Chronic's Research and Aeronautics Project (C.R.A.P.)

[zenrat]

I have some chinese made Matchbox knockoff kits with dry rub transfers and AMT used some in a few of their car kits.  They are a PitA to put onto a hard, painted surface as they don't stick too well.  They are also a pig to line up as you have to hold them in place and rub then down at the same time.

[TheChronicOne]

Now that you mention it.. yeah... the alignment problem..  What a nightmare.

This dude that ordered the kit (I think he said he did...)...    I'll have to ask when he gets it what they are like. I wouldn't want to shell out 80 dollars to turn around and have to search out transfers for 7 kits.

This said, I have a 1/1000 Enterprise Refit kit that came with full Aztec decals. Four or five large, full sheets chock full of decals. I'm going to post a pic of all this pretty soon. The decals look amazing to me.. All the aztecing and everything else one would ever need for that ship.   

[Rick Lowe]

I've used some (20+ years) old Letraset on my Shinden; they went on ok, but I put a coat of Klear down first.

One hand to hold the model firmly in the right position, the 2nd to hold the cut-out letter/number in place and the 3rd to use the pencil to rub it down. 
It helps to be a Modeller near Chernobyl...

I must admit to the somewhat heretical view that I HATE AZTECING on my Star Fleet Starships... I'm convinced it's akin to the Space:1999 Hawks having orange bits so the Poor, Dumb Li'l Viewer could tell the things apart.
Sometimes a saucer IS a smooth, bland shape - I don't need Fiddly Bits (patterning or greeblies) on a blank expanse, thank you SO much...

That said, I will probably mist a random pattern of a different Grey over the base coat, though.

Sorry, Rant Mode Off now...

[TheChronicOne]

I've used some (20+ years) old Letraset on my Shinden; they went on ok, but I put a coat of Klear down first.

One hand to hold the model firmly in the right position, the 2nd to hold the cut-out letter/number in place and the 3rd to use the pencil to rub it down. 
It helps to be a Modeller near Chernobyl...

I must admit to the somewhat heretical view that I HATE AZTECING on my Star Fleet Starships... I'm convinced it's akin to the Space:1999 Hawks having orange bits so the Poor, Dumb Li'l Viewer could tell the things apart.
Sometimes a saucer IS a smooth, bland shape - I don't need Fiddly Bits (patterning or greeblies) on a blank expanse, thank you SO much...

That said, I will probably mist a random pattern of a different Grey over the base coat, though.

Sorry, Rant Mode Off now...

One hand to hold the model firmly in the right position, the 2nd to hold the cut-out letter/number in place and the 3rd to use the pencil to rub it down. 
It helps to be a Modeller near Chernobyl...




I must admit to the somewhat heretical view that I HATE AZTECING on my Star Fleet Starships...

Nothing wrong with that! I'm a "take it or leave it" type with pretty much everything in life. This particular stuff ...well, it just depends. In the Trek movies (based on TOS) they have these glorious beautiful spacecraft and in some close shots you can see the beautiful squarish variation stuff. That said, I don't knock anyone for loving the clean look. 

[zenrat]

I had no idea what aztecing was.  Thank you google.

It strikes me that it is the starship modelling equivalent of preshading - i.e. it is contentious but expected for contests.

[Rick Lowe]

Y'know, that's not a bad simile.

[PR19_Kit]

It strikes me that it is the starship modelling equivalent of preshading - i.e. it is contentious but expected for contests.

Which just goes to show how out of touch with reality, either virtual or real, the contest judges are. 

[TheChronicOne]

 


Check this out... these first two are ones done using decals. The next is someone's insane level of patience and masking and painting it all. No after pics of this one but I'll try to get some and update.  I've seen pictures of ones 2 or 3 times more intricate. I'd throw myself out a flippin' window before I commited to amount of masking!!   


By Cam Morley


By Cam Morely


By Butch Bryan

Pre shading? I've seen some with it AND this aztecing! 

The aztecing has merit in that it was on a lot of the ships but it was never all too pronounced. MUCH more subtle:



I'm going to put mine on a WHITE ship so they're REALLY going to stand out. I may as well plan to get another to do without 'em though.   

[Rick Lowe]

The Starship Modeller Store has Aztec Masks, IIRC they're pie-shaped sections of 'positive' and 'negative' masking to get the effect.

The transfers would be much easier to my mind, but still not the way I want to go.

[NARSES2]

The top one of your two pics is absolutely amazing  There is no way I would have the patience but boy do I admire someone who does 

[TheChronicOne]

Yeah I might wind up throwing mine out the window! (nahhhh but I hope I find a good system for applying them that doesn't drive me nuts)   They're  bunch of wedge shapes, pretty large.  I can't wait to try it, though! 

I've been watching all these builds on the Star Trek Modelers group on Facebook. LOTS of cool stuff and I'd say less than 10% of it is made how it's supposed to be..   It's pretty much ALL whif stuff...  Even saw a Voyager build the other day with similar colors to my nutty Vampire Vampire....talking black and purple.  Just yesterday the Ship of the Year was awarded to a neat Miranda class kitbash (Like Reliant in  Wrath of Khan) that had the nacelles attach to the bottom of the secondary hull and also had a third attached to the saucer section. It was like smashing a Dreadnaught into a Miranda.  Lots of and lots of alternate paint colors and all kinds of neat stuff.  In fact, I feel like the weirdo for trying to build these three little ones accurately. 

[TheChronicOne]

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I'm a little bit excited today because the weather is cooperating somewhat and I ought to be able to paint outside! I need to do painting on all three projects. I have to finish masking the Spyplane (another 10 minutes I'd imagine.. only reason I stopped was because the light situation deteriorated and I was having a few beers that evening and decided to shelve it)..

Romulan gets silver paint. F-84 needs to be masked then also silver paint. I had to make an alteration to the paint scheme because the border to the roundel would have been a bit large and would have looked quite goofy on this plane... so.....the rear half will be white. I hope it turns out OK. I'm thinking now I might like to have some sort of stripe of paint where the white meets the silver but we'll see..

[TheChronicOne]

[TheChronicOne]

So much for all that!!  The only thing that went off without a hitch was the Romulan ship. My F-84 crazed where I sprayed black over a bit of white so I'll need to let it dry then sand and try again. Same thing on the Spyplane but much less severe.. just a tiny bit where I had to putty a wing root. That will be a quick fix and the rest of the dark green color went down great!!  Only problem with all this is waiting on things to dry. Nothing I can do about that. The Romulan, while not needing any more work, can't be touch for 4 or more days because this silver paint takes ten million years to dry.

SO, I guess I can go ahead and put the drop tanks together for the F-84 and I can spray the gear door when I figure out which ones are which as some will be metal color and some will be white.  All around I think I can probably do about an hours worth of work before I'm in a holding pattern for paint dry time.

I guess I can start on the other two little Star Trek ships?  Yeah, that sounds about right...

Beyond that I have a really old Airfix B-17 that I want to make a whif out of it...   We're going to pretend WWII never happened. Yellow wings, blue fuselage. This thing came with NO clear parts so we'll be doing away with all the turrets. The "flat" stuff I can use some clear plastic packaging material. The windows may be recessed instead of flush with the fuselage but I don't know what else to do.. I don't even have the main cockpit glass which unfortunately on this kit includes a great deal of the actual fuselage. I found a B-25 glass piece that I tink I can work but it's going to take some cutting, chopping, puttying, and all sorts of scratch build and bashing.

Also, the nose... I'll find like half a plastic Easter egg or something for that and make it solid.. No glass.  I'm not sure yet what this thing will "be" but something will hit along the way.  Maybe it'll be a VIP transport or something.

[TheChronicOne]

Fascinating! I did a lil math and turns out a 1/3 scale B-17 would be the same length as a P-26 Peashooter.   

Imagine a lil midget B-17 shaped fighter bomber with a bubble canopy like you said.....   two engines one per wing or a radial engine the nose.   

I think the missing bits of the fuselage are sounding a bit more menacing than they look. The B-25 bit actually wound up being the same width and the length seems to work too... I'll snag a pic when I finish lunch . . . . .



. . .. .

Hey it's not as bad as I remember! It's more of the frame work that is a part of the original glass than anything but I'll still need to cut off parts of the roof and sides near the back of the cockpit in order to get the new piece to fit. 


Transfers there are for a B model and the fin flash will have to be trimmed to fit properly. The "US ARMY" is supposed to go on the underside of the wings but I'm thinking of putting it on top instead because why not.


Width is good!


Length is good! 

It'll just take some cutting and putty but I think I can make it work. Now... for all the rest of the glass..... yeeesh..  I might have a couple small things here and there to take care of some of it but a lot will be filled in completely I think.