Vidar_710

Little news. Haven't worked on Excelsior since before the holidays. The Hobby Room is getting a good cleaning and re-organized before I can build anything. I found a great vacuum form table with a heat box included large enough to make parts for all sections of the ship. It should be here sometime in March. Before I can vacuum form the hull sections, all the masters need to be fitted with 1/4" - 1/2" bucks to lift the masters off the table for a clean pull. Tracy

I was planning the same thing for this part, except I plan on using my corrections to vacuum form a new part using the corrected cockpit dome as a buck. Tracy

email sent Tracy

just saw this. anyone contacted you yet? Tracy

I'm doing this in 1/100. gathering parts between the Tamiya shuttle and Anmark/Doyusha 747. Good luck with yours! Should be an impressive display. Tracy

No, sorry. The only one I could find. There is a incredible build of this kit going on, on Face Book by Bill Kraus. My build was strictly a OOB build for the company that makes it. Bill has hollowed out all the resin parts and fully lit it. His pearlescent paint scheme is awesome. Tracy

Dunch, There is an awesome new alternative to Crystal Clear, or Dental Acrylic. It's called Solarez. Cystal clear resin that can be sanded, buffed and polished. I use it on large Star Ship models. Technique. 1. Use clear tape to mask over the window ports on the outside surface of the fuselage - Clear tape reason is coming. 2. Apply Solarez to each window from inner surface of the fuselage. You have all the time in the world to allow it to self level, and ensure no air bubbles are stuck in the window port. 3. Hit the Solarez with a UV Flash light for se

That Windscreen part? I plan to re-enforce it up in clay, mold it, cast it in resin, make refinements in the resin casting, then vacuum form a new clear part.

Just heard about these guys last week visiting my local hobby shop. Couldn't believe my eyes, an Aurora 1/96 727 pre-pop! Had to grab it! 40+ years and $100 separates these two kits from the same molds. One stays on the collection pile, the other will be a TWA build! 3rd grade in 1972 is the last time I built this kit. Tracy

Here's some pics with a nice size comparison... This is an easy fix... 1/144 DC-8-71 Can't wait to start on it. Looking forward to upgrading the clear cockpit class. The front office ain't bad. Tracy

My DC-8 with Pan Am markings showed up the day after Christmas. It's rough, but with some model building skills and effort, will make a real nice model in 1/72 scale. I,ll treat it as a vacuum form kit when it comes to construction techniques. I plan to recast the cockpit clear part, mold it in resin to refine it as a master, then vacuum for a new cleared part. The plastic seems soft. Kind of like Heller's plastic, so a long bead of Apoxie Sculpt will run down the upper wing half to act as a spar. I may even add a steal rod. I hope a metal gear set will be ma

Back in the late 90's - early 2k's I did a lot of master works, and box art builds for various companies and vendors... The Belknap conversion build for Federation Models The Saratoga Conversion build The Lantree variant The Grissom Heavily modified old AMT Enterprise kit converted into the Copernicus from Star Trek: Phase II's Blood n Fire episode A couple of the WIP pics... CGI model from the ep. Reshaped saucer and scratch add-ons

Got 2... They'll look great on an S-3! Tracy

They did a change a few weeks back. Those link options no longer pop up. Found a work around though. In Photobucket, click on your image until you get it to full size, then right click on it and select 'Copy Image', then paste it where you want it into your context. I have a Starship Excelsior scratch build thread in the sci-fi section if you want to see how it turns out. Images posted with this technique are only on the last page. Tracy

Next up, giving these nacelle strut parts the drastic face lift they truly need... There is so much to re-shaped, and detail to be scratch built to get these right. Once I fix them, the new masters will be molded, then new casting will be made with brass tubing to route electric wiring. Steal rods will also to added within the new castings to provide strength and prevent sagging for years to come. Tracy

Mine showed up today! Nice having it in the same scale as the Saturn V at 1/96. Would like to see them re-release the 1/70 scale. I have one still in the box dated from 1968. 🙂 Tracy

ordered mine! 🙂 Tracy

Digging these out of the hanger, I discovered my AA 75 took a ding on the paneling to the left wing... You can see how Gil and I approached the engine assembly a little differently. Not looking forward to filling and sanding his nice finish to blend the pods to the mounts.

Cockpit and umbilical panels in 1/100 please? ...as I bat my eyes. Nice work. Tracy

Getting back to these two VERY soon. Looking forward to finally getting them done. Tracy

The remastering of the top half of the primary hull is finally finished. Here, the layers and layers of screeded filler are shown after sanding to a smooth finish. First coat of primer to check for flaws. After several applications of sanding and primer layers, it's done. Here the screed blade is placed to show the new dome profile, and the edge ring now has its downward taper. Now on to another part of the ship. Perhaps the nacelle struts. Tracy

After a few layers of the courser filler, it get a sanding to smooth it out. Checking the domes contour against the screed blade to verify my progress. A creamier self leveling layer of filler is applied. Then sanded smooth... Red glazing filler is applied to fill scratches and shallow dips in the dome's surface. A stacking jig is installed to ensure everything falls into place correctly. Resin is poured into the base of the saucer to help hold it shape, and give it strength for the vacu

Some progress on fixing the upper saucer's profile. A ring cut from 1mm thick sheet styrene. The ring is cemented to a .5mm base of sheet styrene, then the downward taper is ground in by hand with a Dremel The ring is filled to smooth out its contour. ... then sanded to shape. To correct to bad shape of the dome, as screed blade was made from scaled images of the original ILM Excelsior plans. You can see there's quite a bit of work to do. The first layer is always the roughest. Se

images fixed... see above. Tracy

There was an issue with the profile of the top saucer master. One problem led to another, so I'm going to fix it. The dome is too big, and it also has some issues with dips and valleys in its surface. To fix it, I need to remove it. The diameter is too big, so the required material to be removed is scribed in. After the excess material is removed, the dome was cemented onto a 1mm thick piece of sheet styrene to bring it back to its profile height. A hole was cut into the new base so resin can be poured in to st