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Tamiya 1/100 Space Shuttle


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Houston, we have a problem! Most obvious is the extra window space at the bottom of the corner windows, and the gaps in between each of the window corners. It's looking like I'm going to have to take the masking tape off the windows and mask them up to apply putty to these small areas. What do you guys think? Is there another solution that I'm not thinking of? The decal is pretty accurate to the real orbiters so I want to change that as little as possible (although I may add a small black hairline around the outside edges of the window frames just to make them a tad bit thicker since they appear a bit thin compared to my reference photos).

Apply a real decal, as a sacrificial item. No need to remove the 'glass' area of the decal. Repair the gaps as you wish, with putty or thick paint or little pieces of styrene, sand away without worrying about the decal. It's there for precise placement.

When it's all repaired, and sanded, and painted and 'Futured', either remove the sacrificial decal with tape or Windex and apply the, slightly enlarged, decal. ( Can I assume you'll enlarge it using Illustrator software? )

And that window decal looks nice and accurate!

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Using the Tamiya kit decal as a mask for fixing the window is a great idea!

BUT... after looking at the overlay again, I'm not sure if it would work. The Tamiya window decal is no perfect fit, either. Here's a screen shot from Illustrator of the overlay, with the new decal in magenta:

Clipboard01-1.jpg

If I were to simply enlarge the decal slightly to fix the areas that are exposed around the outside, I would create too much inner window space. I'm already stretched to the max on the two inner windows. If I enlarge any more, then I run out of glass and would need to cut plastic and add windshield.

What I may do is print a decal out on regular crack-and-peel label paper and use that for a putty mask.

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Are you trying too keep the window from getting scratched?

Both the Tamiya window decal and the decal I sent you fit fine. It's better that they are a bit smaller then the clear piece. What I did on my Revell shuttle was putty around the clear window piece and sand it down with a fine grit sandpaper. The clear window piece did get all cloudy. I then polished it back to it's original shine and applied the masking tape(for painting). IMHO it's easier doing it this way and there's no evidence of the seam around the clear 'glass' piece. The polishing cloths are easy to use. You just start with the lowest number grit and work your way up to the finest grit. This was the first time I used polishing cloths and they worked as described.

Below is a link to the polishing kit I used and before and after pictures of the windows on my shuttle.

Mike.

Micro-Mesh Polishing kit

IMG_3093.jpg

IMG_3192.jpg

Edited by crowe-t
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Are you trying too keep the window from getting scratched?

Nope, trying to putty over the extra window space that the decal does not cover, without getting putty on the window area that needs to stay clear.

Nice technique on your windows. I may need some of those polishing cloths for myself.

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With the way I did mine I didn't have to worry about covering any of the seams with the window decal. Even the seams under the window frames will need to be puttied and sanded so the decals has a smooth surface to adhere to. Also you don't want to enlarge the decal too much or it will look out of scale on the finished model.

When I was first doing mine I was trying to cover and protect the clear glass and it just seemed too hard that way. Not having to worry about the clear glass and polishing it out was so much easier for me. I was able to get rid of the seam all around the window area and now that it's painted it looks like one piece.

I'm sure you'll figure it out, there are many ways to tackle this area. I'm looking forward to seeing your approach.

Mike.

Edited by crowe-t
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Using the Tamiya kit decal as a mask for fixing the window is a great idea!

BUT... after looking at the overlay again, I'm not sure if it would work. The Tamiya window decal is no perfect fit, either. Here's a screen shot from Illustrator of the overlay, with the new decal in magenta:

Clipboard01-1.jpg

Oh, I thought you had a digital file of the windows and you could just print off as many as you wanted onto decal film / paper, in that case, the window decals would've been identical.

The Tamiya decal should just be tossed.

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Ok Pete I gotchya. For some reason I thought you meant use the existing window decal from the Tamiya sheet. But yeah I suppose I could print off an extra set of the custom decal. Hmmm

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If you are looking to use the decal to create the white mask leaving the clear windows, it could be done by taking your Illustrator artwork and just leave the actual window shapes as black or whatever color you wish. Then the hard work of cutting out the "windows" from the decal sheet begins. You could then apply the white mask and then stack your window tiles decal (printed on clear) on top of it. This would allow your tile and other detail to show through. You are in for some sort of mask cutting even if you tape off the windows to paint the white. Just a thought and by the way everything is looking great.

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DAY 9: 4.5 hours (26.5 hours total)

Time for a surprise part of my shuttle build: I'm gonna light up the cockpit!

DSC03411b.jpg

I figure since I spent so much time (probably too much) making the cockpit nice with a fine set of custom decals and all, I decided to "spotlight" it a bit by adding some LED's. I've seen this done in the sci-fi forums to light up starships, and on shuttle builds to light up engines or payload bays. I'm not sure if the scale of this kit is big enough for LED lighting without being total overkill, but I'm thinking of doing a more ambitious 1/72 shuttle after this one and I definitely want to light that one up.

I've never fooled around with LEDs before, so I did some research and found a model railroad website where you can buy pre-wired, battery powered, switch operated LED's ready to go and at low cost. All I would have to do is figure out where to put the battery and where to drill a small hole for the push button switch.

DSC03413b.jpg

At first I wanted to put the battery in the nose. This seemed like a brilliant idea because I could replace the battery simply by popping off the unglued forward RCS panel (see pic above). Unfortunately, the battery is just slightly too large to fit through the opening. So, since the payload bay doors are going to be glued shut, I decided to place the battery in the aft fuselage engine compartment. I'm not quite sure how I will rig it up to where the compartment can be opened and closed without permanently gluing it shut, but if all else fails I will just buy a lithium battery and hope it lasts a long time.

DSC03452b.jpg

Next I drilled the holes for the 3mm cool white LED's into the cockpit bulkhead and glued them in.

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Let's test them out and see how they look so far:

DSC03420b.jpg

Pretty cool!

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Here is where I drilled the hole for the switch. This is next to the fuel cell purge ports where a decal will go around most of the hole to help conceal it. The hole is a bit oversized, but I don't expect it will be too noticible with the decal around it. A paper clip or toothpick will have to be used to stick inside the hole to push the button on and off.

In order to glue the switch to the inside of the payload bay, I quickly scratch-built this mounting bracket out of spare styrene pieces I had already laying around. Not the prettiest or most thoughtful thing I've ever fashioned, but it should do the trick.

DSC03415b.jpg

Here is where I ran into an unexpected little snag and had to make an adjustment to the kit parts. When dry fitting the cockpit and bulkhead to see how it would look glued inside the orbiter nose, I noticed that the flight deck was elevated too high up inside the fuselage. Here's a picture so you can see what I mean:

DSC03424b.jpg

As you can see, the dashboard fills up half of the front windows, and my astronauts have to look down in order to see out. I had to fix this somehow. I had come too far and invested too much on this lighting deal to have to settle for this. My options were to either break the flight deck off of the bulkhead and move it down a few millimeters, or trim a few millimeters off the bottom of the bulkhead so that it sits lower. The first option would have been the best option, IF i could have successfully removed the glued flight deck from the bulkhead without damaging the decals and the rest of the fragile cockpit. I didn't want to take that chance. Trimming the bottom of the bulkhead wasn't pretty (I already had to cut out part of the bulkhead to make room for the switch mount). I've now got a big ugly gap between the top of the bulkhead and the top of the fuselage, but it shouldn't be noticible once the payload bay doors are glued into place.

DSC03428b.jpg

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So now that everything's glued into place, let's see how this thing looks lit up!

DSC03431b.jpg

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The LED's are so bright, they're like headlights! In hindsight, I wish I had mounted them on the floor of the cockpit in front of the astronauts to hide the bulbs. There is also one other unexpected side effect from the LEDs - they glow through the plastic!

DSC03450b.jpg

Lookie there how it even lights up the ribs on the inside of the payload bay doors! I'm hoping a couple coats of paint will fix this. It's not so noticible in the daytime, but in a dark room it glows pretty good. Despite these little snags, I'm satisfied with how my lighting experiment turned out. Now I know what to do on my next build!

Next I made a mask for puttying the extra space around the windows.

DSC03466b.jpg

I applied the paper mask with spray adhesive, masked off the area around it with tape, and applied some small dabs of green putty to the exposed areas.

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I'm only doing the areas at the bottom of the windows. The top areas shouldn't need any, the decal should cover them. I don't want to get too busy in this area because I'm afraid the window might cave in during sanding. I'm going to have to be real careful when I get to that step.

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Nice work on the lighting! :thumbsup: It's something I've never attempted but there are quite a few builders over on Starshipmodeler.net that have done lighting. There's a sub category 'Lighting and Electronics'.

I usually see lighted models with black painted inside to block the light. If done correctly all the light will be blocked from the outside.

Mike.

Edited by crowe-t
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That's quite the surprise!

It's great to see the experimentation ... also using this model as a sort of test bed to work out future methods and solutions.

And thanx, Hotdog, 'cuz we'll all benefit from this WIP! :worship:

A good coat of primer and then the top coat, may block the light. I've never even thought of lighting up a model, so this is really great to watch!

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I usually see lighted models with black painted inside to block the light. If done correctly all the light will be blocked from the outside.

I sure wish I had ran across that technique when researching this at the starship forums. It's safe to say that I got a little excited about this part of the build, and got in a hurry.

And here I was thinking of using aluminum foil on the inside to block the light. Black paint would be easier and make more sense.

At this stage of the build, all I can do is paint the bulkhead black to shield the payload bay from excess light.

A good coat of primer and then the top coat, may block the light.

Sounds like I'll be adding a couple more coats of paint than I had planned or would like to do, but oh well. How many coats is too much?

You should try LED illumination on your next build K2Pete. That website that sells them wired up and ready to go makes it very easy to do. All you need is the idea of how and what part of the kit should get lit. I know an ace like yourself could turn out something really impressive! By the way, I stumbled upon your cutaway Columbia build the other night for the first time and I am still awe-struck by it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Time for an update. I haven't posted any pics lately since all I have done on my build is minimal sanding and putty work. I have also been toiling away with creating various custom decals, including some tile decals for the OMS pods.

I've also been planning on how to go about painting the orbiter. That's a step that's coming up very soon so I have been trying to get all the details about [what-and-where] to mask and [which-shade-of-what] to use. For this purpose, I created this chart based off of my reference photos to go by:

discovery_paint_diagram.jpg

I plan to primer the entire ship in Oxford White and build on top of that.

Some of the shades used in the diagram may be darker than in real life, this is for the sake of clarity. Since this build is to depict a younger Discovery, I won't be going as crazy as Crowe-t did with a multitude of masked areas, but I will be using his same technique. I really just want to emulate the different surfaces of the TPS, while preserving the newer look of the orbiter in contrast to the wear-and-tear you see in recent photos of the spacecraft.

This part of the build makes me very nervous (a lot can go wrong during painting) so I am trying to plan as much as possible to prevent a disaster.

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So every time I have tried to spray paint a model outdoors it has been disasterous. Elements such as wind or airborne debris such as hair or leaves always interfere with my paint job. I live in an apartment, so I don't have a garage or other suitable controlled area in which to do my spraying. So, I came up with this makeshift paint booth, which is nothing more than a cheap children's tent I found on Amazon.

paintbooth.jpg

I'm hoping this will take some of the worry out of my spray painting.

Anyone else have similar circumstances or DIY innovations for spraying?

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Nice portable "clean room" you've got there. :D

Seriously, very cool idea for a cheap spray booth.

Concerning a paint for light blocking, metallics work best since they have solid metallic particles in them as opposed to pigment and opaquing agents. So you can build up a decent light blocking coat in very few layers (usually just one is all you need). After that, just overcoat with white as normal.

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That's an interesting spray booth.

I hope you're considering wearing a respirator since you'll be spraying paint inside the apartment and the tent. Most spray cans are lacquer or enamel and you don't want to breath those in. Make sure to leave a window or two open. Even with the painting inside the tent not all of it will be contained. Just be careful.

I also live in an apartment but only spray non-toxic acrylics inside, using an airbrush. I don't have a spray booth but I paint in a spare room on a table below 2 large windows.

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Concerning a paint for light blocking, metallics work best since they have solid metallic particles in them as opposed to pigment and opaquing agents. So you can build up a decent light blocking coat in very few layers (usually just one is all you need). After that, just overcoat with white as normal.

Thanks Jay! I have a can of metallic silver that I need to get rid of that may be perfect for the job.

That's an interesting spray booth.

I hope you're considering wearing a respirator since you'll be spraying paint inside the apartment and the tent. Most spray cans are lacquer or enamel and you don't want to breath those in. Make sure to leave a window or two open. Even with the painting inside the tent not all of it will be contained. Just be careful.

I also live in an apartment but only spray non-toxic acrylics inside, using an airbrush. I don't have a spray booth but I paint in a spare room on a table below 2 large windows.

I have a couple of large windows I can open, as well as a couple of fans I can turn on once the painting is done. I also picked up one of these:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/225/photo1esi.jpg/

I can use this to spray acrylics, much like an airbrush. If it works well I will abandon shaker cans all together.

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Help! I'm having decal issues!!

I created custom "Caution" decals to go on the engine bells like so:

Space_Shuttle_Main_Engine_SN_2036.jpg

I printed the decals on BelDecal CLEAR laser decal paper and the yellow print on the decal does not show up when applied to the Flat Black finish of the engine bells:

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You can't even read the lettering on the decal, it blends right into the black.

How can I get this to work?

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Unless white is 'printed' on the clear under the yellow ink I don't think there's any way to do it.

I attached a picture of my current shuttle build. On the starboard side of the cockpit there is a decal that says 'CUT HERE FOR EMERGENCY RESCUE'. It's surrounded by four small yellow corner decals. I had to cheat the two yellow corners that are forward and apply them to the white area instead of on top of the black nose tiles. Otherwise they didn't show at all on the black. I was lucky I could cheat it but unfortunately you only have the black area to apply the decals.

Mike.

DiscoveryCloseup.jpg

Edited by crowe-t
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I tried the same thing. the CAUTION lettering was Yellow on a black background. It didn't show up, so I applied another decal over it, then another. The CAUTION lettering showed up ... then I weathered the engine bell and it all went bye-bye.

You can just barely see 'em on the right side SSME ... look for a dark rectangle

aSSMEs.jpg

So try applying the decal in multiple layers. Make sure you register 'em perfectly.

Something that JUST occurred to me ... what if you make a black decal with CLEAR lettering and on the engine bell you have a patch of Yellow that would show thru ........ it was just a brainfart ...

Edited by K2Pete
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GREAT IDEA K2Pete! Five years in the printing business and I didn't think of that. I was too frustrated to think straight anyway!

I was hoping to have the engines done tonight (huge milestone of the build) but it will have to wait until I get back to the office on Monday. Back to decal making!

In what way did you weather your engines that would make the Caution decals disappear? I plan on applying just a small amount of powdered pastels, dry, and using a q-tip to wipe the powder away from the flat areas.

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In what way did you weather your engines that would make the Caution decals disappear? I plan on applying just a small amount of powdered pastels, dry, and using a q-tip to wipe the powder away from the flat areas.

Pastels applied with a Q-tip. For some reason, the Pastels didn't wanna remove from the decal material, even with a slightly moistened Q-tip ... the excess Pastel came off the plastic nicely, just not the decals ... and I didn't want to make the decal wet, fearing that I might take off a layer or two.

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Another option that might work is to repaint the bells black (would suck cause you did such a GREAT job on the weathering)and then print on white paper the yellow markings with a black border around them. Place the decals and then re-weather the bells. Make sure to clear coat the heck out of them first so you don't have the weathering issue Pete is talking about. You could try to match the grey color you have on them now instead of repainting black but that would be REALLY REALLY hard to do. Just a thought.

Bill

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