Scratchbuilding Oberth

[honneamise]

Whole ship with all the parts I built so far.

[Grayson72]

So what is your technique for cutting out the little triangles in the wings? I can see one of the cut-outs and it has a bunch of little dots on it. They look very accurate and semetrical.

[honneamise]

Grayson 72 I cut these pieces out with my cutter knive. These little dots you can see are little holes. I drilled them with the intention of making my first cut along these dots and then working to the final (bigger) outlines with a very little file (made of sandpaper glued to a very thin sheet of styrene).

I did so with the first triangle but then I found out I was able to cut along the final outline and this reduced the amount of sanding I had to do. Still, I drilled holes into the other triangles as well because I found it much easier to cut against a "non-solid" portion of material. Have you ever noticed that is much easier to cut a thin strip from the edge of a styrene plate than making a cut in the middle of the plate? I´m not sure but I guess drilling little holes into a cut-out portion has a similar effect. Just found this out by accident or you could say by laziness because I actually wanted to avoid too much sanding. Sanding sucks, well at least it is not my favourite part of bulding a model!

[Morpheus]

Most impressive .

I will follow this one closely since I also planning for making a scratchbuilt model myself .

Keep up the good work.

[Myersjessee]

This is extremely cool! Thanks for sharing your work!

[Zentrandude]

waves hand like a jedi.youmust not make this a kit but just give the original to me

[Grayson72]

I drilled holes into the other triangles as well because I found it much easier to cut against a "non-solid" portion of material. it is not my favourite part of bulding a model!

Awesome, that's a great tip! Thanks

[honneamise]

Zentrandude, the selfish speech stop you must or to the dark side it will lead.

Patience you must seek and owning this model you will.

[Zentrandude]

Zentrandude, the selfish speech stop you must or to the dark side it will lead.

Patience you must seek and owning this model you will.

[Guest Bromgrev]

I drilled holes into the other triangles as well because I found it much easier to cut against a "non-solid" portion of material. it is not my favourite part of bulding a model!

Awesome, that's a great tip! Thanks

Yes, excellent idea! I've done this with 30mm steel plate when cutting out engine cranks. Dumb of me for not thinking of using it on plastic models ...

[honneamise]

I´ve started with the engines. It is so hot in here I can hardly work but still there is some progress.

First I prepared the counterpart to the styrene "rail" on the ship´s sides. This will be a slot on the final engine and should provide a perfect fit. I added some formers to provide the inner, triangular shape of the engine. More styrene pieces are glued to the other side to provide the shape for the three big intakes (front). The intakes are then covered with styrene ribbing (0.5mm) just to make them more detailed and of course to match the lineart. Then I added a backplate with a "grid" structure.

[honneamise]

I added more styrene plates - the shape is beginning to look like an Oberth engine - but at this stage it´d make a nice little warehouse for a 1/700 naval diorama . To show where it actually belongs I´ve tacked it to the ship.

[honneamise]

On these pics you can see the triangular section taking shape.

I built a spar with a cut-out inside. The spar will be the end piece of the forward section of the engine while the inside piece will be mounted to the rear end - I will build that separately because it will be easier to cast that way. On one pic you can see the corresponding "rail" parts that form the engine/ship connection.

[honneamise]

Another pic of the ship with the engine.

You may have noticed that I have built only ONE engine. Well I´ve noticed the two engines are completely symmetric so I´ll have to build only one!!

Since I´m going to cast the whole ship anyway I will make two molds of the same engine. Quite a shortcut, but on the other hand quite a hell to build since this thing must be spot on on each side or it will be noticeable that one engine is mounted upside-down! I hope to get it right though. That´s the other reason why it takes so long.

[broadshore]

That is one Hard Core Kit Bash man. What is the Scale of the ship? Looks almost 1/100?

[Grayson72]

That is one Hard Core Kit Bash man. What is the Scale of the ship? Looks almost 1/100?

Try 1/1000, it's a spaceship not a fighter.

[Viceland]

...and I would hardly call this a kit-bash , even though a few parts from other kits have been used due to their convenient shape (saving the time of having to sculpt them, which he proved by now he would have no problem doing), this is a fine example of pure scratchbuilding and sculpting talent

[broadshore]

Sorry Scratchbuild. Actually that last post I was thinking about the VF-0D. My Bad.

Anyways! Awesome Build man!

[honneamise]

Thank you guys!!! And yes, the VF-0D is AWESOME!!!! You can´t say it´s "only" a kitbash, I guess it´s way more work to figure out a working transformation than to build an entire ship from scratch. I´m soo glad my Oberth doesn´t have to transform!

[honneamise]

With the heat wave over (lasted three days, hope the summer is not over now... ) I´ve been able to do some more work on the engine.

I built a matching aft end and added the same grid structure that was already used on the front. Now I have a nice but very edgy box in front of me...

[honneamise]

Next step is detailing the inside of the "exhaust". The lineart shows a ribbed inner surface similar to the intakes but with bigger ribs. I used Evergreen styrene plates for this but rounded the edges by using a section of tube. All the outside edges of the engine will be sanded smooth in the end so I want the insides to match.

[honneamise]

Now it is time for the final plating of the outside. I added 0.5mm styrene to all surfaces except for 7mm of the main part aft end. This will be the part that is shown black in the lineart and I thought it´ll look better recessed.

The outside will have another recess as you can see in the first pic. This is where a big intake will be installed, but I will cast this as a separate part since it is not symmetrical like the rest of the engine and so I will need one for the left side snd one for the right.

After all plating is done I left it to dry overnight. Then I sanded all of the edges to get a more rounded shape. While the engines still look enormous and quite boxy their appearance is now more adequate to the rest of the design.

[honneamise]

Here is the ship with its engine attached. Too bad I have only one but I´ll soon make a mold and cast the other one. With the added engines the whole model looks MUCH bigger and massive than before, it is quite a handful now and it will take slightly more shelf space than a 1/72 VF-1. I guess the 1/1000 scale is just right for this ship. An ARMD built to scale will be a different story then, BIG chunk or resin this will be...

[Zentrandude]

(drowns in his own drool)

[honneamise]

I went on with the guns. Just glued tubes of different diameters into/onto each other.

[honneamise]

Now the ship is beginning to look a little more menacing...

[honneamise]

Side view

[Grayson72]

My god man, I think I'm gonna cry, not only because that thing looks great but your skill in building it makes me feel so inferior.

You must tell me, when cutting out styrene, how you get things so square and plumb to each other?

Also, do you really think you'll be building an ARMD in the same scale (please say yes)?

Edited May 31, 2005 by Grayson72

[cobywan]

All you need to do is get a machinist's square. That is a very usefull tool to have for about a hundered reasons. You should have one. If you don't...get one.

http://www.geocities.com/budb3/arts/toolm/sqrbvm.html

[Grayson72]

All you need to do is get a machinist's square. That is a very usefull tool to have for about a hundered reasons. You should have one. If you don't...get one.

http://www.geocities.com/budb3/arts/toolm/sqrbvm.html

Thank you Woody

[cobywan]

Woody?

[Grayson72]

Oh I thought you were quoting Toy Story where he tells everyone to get a moving buddy. Too much TV watching with the kids, everything sounds like a Disney reference to me

Anyway... the machinists square will help me with gluing the parts together square but what about getting nice straight, square edges when cutting the styrene?

Edited June 1, 2005 by Grayson72

[honneamise]

Well I have a machinist sqare but I don´t really use it that often because it is so heavy. For the most part I use those geometry triangles (hope this is the correct expression to use here) and even the plastic ones!

You are not too wrong if you say that´s pretty stupid because cutting along a plastic ruler with a knive/cutter will of course kill the thing in about a week - if you work very careful! Still, this ship here demands very small parts and these see-thru-triangles come in handy and they are quite cheap. Making parallel or angled cuts is much easier if you can see the rest of the part through the triangle, gives you better control IMO.

Grayson72, as for the "square and plump to each other" parts the magic is just to use the parts where I got it right and go on with these. I wish I could say I´d manage to get everything right at the first try but in fact it is all trial and error. You should see the amount of crappy discarded parts covering the floor and my workbench. I just didn´t take any photos of these .

The other importand thing is to have file and sanding tools to fit all needs. I often glue sanding paper to bits of styrene in the oddest shapes to get a tool for a special angle I need. The usual tools are mostly oversize or have an unsuited shape for some tasks like say cutting a 3mm triangle out of a 0.5mm styrene piece, so I make my own styrene strip with sandpaper attached and filed to a triangular cross section. That way you can avoid distorted contours or rounded edges where none should be.

And, well...the ARMD. I´d definitely love to make one, but it will be quite huge so I´m a bit afraid when I think about casting such a thing. And it will be quite expensive so I´d first have to check if there´s enough interest. After all I guess having more ships would be cool but when it comes to Macross most people will think of the mecha first. Maybe a Destroid or another VF will better suit the demand.... But first of all I have to get everything right with little ship here I think.

[cobywan]

If you want to do it I suggest selling the pattern to, or cast through Federation Models or another caster. FM has a rotocaster and it does quite nice work. I say don't worry about the casting issues. There are many options. If you build a matching ARMD model it can be cast quite affordably.

[Guest Bromgrev]

After all I guess having more ships would be cool but when it comes to Macross most people will think of the mecha first. Maybe a Destroid or another VF will better suit the demand

Ah, there's plenty of mecha out there. We need more ships!

....  But first of all I have to get everything right with little ship here I think.

So, going by the progress seen here, you'll be starting on the ARMD next week, then?