Stand by for Action, we are about to launch Stingray!

[Guest]

Thanks guys, welcome along for the ride

Lots of progress today in all manner of areas. First off, work has began yesterday on disguising the base so that instead of a black plastic box there is something more in keeping with a Stingray scene. So lets begin with casting some rocks. I'm using Hydrocal, something I've had lying around for a while but I don't use much coz I really don't like it. It mixes up very frothy", so sets with lots of bubbles and crumbles very easily. I much prefer plaster of paris BUT Hydrical is significantly lighter, which in this case is desirable.

So for the top surface I need to remember to hit a hole for the support rod to go through so to that end this arrangement was constructed:

and here it is setting in the afternoon sun!

Today it had fully set so I could work with it. First off the under-surface had to be smoothed off, then the edges that overhung the box were trimmed, then the top plate was added, using PVA glue to glue it. A piece of rod was inserted int he hole to make sure they stayed matched up. Then I misex up some of my old favourite claycrete with some artists acrylic and a mix of 3:1 PVA glue and water to make the resulting paste even more sticky than usual because this stuff is going to have to defy gravity a bit!

The end result was this:

and this will be drying for the next few days before it will get painted and have the seaweed attached.

In the meantime, the underside of Stingray got some attention, the battery cover panel was glued in and the various gaps filled and later sanded down

The support rod got some attention next, with the end drilled out to accept the power plug, along with the groove for the wires being extended up to the end. This was all then sealed with araldite to make a solid joint.

The inside got a similar treatment, with a bracing framework built to support the socket

After that photo was taken, a liberal dousing with more araldite secured the joints and socket into the framework. This will take a certain amount of punishment as the thing is plugged and unplugged as it gets moved around, hence why an effort has been made to give it all strong joints. Electrical connection tests were made at each step - with everything getting sealed with epoxy, the last thing you want to do is discover a bad connection after its set!!

So with that sorted and waiting for the base to dry before that can proceed further, let us return to the cockpit. The side walls and platform were added. The platform was later trimmed back to provide a good fit against the transparency.

This was then painted and handrails added to the pit in the middle

and a red coat added to the bottom of the transparency so that when put together it looks like a proper seal

and when fitted starts looking right

Bah, you can't see much there can you? How about we add a bit of internal lighting?

and with the lights off?

Jobs a good 'un!

[Guest]

:tropthy:

[Guest]

Highly illuminating Andrew (see what i did there?)

Looks good so far, i love to see lighting on models.

I went to our local "pets at home" so the dog doesnt starve and looked at their aquatic range ... there's some natural plant that would look great on that base .. it's about right to scale for a kelp bed type thing .... i though about this build when i saw it

Green Fern Aquarium Plants by Supa | Pets at Home

A quick spray with hairspray to seal it and it'll keep the colour.

[Guest]

Had a couple of days off work this week coz I felt like a bit of a mini-holiday and took the opportunity to progress.

First that base has been developing nicely, look at this:

The acrylic rod supports the model very well and this was another opportunity to do an electrical test which passed with flying... er... swimming colours! As you can see Stingray has had its primer coat ready for painting! In fact painting has progressed even though I haven't joined the two halves. I decided that rather than try to mask the big transparent impeller thingy, I'd doing most of the spraying while it was in two halves then when they get joined it will be just a matter of touching up the joint with - in the most part - silver.

The top surface has had the dark blue of the cockpit painted, plus the light blue of the "crows nest" and the yellow band. In the picture below you can see I've got as far as the light blue bands. This will be a bit hit or miss as I'm masking each section after its painted and moving on to the next, so I won't see the mess that will almost certainly have been made by the paint creep until its all done and I can unmask the lot!

The lower have has had the complicated curved yellow triangle at the front painted and the dark blue oval painted and masked and again we are onto the light blue here as well.

So then its back to the cockpit. I spent several days trying to work out how to scratch build the steering wheels (tillers?)

and eventually came up with a plan. First I got some 0.25mm x 2mm plastic strip left over from the bar armour and wrapped some of this tightly around a 4mm brass rod 3 or 4 times. I then dipped this lot into boiling water to "set" the plastic in the curve I wanted. Once this was dry and cool I cut a ring from the strip and then sliced it lengthwise to get 2 1mm wide rings, of which I cut 2/3 out and then cut that in half - each of these was one of the handles.

The long column has to be quite rigid as its well, long... so I cut up a thick paper clip and used the straight bits for the column - its also silver already! The tiller attaches to the column via a cone-shaped connector. This was built up using nothing more than a blob of Mr Dissolved Putty on the end of the column. Its very small and a bit crude, but that should be okay because it is very small!

I added some levers with thin wire and blobs of coloured paint on the end. Troy Tempest and Phones have also been painted up. I couldn't face scratch building their shoulder epaulettes in this scale so I just dabbed a bit of gold on to represent them so here is the cockpit

and with the transparency on you can see even less clearly!

And finally, remember that base? Well thanks to Colin's utterly brilliant suggestion above (cheers!) I popped into the local Pets at Home shop yesterday and found some cheap plastic aquarium "plants" which were perfect when cut up and added appropriately...

More to come, including tomorrow in theory should be the "Great Unveiling" where I will discover just how bad the paint runs are

[Guest]

Oh yes its the Great Unveiling!

The lower hull:

Just a little bit of paint creep around the yellow and the rear curve of the dark blue needs tidying up.

The upper hull:

Here you can see some of the paint creep in the dark blue above the windows, under the windows, near the nose and around the "torpedo tube". Not as bad as I expected! So all that was easy to fix, so next is gluing the cockpit into the upper hull, gluing the "impeller thingy" into the lower hull and fixing the LEDs permanentlyand then joining the two hull halves together. No sooner said that done!

Some filler/sanding required on the joint so the paint will need some repairs, but that shouldn't be too difficult! Blimey I think this might be almost complete, but but but... its only been a week or so, I obviously haven't complicated this enough!!!

[Centurion3RTR]

Looking mighty fine Andrew, loving the work thats gone into it matey.

Have fun, John

[Guest]

Looking very nice and fine!

[Ian M]

Way cool. No. SUB zero!

See what I did there?

Ian M

[Guest]

Its all happening to quick, either youre not making it difficult for yourself or your expertise is blossoming.

Looking really good mate, very sharp and crisp even with the bleeding, easy fix eh?

be finished by tommorow night???

[Guest]

Well I've sort of hit a bit of wall in that the two halves won't join without showing a huge great seam, even with filler and sanding and re-masking and respraying.. .sigh... it will come right in the end but the last hurdle is proving to be the biggest!

[Guest]

So after a few days fighting with the hull joint, airbrush and home-made decals, we are almost there!

The joint between the two hulls took a LOT of filling and sanding to get it anything like decent. Then of course came the complexity of respraying the silver, then there was retouching the paint creep under the masking tape. The nose had to be completely repainted - there are something like 8 or 9 coats of yellow paint there!

As for the decals - well there hangs a tail. I had bought some clear decal film for colour laser printers, but then the company I work for got taken over by a big software company whose name begins with "O" and they moved us into their offices and got rid of all out lovely colour laser printers!!! So now I have to use my own inkjet printer on the appropriate decal paper. Problem here seems to be the ink used by HP will run at the slightest touch of the liquid decal film, so today I have used up about half a sheet of decal film trying to get two "Stingray" decals where the ink has run, smudged or simply dropped off!

Anyway perseverance paid off. However, its still not 100% complete. The fins behind the cabin should have a white "3" on them but there was no way I could print white, so I have some generic number decals in the post that will hopefully do the trick. So here she is 98% complete...

and of course with the lights off...

and here is a close-up of the cockpit

[Guest]

Love it, Andrew. The only thing missing is the neon tetras swimming around in the background.

Keith

[Guest]

Fantastic, I like it so much.

Cheers.

[Guest]

Nice job Andrew.

[mossiepilot]

A cracking Stingray Andrew, takes me back to my childhood.

Great work all round mate.

Tony.