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Studio Scale UFO from UFO


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I bought this kit at Telford 3 years ago from Kits for Cash an dits sat in the stash all this time until yesterday when I decided I had to build the thing at last! I seem to be starting lots of builds at the moment and slowly progressing them and then loosing interest... will be good to actually finish something!

 

So for anoyone who doesn't remember UFO a little reminder with one of the best opening sequences of all time...

 

 

 

and this is the UFO I aim to build:

 

ukDvdPicQualityUFO.jpg

 

As you see in the video, the UFO while travelling spins on the vertical axis so its hard to see any detail, until it lands as above.

 

The actual studio model was a bit rough, you can see some photos of actual studio models here : http://www.thepropgallery.com/

So the kit is a resin kit with vac-formed clear acrylic domes and looks like this:

 

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Here are the "paddles" that go around the middle, these have been give a nice corrugated surface as some of the studo models appear to have

 

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and here are the legs that support the paddles. Again this have been given a nice corrugated surface which will catch the light as most of this model is painted silver. Here are the 3 main components of the main body

 

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Here are the upper and lower domes in their vac-formed glory. This acrylic sheet is quite thick and turned out to be a bit of a bugger to cut! So here is the upper done finally cut free from the sheet and with holes drilled in the top to take the screws that will hold it onto the upper part of the body

 

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This took upwards of an hour to cut out by itself as I was trying to avoid damage around the cut point. The upper dome was done having learned some important lessons while cutting out the lower one, which I made a bit of a mess of and took even longer, over 2 hours to cut out

 

DSC_7320.JPG

 

You can see around the lower edge where I've had to sand the surface down using various grades of micro mesh to counter the mess I made of it while cutting out.

So onto something a "bit" easier then... Needless to say the first thing I did right at the start was to wash everything in soapy water...

Next, the main resin pieces of the body had large casting lugs on them that needed attention:

 

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These needed the dremel taken to them, out in the garden to avoid getting covered in resin dust, with goggles and mask on needless to say. Here is the top dome primed and with its green coat on. This will be masked and the rest sprayed silver later. 

 

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Next the upper and lower parts of the body were glued using epoxy glue and once that had dried was primed and sprayed with Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver

 

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In the meantime, the paddles and legs were detatched from thir casting blocks and cleaned up and then glued together. There are 16 sets in total and the paddles alternate in direction so I had to be sure to clue 8 pointing up and 8 pointing down. There they all are ready for priming:

 

DSC_7321.JPG

 

These are currenly being primed initially with Tamiya primer but I think I might Alclad these ones to make them shiny :)

 

Finally progress so far today (getting very windy out there today!) the black stripes on the underside of the main body got masked and sprayed. Here they are just uncovered with some tidy up still required. you can also see the now silver painted top dome, ready to fix but I might leave it off until the vanes and paddles are attached.

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18 minutes ago, HL-10 said:

Love it! I have the flying sound of the UFO as my ring tone :)

Aren't you going to make it so it spins?:D

 

Its too heavy - thats a lot of heavy resin! If it was spinnign you wouldn't be abel to see the lovely casting of the resin :)

 

14 minutes ago, Panzer Vor!!! said:

Watching with intrest buddy

Hope you ok after rough start ??

Looking at this today at   Hornchurch

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revell-08813-Bucket-wheel-excavator/dp/B008QY8KIQ

 

Maybe Telford :wicked:

 

Have you seen the size of that thing - 1 metre long, half a meter wide!!! Good luck with that! :)

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Progress is being made on the paintwork and of course being Alclad there are large gaps while the primer and overcoats dries. So in the meantime I worked on the base for it

 

DSC_7335.JPG

 

This was made from a block of florists oasis that I had lying around for ages, then gave it a coat of claycrete and used one of those "forests in a  pot" things which was superb. You can see where I used the lower dome to get the size and placement for a "crater" for it to sit in.

 

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Next bit of progress, the Alclad on the vanes and paddles are done

 

DSC_7336.JPG

 

So now these are all done, time to start attaching them...

 

DSC_7337.JPG

 

Finally for now a better photo of the base which has had 2 days to dry out...

 

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I'll be adding more of the vanes today so more soon...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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