Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

[...] "hardly an bubbles, but has some flash" like flash is a bad thing???? :evil: Tain't a good thing , for one. It's like saying "she has very few stretch marks, but has a slight mustache". It's not a bad thing per se but that fuzz still has to be shaved away before you can en...

Funny thing: our fellow SCC-7107 USS Atlantis has just posted on the Blinking vs flashing LEDs thread that he did exactly this rod-and-plug thing: [...]My TOS-E, I modified the engineering hull to use a brass rod as the stand, then run a power cord up the center of that - the connection between the ...

working on my conversion of the 22" into the Constellation. Need to find a way to connect the ship to the mounting post with the ability to disconnect from the post to assist in taking to shows, etc. Connies are very off-balance, aren't they? For maximum sturdiness, I'd say add a tube running ...

Oh, I forgot to mention: go check Terms of Use/Forum Rules , particularly Images in posts . The thing is: John and Linda (our hosts) are good people who run this very nice forum out of their pocket, and inline images do tend to eat away their monthly bandwidth quota real quick, so we use like to use...

Haha! Nice use of 'found' objects. Looks good! And welcome, by the way. It's good to have more of 'us' around here.

If the disks are already cut, and you have to mark them: 1. buff them with steel wool so they can accept a good pencil line; 2. use mechanical pencils (for precision work I like 0.3mm, but 0.5mm is fine); 3. use hard lead (2H minimum. If you can find 3H or 4H, go for it) for both the mechanical penc...

One of the parts I need to make is a cylinder (9.5mm diameter, 7mm length) with a 5mm hole through it, on-axis. As I gather you have the 5mm inside diameter and the 9.5mm outside diameter tubes, right? Start with a length of the 5mm (one inch or 25mm—actually it has to be some 20mm more than the wi...

With drawing tools it is easy to divide an angle in 2, and it is equally easy to draw a line perpendicular to another (you need only a compass to do both). So, draw a diameter, draw a perpendicular to that, [you have 4 quadrants now] divide each of them in two [8 angles], then again [16]. The good t...

I keep a cheapie, drugstore-bought, blister-packaged 3g (that's like 0.1 Oz) bottle in my toolbox just for that event. You gotta remember to use the 'lil suckers before they die on you, but they're cheap(ish) and have other uses around the house, so every two or three months I get a new one.

...thank John and Linda as well as all the moderators for allowing us to be ourselves. :8) I would also thank for when you guys kinda DON'T let us be ourselves (particularly Linda). Sometimes we need a swift kick in the retronether region to play nice. Now, who has found any pretty shape to play wi...

Does it HAVE to be CA? If you use epoxy (5 min), and just a teeny amount of it per greeble, and they rest on a horizontal surface whilst the epoxy cures, capillarity will keep'em in place. BTW have you tried a different bottle of CA? Maybe the heating-in-the-radiator 'broke' it (who knows? Chemicals...

photoguy wrote:...and used a cut-off wheel in his Dremel to take off half of the eye...

Ouch!

Small diameter heat-shrink tubing—like the ones used in electronics—around the pins. They'll do the same job as the coats of paint Johnnycrash suggested, just in a one-piece, not-gonna-be-stripped-away-by-repeated-flexing-of-the-joint kinda way.

Kinda OT, but I once "developed" an illustration technique on the quick and dirty. Client wanted a series of watercolor illustrations for a print folder, but we had just too damn little time to do them. So, instead of going all the way and actually doing full color watercolors, we decided ...

And I forgot to mention: if the part has an 'inside' (like hull halves, for instance) try your cleaners on the inside, so you don't ruin the outside.

As a rule, whenever I have to try chemicals (like in your mold release release problem), I go from least to most noxious. Before I go to acetone, for example, I try ethanol, then isopropanol, then bleach, then... And instead of dunking the whole thing (if it is a big part, like a hull), I apply the ...

Madman Lighting wrote:I like cotton as a light diffuser...

Or some of those synthetic fibers with which people stuff teddy bears, pillows, annoraks etc.

And they're all done basically with (sort of) the very same goop that comes in a can. They pour a bit (well, a lot) of the chemicals in big molds and cut the 'slices' away. Technically, you might order a whole big ol' block of it, though it won't fit in a minivan.

Isn't that 60 thousandths by 30 thousandths?

Warped Speedster wrote:Interesting indeed. Good find. I wonder how ridgid the plastic is?

It's polycarbonate: sturdy, rigid, very gluable, bullet-proof

Yo, Rob. Why don'cha talk to John and make it an 'official printable scale ruler by Starship Modeler', with the SSM logo and all bells and whistles, in PDF, so folks can download it from SSM?

Are you building it in foot/inch only or in metric also?

Kylwell makes a good point there: Don't follow the techniques used to build studio models if you want the model to last. The key to building a successful studio model is speed—you use what is easier/faster to build. For a 'labor of love' type of model, do as Kylwell suggests, but I'd also chime in w...

Tube putties usually thin well with acetone (maybe the nail polish remover you used was one of the isopropanol based-ones). Just a little bit—a drop or two—in a little pea-sized gob of putty will give it a very nice consistency. Don't mix too much at a time, as it will dry up very quickly. Keep addi...

If you just dip the head in resin, maybe surface tension will make it round enough—in layers you can even use Future. Dip it and hold it upside down until the resin/future cures/dries.

Ribbed conical bottle/tube caps. Take the cap of a toothpaste tube, for instance. It is conical, and the knurls are regular. If you make an indentation on the fuselage using that shape as a pattern, and a corresponding male on the engines, and if you go with the idea of using the magnets, just pulli...

Where octagon meets octagon, yes, 45º is the ticket. Between triangles and octagons, however, the angle will be different. It will be 55.35º (trig is the modelbuilder's best friend)

[Q] From Ken Rodman: “Could you please help me with the origin of the phrase: 'start from scratch'?” [A] To start from scratch is to begin from the beginning, to set out on some action or process without any prior preparation, knowledge or advantage. Scratch has been known since the middle of the e...

...The best I can imagine is that after making a rubber mold, I will have to remove the "plug" in the center first, then the master. So how do I line up the "plug" when pouring the resin? For it to look half-way decent, I would have to center it with respect to the rubber on the...

Too bad it is a bit expensive to buy for shapes, but still, this shower head is jes a wee bit awae from a proper starship, cap'tin.

A scriber.