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Dutycat Arts Beany Cap


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Ok, guys, I have pretty much finished the remaster of the Beanie Cap. I want to give it another quick once over to make sure I have not missed anything, then I will prime, gloss, and create a new mold.

FYI, the original cast was very successful, and I went through two production runs before the mold started to deteriorate. Before creating a new mold, I thought it would be a good idea to make some minor changes to the master based upon lessons learned from my own build.

Here is a summary of those changes.

1. Tiles were "recut" a little straighter and deeper. This was done to provide greater relief and because the tile work on the "tiny tiles" around and in front of the windows molded a little soft on the original effort.

2. Tiles in the star tracker ports cut a little deeper.

3. Interior curved area around windows was "faceted" a bit more so that the glass installs a bit easier.

4. Created a rectangular depression in the interior roof around the mission specialist windows so that it does not need to be sanded down prior to install of the glass.

These modest changes improve the product slightly, but it still requires solid modeling skills to fit to your Monogram orbiter. Below are some pics as it sits now. Keep in mind these are enlarged close up pictures, so any slight imperfections or inconsistencies you see will hardly be noticeable when you get it installed. Remember, it is a manually crafted piece....just me, some strip styrene, my scriber, and a good bit of putty. Also, the tiles are not intended to be one for one accurate, just generally representative. I did the best that I could to get the overall effect, and it is a huge improvement on what you get out of the box.

-Gil

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Hi Gil,

Great to see the beanie cap coming back for another round! So long as you're making improvements to the master, may I make a suggestion?

The corners of the window frames appear to be a bit sharp when compared to photographs. Is there a way to make them a bit rounder, particularly in the upper corners? Here are some comparison photos so you can see what I mean:

nxm0ie.jpg

107j51j.jpg

Forgive me if there is a reason for having the corners of the windows sharp. I've never done any parts molding before. Keep up the good work!

Also, any plans for a Revell beanie cap?

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Hot Dog,

You are right. The window frames should be more curved on the inside as well as the outside. The window frames, as well as everything else, were done as well as I could do them given the tools at my disposal and my talents at the time. I worked very hard on it for a couple of months...mostly a trial and error effort. But if you look closely, you will see all sorts of minor inaccuracies when compared to the real thing. As I was working on the piece, I gradually realized that given the geometry of the original kit piece, the complicated nature of the tiles, and the size of available strip styrene, it was going to be very difficult to make it completely faithful to the original. So I settled on representative. However, I thought the piece was such a huge improvement overall, and there was no better alternative, that I figured it might be marketable and worth my time and effort to mold it.

In any case, there is really no way to fix what you are suggesting without knocking out the window panes, reshaping the frames, and building back up the underside again with new panes and new putty work . Way too much work for a marginal improvement. My suggestion is for those who want a little more curvature in the corner of the window frames is, once the widow panes are knocked out, to just carefully build up the corners a little bit with some putty and then reshape them a bit with a rat tail file. One could even leave a tiny bit of the underlying resin pane for use a support structure. That would make it pretty easy.

I have the piece about 95% there. It is a representative piece which corrects a gross inaccuracy in the original part. Getting that other 5% will be up to the modeler, should they decide they want it.

-Gil

Hi Gil,

Great to see the beanie cap coming back for another round! So long as you're making improvements to the master, may I make a suggestion?

The corners of the window frames appear to be a bit sharp when compared to photographs. Is there a way to make them a bit rounder, particularly in the upper corners? Here are some comparison photos so you can see what I mean:

nxm0ie.jpg

107j51j.jpg

Forgive me if there is a reason for having the corners of the windows sharp. I've never done any parts molding before. Keep up the good work!

Also, any plans for a Revell beanie cap?

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Gil, Nice improvements to the beanie cap.

How is your shuttle project coming?

Mike.

Mike,

I haven't worked on it in a little while because I started some other projects to get some additional stuff ready for Jaxcon on Feb 1st. I am going through the tedious task of patterning out the thermal blankets on the fuselage and wings with thin Evergreen strip. It is a very manual process requiring the cutting hundreds of individual strip pieces and positioning them with tweezers. I have the tail, the engine fairings, the left fuselage side, and some of the right fuselage side done. Still need to finish up the right side and the nose area.

So still a ways to go, I am afraid. I am shooting to have it finished for Jaxcon, and of course, the Nationals next summer. I am going to need to emphasize it more to make Jaxcon, however. About half of the stuff I am working on right now is on the Dutycat blog here.

-Gil

Edited by DutyCat
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Gil, I just went checked your build blog. NICE! It's really coming along great. I was at first a bit skeptical of the way you'd described you were going to do the blankets on the OMS pods, but seeing it changed my mind. I think that's going to work great! I am contemplating attempting something like it myself now. Keep up the awesome work.

Bill

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Gil, I just went checked your build blog. NICE! It's really coming along great. I was at first a bit skeptical of the way you'd described you were going to do the blankets on the OMS pods, but seeing it changed my mind. I think that's going to work great! I am contemplating attempting something like it myself now. Keep up the awesome work.

Bill

Thanks Bill. Unfortunately I have myself spread out pretty thin trying to work on a bunch of different projects (just take a look at my signature), so progress is slower than I would like. Things are going to pick up soon, though, as many of these projects are close to the painting stage. Plus I still have to make time to remold the beanie cap and get it back out there for sale.

-Gil

Edited by DutyCat
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