Are you FRAKIN' kidding me?

So I had no idea how much time had passed. It's been another 8 months! I have been pickin' at the G for a while. Here's an update.

I've pretty much finished the massing on her, but I figure that I'm probably 60% done right now.

I'm baaaack...

After being distracted for 16 months I've finally got my focus back enough to get back on this baby.

So here are some pictures.

Engineering some Nozzles

I am now dealing with the engine nozzles for Galactica. This is proving to be a long process if not difficult. What is making me work hard is the density of detail on these parts.

The process here is to take my Autocad information and project it onto a simplified 3D engine nozzle. I then split that surface up and un-roll it in Rhino 3D. This then gives my the flat shape that will curl up to fit my foam patter.

The only hard part is just drafting out the thousands of lines that make up this detailing.

Nozzle Mockup

Nozzle Mockup

Skin Job

Oh! How long I have waited, and dreaded making the detailed surfaces for the Flight Pod retraction pockets.

So many aspects had to be dealt with before I could even attempt this. The hull slices, for one, had to be at thier proper thicknesses. Since that was done many weeks ago I only had my concernes about fitting getting in the way. They turned out to be unwarrented. These new pieces dropped into place with the minimum of fuss.

These skins are made from two layers of material. The innermost, and thickest, being of ridgid vinyl. The outer being made from a 2" wide strip of electrical tape. The tape lazer cut just like most every other part on the Galactica. And since it IS tape it is self adhesive.

Skin Patterns

Skin Patterns

The only thing that I worrried about in this process is how well the tape would hold up on the pattern after a couple of mold pulls. I am avoiding this problem by molding the skins and using casted skins instead.

Mold

Mold

Cast Skins

Cast Skins

Casting also give me the advantage of only making one set of originals as well as being able to be formed to compund curves much better than the sheet vinyl.

Skins in place

Skins in place

Skins in place

These look fairly good to me. With a little fitting and some minor gap filling I can be done with these.

Movin' Along

After spending weeks away from Galactica I finnaly made some progress.

Here is the detailing on the Galactica's "head".

Brow Detail

Brow Detail

The Devil in the Details

The detailing on the Galactica's main engines is pure evil. But that's why I love this ship. She is a real challenge.

Here are some shots of the Main Engine plate;

Main Engine detailing

Main Engine Detailing

The armor paneling offers a challenge in how to model the subtle thickness that is apparent in closeup shots. My solution was to laser cut three layers of material. The thickest being styrene to depict the armor itself. The next two being thin vinyl shelving liners. After they were stacked up I made a silicone mold immediately because of the very delicate nature of the assembly.

Armor mold

Armor casting

Next up; Landing pod pocket detail.

Getting bigger

Everything done up untill now is preperation for a 1/2500th scale model. The finnished model will be around 22.5" long.

For such a large model I could not simply resize my parts from the Mini Galactica model. The detailing on the hull will be done with an applique of material so I needed to compensate for the thickness of the strips. Also since this model is being built to a specific scale, the materials I am using need to be made to custom thicknesses.

These skins started off as five laser etched vinyl strips and were detailed with chips of styrene and a few HO scale detailing parts. I then made a mold of them and cast up around 200 skins in urethane resin.

Mold

Detail strip

The bulk of the hull is made from lasercut shapes of foam. These foam slices were contoured just as the smaller model's acrylic shapes were. Once all the slices were shaped I began the process of applying the detailed skins.

Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing
Hull detailing