Please excuse the mess

So I'm taking a little bit of a break from my projects for a little bit. I'm doing this for a couple reasons. Firstly, my work space has become largely unmanageable so in order to work on much of anything larger then a single space marine

So I really need to clean up my work space and get stuff put away and organized. I spent all this time building the space and I can't really make use of it right now. So I need to deal with that. Also I'm starting a new job so that's going to eat up some of my time. That combined with the fore mentioned need to clean is going to chew into any sort of extra time I have for the next couple weeks.

Also I'm going to be working on re-designing this blog some over the next couple weeks, so please excuse the mess.

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Project Thunderhawk update 7/19

You know what I dislike the most about working on one of Pataroch's templates? The level of details on it! I'm not saying he's done a bad job with details in his templates, or that the detail is a problem. No, something quit different. The sheer amount of detail he puts in his templates is staggering compared to most other scratch build templates out there. As an example, look at the diagram showing the construction of the pilot deck:

Breakdown for assembling the pilot deck of the scratch built Thunderhawk

 That lists 40 separate components to build that deck. So whats the big deal right? Well, here's the thing. Most of those components are in turn made of several pieces. Like the center console between the pilot seats. One component. That is made out of 6 pieces. The pilot seats? 12 pieces each. The computer console behind the pilot seats? 16 pieces.

So yeah, you have times where you can work on these for several hours and get everything assembled.... on only have like 3 small sections built. It's a bit disheartening at times. That being said I have been working on the project today and gotten some work completed on it.

I finished building the canopy cover. Now I'm sure you're saying "Wait, what? I thought you built that a while ago." Well, yes sort of. See if you look closely at this new image you can see that I'm put in the clear plastic planes for the canopy. It's a solid part so I count that as building. I had to wait until I got the primer on the piece and decided to go one step further and put down the base coat for the piece. The Thunderhawk is going to join my Blood Raven army so it got the maroon color needed for that.

Got the pilot station glued in and am now working on painting the pilot deck.

Here is the ceiling of the Embarkation deck. Here is where that level of detail comment came from earlier. Everyone of those boxes are made using at least 3 pieces of styrene each. And then there's the piping between many of the boxes. Oh and I had to pass the wires for the LEDs though the pipes too. Yeah.... lot of work. Not a lot to really show for the effort.

I've been working on other stuff besides just the pilots and  ceiling of the embarkation deck for this bird though.

inside left wall of the scratch built Thunderhhawk

 

 

 

This is the inside left wall of the Thunderhawk's embarkation deck. There's not a lot to say about it that you can't see from the pictures themselves so I'll just let the picture speak for itself, you know being worth 1000 words and all that. The ribbed cables I'm using are from Dragon Forge Designs.

I've also started working on the engines. Well one part of one engine. See the model uses a series of 6 half-tube sections around the engines. One of the top of the wings, one on the bottom and then 2 along the bottom of the main hull. Here is my current state of progress on this point:

Yeah... lots of small parts and sections. The capping on each end is a section of "House siding" paneling from Ever Green plastics wrapped around the end of the half tube and glued in place. I needed to use clamps to hold the piece down long enough for the glue to set because my hand would start to cramp after a couple minutes while still failing to hold the piece in place properly. Once that was glued down I went back with smaller strips of 1mm thick styrene and then glued those down along the edge of the siding piece. It gives a rather nice mechanical look to carry the idea that this is a working machine I think.

The piping isn't even half done yet and it still a lot of experimenting as I go so I've had to start over several times. The center pipe running along the back of the tube was accomplished by cutting strips of .01mm thick styrene, gluing down one edge of it to the pipe and then rolling it around the pipe and gluing it down once I had reached the desired thickness.


Remember when I posted this a couple days ago?

Well I got some work done on the thruster nozzle that attaches to this part, buuuuuut I'm not all that thrilled with the end result so far:

It's just... so plain, There's nothing there. So working on that. The catch is I'm trying to accomplish fixing this with out ordering anything right now. See Plastruct is crap at filling orders. Last time I ordered it took me 5 weeks to get my order and when I got it in there was mold on it. They also require a $50 minimum for private orders, but they only supply 1/19th of their entire catalog to distributors like Hobby Town. So... yeah. I have one maybe worked out:

Basically there is a raised edge along the outer perimeter of the panel. It adds some to the piece, I'm just not totally sure it works well enough. Any thoughts from anyone else?

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So I made something

Got a new piece built for the Thunderhawk:

Got a guess what this is? Well I'll save you the trouble:

It's this:

Yup. That is one section of one engine on this bird.

Now want to know the really twisted part?

Well, yes there's the point that I have to build 2 more of these things. But beyond that point. This one part is built out of 88 separate pieces of styrene. Yup. 88 pieces.

 So now I have to make 2 more of 'em. That'll mean I have to cut out 176 pieces and assemble them. I'm sort of tempted... in a weird I want to torture myself sort of way, to actually count up the number of pieces of styrene it ultimately takes me to build this monster. And then I'll have to at least double that because I want to build a 2nd one that I can convert to go with My Chaos Forces.

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Project Thunderhawk

So got some more work done today. You know one of the things I dislike about scratch building projects like this is that I can work on the project for multiple hours and only get a small section complete. Not exactly a complaint just a point of annoyance with the project. As a point of comparison, in 8 hours I can build a complete Land Raider kit, fill in all the seems, clean it up, and probably get started on painting it, and by get started I mean getting base colors down and started on highlights.  I've been working on the Thunderhawk for a bit over 8 hours today. And the most notable piece I finished is the canopy.

The Canopy is actually made out of 3 layers of styrene affixed to one another both for strength and for the bonding plane to... well actually exist. The first layer is .02mm thick styrene. Then there's a layer of .05 mm styrene on top of that is just slightly larger then the  .02 layer, This larger layer is principally what is actually holding everything together. And then ontop of that there's a layer of .01mm  sheet styrene on top of that that is cut to create the panels you see. And then of course there's the 62 rivet details on the canopy. The rest is pretty straight forward and speaks for itself.

I was also able to add some more material to the cockpit of the craft to help fill in space a bit more and got the torsos of the pilots built. Gonna get 'em primed tomorrow I think. I used the weapon firing arms from the Space Marine vehicle accessory sprue as the pilot arms. I decided to get a little adventurous with the left side pilot and made one arm with a pointing finger like he had taken one of his hands off the yoke to push a button on the control panel.

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Continuing with Project Thunderhawk

Okay so got some more work done on the Thunderhawk today. Annoyingly for at least the next week or so any progress I do make on the Thunderhawk will be extremly small and mainly limited to small details or perhaps painting a small part and there is a reason for this. I have to wait for several orders of materials and parts to arrive before I can continue working on the large stuff. I don't have enough styrene of the proper thickness to build the body for instance. I decided to use some bitz to make building the consoles on the control deck a bit more reasonable and keep them fighting with the other Space marine Models so I need to wait for those parts to come in. I've decided to use rectangular LEDs for some console displays, rectangular LEDs I had to order so I have to wait for those to come in before I can do much more like wiring in the circuits for them them to be used.

But I have been working on the Thunderhawk!

 Here you can see the underside of the control deck. I'm sure you're wondering what those two holes are toward the front of the panel. Well Those will be fore red LEDs that I'm going to install in it. Something to give you an idea:

I'm gonna try and wire those red LEDs into a blinker circuit that that it'll be like when they open the bay door, there's a red flashing light. Might build a Captain getting ready to jump out of the Thunderhawk, along with an  arrogant little twerp of a 'veteran' marine complaining that such acts are not in keeping with the codex. And then he promptly get's smacked by the Captain with the codex as he tells him that as soon as you start limiting your battles to a pre-written book you may as well surrender.
The green lines are pigment powder I used to mark out the boxes and sections I marked. See the template I'm using builds in a tremendous amount of detail and I'm going to try and use that detail to my advantage with regards to the electronics. See the lights will be... well the lights on the Embarkation deck and control deck will be in the front of the model, while the power supply will be in the back end. So I need to run wire up the body and into those respective sections. Well I'm going to try and hide those wires in plain sight by positioning them to be the cables and conduit that run over head on the embarkation deck and under the control deck.

here is an example of one of the extra bits of detail the template makes:

That's not all the details that go on that panel, but it gives an idea of it.

Here's the top side view, along with Calgar for Scale:

 I am going to build the console stations and piloting stations but like I said I have to wait for the supplies to arrive to do that. To give you an idea of what I'm going to light up in the cockpit I made this using the template:

The Green glow from the panels is what I'm intending to light up. Actually I've already made one part for the process:

So... yeah. Little tiny updates for the next week or so I guess while I wait for materials and parts to come in.

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