Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Theatrical props and sets, prototypes, R/C model airplanes...

Glue it together with liquid nails, fill with spackling compound, sand it, cut it, hot wire it,seal it with acrylic sealer, Foam is great stuff!

Black & Decker sells various grades of sand paper with the hook and loop fasteners for their "Mouse" sander. Not sure, but I would suspect those are available on your side of the pond.

A soldure yourself kit in between $15 to $25 I call that reasonable. And I put to a challege... to any E engineer reading here...(for which I am not) Come up with a schematic useing regular hobbiest off the shelf PCB parts and chips. (make a list, ie DigiKey) And a circuit etch trace would be a plu...

That's the direction I was thinking. Though I've never tried Programming myself.

Well, sorta. It will be FLAT.

I usually wait until the last step to apply my "lighting" paint on Trek ships. I want that to be glossy and shiny, like light shining through glass windows etc.

My idea depends on how detailed the cockpit is. As long as you don't have something like dozens of photo-etch switches and knobs, it should be OK. Just loosely crumple some paper towel and pack the interior cavity with it. It will expand a little once it is inside the framework, and should sufficien...

Right. That's why the VFX one is so cool. I was referring to the "lighthouse" kit when I mentioned the sin wave. Sorry for any confusion.

The problem with that one is that it ramps up to full intensity, and then fades out gradually. I believe it uses a simple sin wave generator. For the photon torpedo to look convincing, it has to "ramp up" to full intensity, and cut off abruptly. From what I saw on VoodooFX's website, that ...

What are you thinnning it with? Acrylic does not mean Water Color! For some reason it took me a long time to learn that lesson. Tamiya gets thinned with denatured alcohol; Createx has their Illustration Base; Liquitex sells an airbrush medium that works quite well with their acrylic INKS line. Buy g...

Christmas will soon be here. The day after, all of those great LED Christmas lights go on clearance. I got 50 light sets last year for five bucks each. I still have a few leftovers in my bin.

I spray it right out of the can. And yes, you want to build up several thin coats. I usually just use the cheap dollar primer from Wal-Mart. One trick I learned, was to soak the can in a pan of hot water(not boiling) for about five to ten minutes before I spray. This helps produce a little finer mis...

I swear by the Tamiya weathering kits. I messed around with powdered chalk, chalk pastels, and even oil pastels. Never got the results I wanted, and usually lost part of the effect applying a protective clear coat. Then I discovered the Tamiya sets.... They go on super smooth, blend really well, and...

Well, there are a couple of Vector based graphic programs out there. Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are the two most popular (that I'm aware of). There is a thread elswhere on here that has sorta turned into a debate between the pros and cons of both http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.p...

I usually try to keep the clear parts completely away from the model until the last possible minute. Keep my fingers off of it, keep the paint off of it, keep the glue off it! It's one of the big reasons I haven't messed with my 1/350 Enterprise yet. I am not looking forward to all of the little bit...

Your technique looks pretty good on the little figure. Probably very similar to what you would do with the larger scale. I normally hand brush the hair on my figures. Usually, I pick a couple of base darker colors, and dip a fan brush into both of them. Then build up the paint in layers, one stroke ...

My addition to this would be as follows: If it's not going right, if you're just not "feeling" it; set it aside and come back to it another day. I've tried to force the paint to do what I wanted it to do, after a stressful day, or when I have other pressures on my mind; and that always end...

Check out Derwent INKTENSE colored pencils at your local art store. Works just like their water-colour pencils, BUT, once they dry they are very durable. I've used several of the browns, blacks, and grays, for everything from panel lines, to rust and oil smears. Even after casual handling, the color...

One of our IPMS chapter members posted an interesting article on our web-site. http://www.ipmstristate.org/tipsanddisasters.htm

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but I hope it helps.

I bought one of the six dollar variety airbrushes when I was in Jr. High. Darn thing got me so upset that I didn't touch an airbrush again until College. That's when I actually signed up for an airbrushing class and bought my Vega. Now, I almost exclusively use my Aztec. I still have the six dollar ...

I've seen some really nice results from Alclad, however, personally, I've never gotten the shine I wanted. I'd try the bare metal foil. One of the guys at my local art supply store just showed me a sample board he was airbrushing with a new paint from Createx. I think he called "Auto-air" ...

Mostly, I've been using the Squadron white putty for general seam filling. It does dry fairly quickly; and when dry, it sands at almost exactly the same rate at styrene. On detail-rich pieces, and areas that I need to fill a seam, but am worried about losing fine detail in that area; I've used regul...

Welcome to the boards! Couldn't have picked a better subject to learn about weathering! The Falcon was a "Piece of Junk" in the Star Wars "used" universe. Everything in Star Wars looks like it has been around for a long time. The machines are dirty, greasy, rusty, dented, blasted...

So after finishing up my Space Shuttle for our local planetarium, I looked though my "to do" pile and ran across a totally Non-SciFi Revell model of a Skipjack class nuclear submarine. Figured it would be a quick and easy break before I jumped into the big ISS kit. After I finished airbrus...

Yep, B&H will have it. I LOVE B&H! I make it a point to stop in there every time I go into New York. Look around in the video camera section. For some reason, they seem to have a larger size selection there. The only ones I find in the still photo area are the little pocket sized cloths, not...

I only ever saw it in blue on screen. I always thought that the gold/amber color on the Refit was how it looked when powered down. That would have been light reflecting off of the dish. When it's powered up, it glows with it's own internal power.

I could be wrong though.