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Shuttle Wars: Monogram vs Revell, Part 5


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Thanx Gil! It's a nice production ... the lighting, the fact that you're using a tripod, and your technique, it's all good! There are no distractions!

But a couple of suggestions if I may. Before you start filling and sanding the belly, you might wanna attach the landing gear doors too, the fit is atrocious! On mine I had to glue styrene sheet pieces to get the doors level with the belly. :doh:

And to save you time on the windows, rather doing a lot of sanding and re-shaping, which is what I gather you're gonna do, let me make a suggestion. It seems a lot of shuttle builders complain that the Monogram windows are the wrong shape. IMHO, what Monogram had simply done is offer the builder an excess of window area.

All you hafta do is make sure the seam between the clear part and the white styrene is nicely sanded ( having masked off the clear part ) and apply an accurate window decal later on.

Here's a photo of one of mine ... ya-a-a, I know half of its missing :whistle:

lo-rez-nosehighflash.jpg

I can see where your Youtube build will be a "go to" reference for us builders and just wanna give you a heads-up.

I'm looking forward to seeing your treatment of the Orbiter! And if you're posting elsewhere, I hope you're getting a lot of great feedback!

Thanx again

Pete

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Thanks Pete.

Yes, the gear doors are going on before the sanding begins. That is a good suggestion and one that had occurred to me already.

For the windows, what I was planning on doing is just installing them normally and filling the seam around them. Then, I was going to use a masking template made from the Revell kit windows. If you think the decal will work just fine on its own, then that is an even easier method.

Thanks very much for your tips. It always nice when someone who has actually built the kit before makes you aware of its pitfalls so you don't have to learn the hard way!

BTW, your shuttle dissection looks great! I am not trying to do anything quite so ambitious. My intent is to entertain a bit and give the average modeler some construction guidance so they can build a better shuttle. I consider myself a very good modeler, but I don't really have the time to do the kind of super detailed work that you have done there. :worship: John Vojtech takes the same approach as you do, and he has won best of show at nationals.

Best Regards, Gil

BTW, do you have a link to more pics of your shuttle?

Edited by DutyCat
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The windows are going to be a challenge, given that they are semi-recessed. One thing that you can do which improves their look immensely is to use .040 wide styrene strip along the edges (after the clear windows are in) and blend them in with the rest of the body. Once you've got the strips on and the clear window edges cleaned up, you'll likely have to polish them back to luster and do spot applications of Future to them to make them crystal clear again, but once that is done, you can apply Tamiya tape over the top and leave them to keep the dust and grit out. The top windows have to be sanded flush and polished once the seam cleanup is done. Don't worry about adding the payload bay windows since you won't see them. Plus, if you give your model a bath after seam work is complete to wash all the dust out, the lack of back windows will allow the cockpit area to drain more easily.

If it is done right, the masks could theoretically be left on all through paint, but I've found it best to pull the first masks off when the main body seam work is done so I can do one final check to see if any windows have to be fixed before the paint and primer stage. THEN put on some paint masks (and you can cut the corners slightly rounded so that the paint and primer will build up in those spots to round them. When the window decal frames go down, they will look fine in the end.

Before window frames:

117wip-6.jpg

After window frames:

117wip-7.jpg

After paint and decals:

117comp-2a.jpg

BTW, in my experience the tail doesn't really need to be added that soon. On both my stacks, I left it off until after paint as it makes masking and painting the tail so much easier (not to mention seam cleanup around the OMS pods on top since it isn't in the way). Plus, transport and storage of the models is easier by leaving the tail off. So I just tacked mine on with some white glue to keep it from shifting and it worked fine (on the Moonraker tail, I applied a bead of CA glue to the alignment tab and sprayed some accelerator on it to get it to dry WITHOUT putting the tail on so it would friction up the tail a bit better). Things are pretty shaded in that region and on a NASA shuttle, the bottom edge of the tail is partially covered in black, so a split between the tail and the back of the fuselage is not easy to see anyway with the OMS pods blocking its view from the sides (and the IPMS judges didn't dock me on that at Nationals when my Moonraker took a third place).

Good video documentation overall BTW.

Edited by Jay Chladek
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Gil, here's the link to my Cutaway build, from start to finish, here on ARC.

http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=198071&st=200

Click on Page 11 and scroll about 3/4 down and you'll see the series of the end product.

I've got 3 or 4 more to do, in 1/72, one with my scratchbuilt Hubble. ( I don't know what I'm waiting for and your vid is an excellent source of inspiration.)

Plus the things I've learned from the other builders here on ARC, should take these future models to a little level higher.

It SHOULD anyway! :rolleyes: ;)

And regarding the cockpit windows, IIRC, Jay is right. There is quite a step between the clear part and shuttle's fuselage. I corrected it with an entire frame cut out from styrene ... ( Page 8, about 1/4 way down the page will show you the extra pieces ) ... but I wanted to create the difference in thicknesses from the clear window to the frame. You can even see the red sealant inside the window glass panes on some finished pix. Plus, I had the cockpit glass and a third layer of 'glass' inside the cockpit ( cockpit glass exterior, interior and crew module ) . I installed a helluva lot of details that I didn't describe in the thread ... just for my own satisfaction.

But, if one doesn't mind sanding off the step between clear part and fuselage, the window decal should work nicely!

Thanx

Pete

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