Topic: Clonehead's custom vehicle project

[wraithnine]

freakin detail man is stunning !

[Clonehead]

thank you Bump and Ron, and yes, Tamer, you are always welcome, my friend. Shawn has been a bit under the weather lately and I think he needs some cheering up.

First off, I wanted to share a pic that was on the card of the Saga Death Star gunner showing our gun, more or less, in a scene that I am not sure that I remember seeing in A New Hope.
Notice that gunner up top? He is sighting in his target using some sort of optical device mounted to the top of the gun that isnt included in our factory gun, at least not looking that way.
I just thought it was interesting.


OK, I had forgot to mention that the turned aluminum fittings that I used on our piping assembly were Detail Master items. Now for another car model aftermarket detail from a company called Model Car Garage. This is a set of their Photo etched nickel Automotive Gauges for 1-24th and 1-25th scale car models that feature photo etched nickel gauge housings and bezels, the faces of which are black printed on clear plastic. What you are supposed to do here is paint a background color on the backside of the gauge face that will show through behind the graphics, cut the gauge face out and glue it to the backside of the gauge housing using white glue. The front plastic face of the gauge face kind of makes it look like the gauge is behind glass. Tedious small stuff, let me tell you. I lost one gauge face while cutting and when things are this small, if you drop it, more than likely, it's gone. The gauge housing and bezels are to be cut from the sprue with either a sharp hobby knife or a pair of micro scissors.



Here is the gauge housing that I chose pre painted "remind me to stop doing that" and a set of three gauge faces painted from behind. See how I painted the red needle first and then painted the white background? Perhaps not as we are getting pretty small for the camera here. I was experimenting with my real camera the other day and it didn't seem to be focusing any tighter than the phone does even with the macro setting. perhaps if I dialed the resolution up it would help.


Here are the gauge faces ready to be trimmed and glued into place. It would have been nice had the faces been spaced on the sheet to just cut a strip of 3 and go but no, the spacing wasn't right so I have to do these one at a time. The housing face has an etched line in the bottom that allows for a right angle bend for mounting of the assembly.



Here they are glued into place. That took forever and I lost one of the faces so I used one from a different sheet and put it in the middle.


Here is the gauge assembly mounted on top of the forward plumbing block. Now we are looking both retro and industrial at the same time.




My original thought was to use strips of the etched nickle sprue to make straps out of for where the brackets meet the top cooling line but they were so springy while bending that I lost the first one several times and decided to use the styrene strips instead.



Here is a shot of the strips glued down and around to make our straps.


And finally, here are the straps painted up. I ended up scraping the paint off of the Gauge face assembly and going for the bare brushed alluminum look which negated the need for the bezels as you would see them better on a painted background so, I didn't use em.


Man, that also took longer than I thought. I have a couple of other fires to start or put out today. I had better get to it.

what do you think, Shawn, is this too conservative or, do I need to tone it down a bit?

Thanks, Jay! I had to quote this to bring it to the next page as I was proud of how it was looking.

[Tamer]

Clint, talk about detail focused. This is gonna turn out daggone awesome!

[Luke Sprywalker]

Dang Clint, all these small details are just amazing! Thanks for sharing the info on all these small parts you have compiled over the years of modeling. This is one fantastic build buddy!

[lastgunslinger1999]

Oh man, I must agree with a previous comment. Very brave. Just the thought of cutting up my AT made my stomach drop.
Take it to those pesky rebel scum.

[Clonehead]

Oh man, I must agree with a previous comment. Very brave. Just the thought of cutting up my AT made my stomach drop.
Take it to those pesky rebel scum.

LOL, will do, Todd, and , Welcome aboard!

thanks guys.

[StenHunter]

A W E S O M E

[Tamer]

Forgot to put this on the front page. Problem rectified!

[Mungo Baobab]

You have some excellent attention to detail. This is a great project.

[Clonehead]

thank you, sirs! time to hop back onto my figure project for a day or two.

[Spookymufu]

the detailing is sick!

cant wait to see it all together

[krztfr]

Any chance for an update on the walker?

[Clonehead]

been swamped with parts orders till today when I worked on custom figures. Going on vacation starting friday but perhaps I can do some more work on the gun tomorrow.

[Clonehead]

Or the next day. After getting the request for an update on this project, it occurred to me that as I have mentioned before, to me, nothing beats teasing the Tamer with a good custom project that he is to one day possess. What better way to tease the Tamer than getting some work done on this project and then leaving to go on vacation to return to my job when I get back which might or might not take all of my time and energy away from fun stuff like this.

In the first shot, I just wanted to show Shawn that I had painted the inside of the drilled out barrels.



Now as you may recall, I still lacked some kind of detail on that one side of the gun I had been working on and needed to cover the one drilled out screw hole at the same time.
Before even digging around for some bit of fodder that would fit the task, it occurred to me that I had a mold for a couple of pieces that may fit the bill.

Now it was LE, i believe, that had supplied the masters for this mold and while my original want was some kind of console for that side, the one here proved too bulky and I may save it for a control station somewhere in the gun bay of the walker itself, like mounted on a wall somewhere. I settled on this cooling fan panel and had to carve on it and the receiving area so that it would fit to look right.  Doc, these two pieces would work well in your diorama accessory catalog and while I dont know where they came from, toy-wise, LE might. I have had a mold for them for years but never tried to sell em as I am focused on figures and their accessories.





Now these shots are of the addition with some paint. In these shots, the paint is still wet and the finish will look different when it dries and gets a coat of matt varnish applied. I was just out of time today and needed to take some pics of what I had completed for a good ole pre-vacation Tamer teasing.
  Is this ok, Shawn? You aren't mad that I am taking my time with this one, are you? How many years have i been working on it? I don't want to make you mad.

[krztfr]

Man that thing is a work of art