International Rescue (Thunderbirds) Firefly

[Kallisti]

So this will be my build thread. Here is the box cover and I'll add the sprue shots later when I get home.

From memory, the model is quite small and toy-like. It has wheels that hide behind moulded on tracks that don't move. Its cast in yellow plastic, with grey/silver dozer blade and other items.

I will probably scratch build some proper tracks. Almost all the tracked Thunderbird vehicles used as the basis a motorised toy tractor called the Vickers Vigor:

and this is the real tractor in action:

The toy tractor is now incredibly rare - mostly I think because Century 21 Productions bought up so many of them for Thunderbirds!

Edited December 9, 2011 by Kallisti

[Kallisti]

So as promised here is the sprue shot:

I can tell you are impressed with the complexity of this model...

Ahem, I haven't opened this box for a while and quite frankly I'd forgotten how bad it was! Tiny, no decals or paint instructions, terrible tracks and very little in the way of detail. I guess this is what is called "a challenge"!!!

As a reference I do have one of the tiny Konami models:

and of course there are plenty of photos on the net and in addition I also own this:

"Thunderbirds" Secret Files: The Inside Story of International Rescue

so I should have plenty of reference material...

[Diesel Gypsy]

Thats a great subject.

What a wonderful diverse group of builds in the GB. It’s going to be as much fun watching as it will be building.

[grufsnik]

Who doesn't like Thunderbirds!!! I'll fix them , gonna enjoy watching this.

Gruffers

[Iain Ogilvie]

What an interesting project!

Remember these vehicles - and their unusual undercarriage - never realised they were based upon a commercial toy replica of a real machine!

Has had me off Googling with Vigor!!!! Fascinating...

Gotta watch this one - never done Sci-Fi - but must admit I have lifted the odd box from a hobby shop shelf to have a look and a ponder before - but never quite crossed to the dark-side.

Iain

[Kallisti]

...and so it begins!

First off lets take a look at the tracks:

Nasty eh?

Well a bit of work with a saw, scalpel and file turns them into this:

Much better! So to replace the tracks I've bought a cheap Airfix Sherman Tank as the tracks are a close approximation to the Firefly ones and at this scale, that should be good enough. I've been reading some detailed scratch build articles such as this where they've cast the track segments and wheels in resin. If I were to build my own larger scale model (something I'd LOVE to do one day!) then I might consider that, but at the scale I'm working with here, its not worth the trouble.

What is interesting looking at the builds and at other pictures is the back of the main body. in most of the pictures ther eis a cylindrical "turret" at The back with a sort of gantry over it. In this model the back section has a square section built up and the gantry is very inaccurate. Looks like a lot of scratch building will be required on this, before I even get onto the base If you've followed any of my other models on here before you'll know I love my diorama bases! I have some thoughts on this one and it might even be MORE interesting than the actual model!

Still, you need to start somewhere and that is why I started on the tracks... more to follow...

[Kallisti]

Further progress:

Can you spot the problems here?

So we have:

1) badly shaped nose

2) badly shaped rear of cabin, curved instead of flat.

3) square block on the rear instead of truncated cone

4) One "barrel" on each side instead of 3

So to begin to rectify this, lets get rid of that square monstrosity:

then lets do some serious scratch-building:

What you see here is

a) the wheels separated from the track earlier this week now stuck to some thick card ready to be cut out to give the road wheels some proper width

5 concentric discs of plastic card in the process of being sanded down into a truncated cone

c) two sets of 3 "barrels" made from plastic rod stuck to plastic strip

d) the hole in the rear of the body covered with plastic card ready to accept the cone.

The nose is giving me issues. I'm not sure how best to approach this problem. Its a complex shape and I'm not sure that my initial idea of slapping some Milliput on there and reshaping it when it dried would be such a great idea as it would be tricky to get it symmetrical. I thought about carving it in balsa first as that would be easier to work with.

I can't believe how bad this model is lol Its truly awful. The silvery plastic is almost polythene as opposed to polystyrene. I've assembled the dozer blade and that alone took a great deal of sanding to get the mould lines cleaned up.

Still, if I can make this model look good it will be a major achievement

[Andy Mullen]

Good luck with this, you seem to be handling it great so far. Got me thinking about my Mole that has been lounging in the stash.

A recommendation for reference is the excellent DVD set from Amazon - Amazon linky, currently £50 cheaper than what I paid for mine.

[Kallisti]

Yup got the DVDs - the Firefly appears in City of Fire, Terror In New York City and Cry Wolf (although that is just using footage from the previous 2 eps).

I've got the Mole in my stash as well and its a totally different scale to the Firefly - the road wheels are much bigger and at least are separate from the tracks. Its still got "toy" features, including various metal gears that would allow you to make the drill bit rotate by pushing the whole thing along the floor.

What is interesting is seeing the original kit components used in the building of the studio models scaled down and often misshapen. For example the 3 girder pieces still on the sprues visible in my last photo on the real model are from the old Airfix Girder Bridge model so that gives you an absolute scale for the original models. In addition, the girder supports for the Mole are also from the Airfix Girder bridge. The Mole also uses parts from the old Aurora B58 Hustler model, the Revell Everything is Go! Atlas rocket kit and the Faller Round Restaurant railway scenic kit.

[jacksdad]

I'm surprised this is the only Thunderbird vehicle in this GB.

Your making a great job of it, so far. Can't wait to see it finished.

Thunderbirds are GO!

Steve

[Kallisti]

FAB Steve

So this weekend lots of progress! First off, wheels have been finished off...

As was seen in the last photo, I had extracted the road-wheels and stuck them to backing plastic card to increase their thickness in preparation for the replacement tracks I had sourced from the old Airfix Sherman kit. The wheels then got mounted onto cocktail stick axles, with a 3mm space made from plastic tube to space them out from the chassis. Adjusting the tracks to fit and you get this:

which when compared to the original

looks so much better than the horrible moulded things that came with the kit! Comparing this to the photo however and you can see that the kit scaling is off by some degree. The track wheels are much too small in comparison to the space on the vehicle for the tracks.

So since the tracks looked so good, I though it time to start on the base. Of course you didn't think I'd be making a model without a base did you?

Here is the beginning, using some of my favourite plaster cast rock mouldings left over from previous experiments plus some balsa columns

I'm using the City of Fire scenes as a sort of inspiration, so we need some building rubble as well

which consists of some distorted sprues, come wire mesh I had left over from the Meccano Land Rover and some scratch built girders and trusses.

Watch this space, more to come soon!

Edited October 23, 2011 by Kallisti

[Kallisti]

As promised, more updates. The base has had some more attention paid to it:

and when its given its first coat of black acrylic via the spray bottle it turs into this:

which actually looks very effective, with blackened rocks and "ash" everywhere.

More rubble has been created, consisting of offcuts of balsa, balsa chips and some scratch build girders and trusses.

I'm trying to think of a convincing way to represent flame - anyone got any ideas?

So the other area of activity is the body of the Firefly an din particular the nose. Well first off, all those holes behind the tracks were filled and sanded and the gaping hole above the tracks was covered over and the top and bottom of the Firefly joined together:

You can also see the work done on shaping the nose. The nose has been carved from a block of balsa, super-glued to the existing flat nose and sanded down and shaped to the complex shape of the nose.

That was Saturday, yesterday the filler was sanded down and the shape adjusted further, adding the "step" underneath the nose and priming it to seal the balsa to allow a smooth finish

This is after 3 layers of primer and a lot of careful sanding! I've sadly introduced a couple of scratches into the surface of the balsa/primer/filler coating which I think I'll have to adapt into surface damage on the real thing. The tip of the nose will be receiving the large bore cannon.

Getting this shape right has been a bugger and frankly its still not right. The model itself has bad dimensions. For example if you compare it with the previous pic of Firefly leaving the pod, the front doesn't drop down very far in front of the tracks, but the model has a distinct "mudguard" shape at the front. I think I'm just going to have to make the best of it. The worst of it is that I think the cab roof is too high. I think I'll just have to live with it.

Maybe one day I'll completely scratch build a "full size" model of this FAB machine

[CliffB]

What a challenge! Still, it looks like you'll have a cracking model in the end.

Cliff

[Kallisti]

Now that the Spitfire VIII is complete and out of the way I can concentrate on completing this one. To that end there has been a bit more progress.

First, the cannon has been added to the front of the nose. This comprises two concentric rings cut from 3mm and 4mm diameter brass tube

Next I decided I wasn't happy with the shape of the rear of the cab so started cutting:

and then back filling and sanding...

What you can also see in this last one is I've sanded off the raised moulding for the red band that goes over the cab, but was moulded straight across rather than the proper chevron pattern. I'll have to mask and paint this as there are no decals with this kit.

[Fifer54]

There's a lot of great work going into this, and it's looking good!

[thx6667]

As a reference I do have one of the tiny Konami models:

Someone better tell Firefly that they're driving over a sleeping Godzilla!

[Kallisti]

Lol that also occurred to me when I first got that model

[Kallisti]

Oh bugger I've just done some visual comparison of the new nose that I carved with the screen cap from the programme and realised that the bottom part of the nose should have a flatter profile rather than the conical one I've created, which would lower the position of the cannon!

Compare this:

with this:

and you can see what I mean... BUGGER!

[jacksdad]

I'm really enjoying this.

Do you plan to do the Mole in the near future?

Steve

[Kallisti]

I've got the Imai model but its another one of those "play" type models that has fake wheels and silly toy-like features. I'll need to revisit it again after this one, but it might be easier to make a decent model out of that compared to this. What I'd REALLY like to do is scratch build proper versions of both of these at some point in the future... that surely won't be any more work that the fixes I've had to make to this kit lol

[FZ6]

This is looking great so far. I purchased one of these recently in a set complete with Thunderbird 4 and was so disappointed with it I have contemplated getting rid of it.

This build might persuade me to hang onto it and see if I can do something similar.

[Kallisti]

I've got that Thunderbird 4 as well and it too is a most disappointing little model - the cockpit is terrible

I seem to have wasted quite a bit of money on a set of models that are total rubbish

[Kallisti]

Updating the nose again...

Lots of green stuff added, now to wait for it to cure! its till not toally accurate as this will show:

You can immediately see that the original model didn't have anything in front of the tracks, no wrap around fender pieces. I'm not sure if I can fully represent that. If I start cutting it back, I'm going to hit problems with the mounting of the dozer blade. I think I'm going to have to think about this while the nose dries out. in the meantime, I've begun the Babylon 5 Starfury build over in the SciFi GB...

[Kallisti]

Small steps forward...

Reshaping the nose was reasonably successful...

As you can see I've also cut back the area in front of the tracks. Its still not exactly as per the original model, but its a much closer shape. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to get this model the correct shape, its just not right in the end. However I'm going to do the best I can

You can also see that I've cut into the nose to create the windscreen. This was a very tricky job since the underlying material is a mixture of yellow plastic, balsa wood, dried CA glue, paint, green filler and white filler, so getting a smooth even surface is going to be a en exercise in patience!

and keeping the opening even and symmetrical is also not easy!

[jacksdad]