always stoked when I get to use it, given the history it's had. There's no way I could let that old warhorse go to pasture.
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[OGOPTIMUS]

Sounds like you've been busy like me--just cleanup, nothing spectacular to mention.

I had a similarly bad situation with my last batch of epoxy too. It just got rubbery, not really fully solid even after drying for three days. I was using it on my FASA Refit Constitution and it worked for placing the nacelle pylons on the hull, and getting the neck to fit to the saucer, but they all came loose through wear and tear while I was cleaning it up and making sure everything was aligned. Finally got that fixed.

Would love to see he Republic back in all it's glory. Good luck with that.
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O.G. OPTIMUS


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[Scoutdad]

Must be an epidemic.
Last summer, I bought one of the large bottles of epoxy (since it was cheaper by the ounce that way). I used about half of it on various projects (most noticably, the Juggernaut - it takes alot of epoxy to glue 91 pieces together).
Recently, I noticed that whenever tryign to use any of what's left... it never really cures. It only gets thick and rubbery.

So I trashed it, went to HobbyTown USA and bought a pack of the smaller bottles. Maybe this will last until I use it up???
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Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF

[djdood]

I was figuring it was me not mixing in an even amount of hardener and glue, but now I'm starting to wonder. The two bottles are about two years old now. Maybe they've just aged out.

Glue's cheap. Time's valuable.

Time to replace the glue.
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[djdood]

New, permanent workspace acquired (old kitchen table moved into my office). This should improve my output dramatically, as I will no longer need to pack everything up every time we are going to have company (I was working on the kitchen table and outside on the patio table).

Next up is building a proper spray booth, so I can prime and basecoat in the 9 months were the weather does not cooperate in Seattle.

This is proving tricky, as I won't compromise my family's safety by using a fan that isn't correct for this type of thing (sparkless motor or external motor out of the fume-flow).

Lots of folks just use a bathroom fan and call it good, and I know that 99% of the time everything is just fine. However, I work in an industry that can't/won't tolerate that 1% and it's just how my brain is wired now.

I may end up buying a booth (I think I have some leads on affordable small booths with appropriate fans), or building one (I have shaky information on some somewhat affordable safe duct-fans).

Regardless, I am happy that I will now at least be able to set up my projects and leave them set up until I'm done with them.
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