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It's finished! Here we have another MCRN freighter made, like the first one, from bits of old camera lenses and assorted other garbage I found whilst rummaging in my neighbour's bins. The WIP can be found here, feel free to take a look at all the gory details. cheers Monty

Hi Modellers Well I've had a relaxing break away from the spares boxes and the glue, but I suddenly got the itch to make something. Unlike previous builds, this will be a short build as I have a window of a few weeks to crack on with it before other stuff gets in the way, so here we go. Basically, I have an old camera lens which is no good any more thanks to the dreaded fungus, so I decided to make something of it as I did with another old lens a few months back. I took it apart, cleaned off all the grease and then started playing with bits and pieces from the spares box to see if I had enough bits to quickly make a spaceship of some sort. Here are the lens pieces, reassembled into a different order and glued into place. And here it is with a tin can glued on the end. This will be a passenger compartment, or possibly a storage container (which is ironic considering that it's a tin can). This is a pile of bits which I think might end up glued to the spaceship eventually, not sure at the moment as I didn't bother making a sketch, I just wanted to wing it and see what happens (although I seem to remember telling myself a while back to not do that because it never works ). The white thing is a light bulb holder from an Ikea table lamp. The lamp was binned but I kept this bit because I thought it had an interesting shape - yes, this is how my brain works these days. Finally these last pictures shows a spaceship coming together - the pink thing on the end is a docking hatch which has some greeblies, including some staples and some bits of plastic sheet. The silver mudguards (made for a previous build but never used) will be glued around the hull and will probably be painted black to look like solar panels. The Ikea bulb holder will be the main engine and will probably be silver as I have a lot of silver paint to use up. Thanks for watching, another update will be along soon, either that or a bus replacement service. cheers all Monty

Hi All Here we have the finished MCRN freighter 'Clarke' - the build can be seen here I mocked up a few money shots of the Clarke in Mars orbit (of course) and also leaving Earth orbit, and doing a fly-by of an asteroid as she heads towards Ceres base. All of the planet shots are actually NASA pics of Earth, while the asteroid is a random rock shot I found on the net, then heavily edited. Enjoy! Please feel free to comment. cheers Monty

Greetings fellow modellers Time for another ship build, this time it's a freighter, very roughly in the style (and markings) of the MCRN ships from the Expanse. This build began a while ago, it went onto the Shelf of Shame, came off again thanks to a sudden burst of mojo, and right now it's mostly done. I took a lot of pics but never got around to doing a WIP as I didn't know if anything would come of it, so perhaps now the simplest thing is to put all the pics into perhaps three posts to spread the load a little and to make it easier to digest. It began with two basic components: 1. An old and very large camera zoom lens inherited from Dad, so vintage 1970s with blurred optics and a mount that fitted nothing currently available on this planet thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union (Dad went through a stage of buying camera gear from East Germany because it was cheap). 2. A baked bean tin because I thought it had an interesting shape. I had no idea what to do with the lens but then I thought perhaps it could be incorporated into a build of some sort. I had a vague idea that it might work as a spaceship hull, so I dismantled it, binned the glass and superglued some of the components together to create a 'hull'. The bean tin (without beans) was glued onto the front. I also raided my spares box and found a hosepipe nozzle to go on the back as an engine exhaust, and a plastic plumbing joint to go on the front.That gave me this: At this point i lost interest and the project got shelved. Not difficult to see why, Recently I wondered if I could salvage something from the whole sorry mess and after a lot of thought and googling "expanse ships" I came up with this sketch of a freighter, covered in cargo containers: And here is the very first attempt at creating the freighter. You can see that the length is just over 30cm: The grey thing on the front went in the bin and I replaced it with the lens hood and various other bits of plastic to create a sort of docking hatch. The boxes are the shipping containers and are made of 5mm plastic sheet. I don't know what sort of plastic this is. It's certainly not styrene. Superglue seems to work on it, so that's fine. Anyway, it's fairly sturdy and yet still soft enough to cut with a craft knife. I got it off Amazon and I believe that it's the stuff that architects use to create model buildings. Whatever, it's useful stuff and fairly cheap. The three bits of styrene that look like wings are going around the engine as baffles, to direct the exhaust away from the hull. Or something like that anyway. I thought that the rear needed something to make it a bit more interesting. Well, another update soon, I'm still sorting out the pics, in the meantime happy modelling all! cheers Monty

This is going to be a very short WIP as this thing is already mostly complete. I had the idea of building a spaceship of some sort out of tank hulls and other bits that I had lying around in my spares box. I thought it would be pretty simple to make something interesting without too much effort. Then add some paint and boom, job done. Three months later I now realise that this was a mistake Working without any clear idea of what on earth I was aiming for meant that I wasted a lot of time wondering if this bit would look good glued onto that bit, gluing it on, then realising that no, it didn't look good at all, and thus sawing it off again. Hence the lack of a WIP before now because if I had created one, each post would have started with the line "So after some thought, I sawed off those bits I glued on last week..." Anyway, here we are with a model that does, finally, look like something worth persevering with. The rear is a tank hull, the front compartment is an armoured car hull. Don't ask me which ones, I don't have the boxes any more. Mind you, I believe that the rear might be a German Jagdpanther - could be wrong but it does come from something with no turret. The rear rocket nozzles were turned from 8mm styrene rod and the down-thrusters came from a kitchen cabinet, possibly Ikea, possibly B&Q, who knows, I found them in the 'man drawer' in the kitchen where they've been for quite a few years now. The orange bits of styrene came from a kit of a railway station building. The leg struts are BIC pens and there is also a lot of styrene sheet in there. The two purple boxes on the front are those small plastic cubes that go on a clothes hangar and tell you the size. For some reason (and it's really not me) we have lots of them.... It also includes some strips of wood and a few tank wheels. It's going to be painted white and then probably sealed with varnish. No lights on this one, I'll save that for a future (and much better planned) project. That's all for now, I think the next installment will be paint and decals and then RFI with a few space-y shots. Happy modeling all cheers Monty

Hi All Time for another scratch build. You'll be relieved to hear that I've decided to move on from UFO and instead have decided to use Space 1999 as my source of inspiration, hence the Space Bus which, hopefully, is in the style of Martin Bower's most excellent designs for the series. OK there never was a 'space bus' in the show, but if there had been, it might have looked a bit like this, only a lot better quality. This project had a shaky start. initially, I wanted to build a heavy lifter in the Thunderbirds style, so I made this sketch which is basically a mash-up of some 60s classics, including the Valiant, Victor and the Hercules C-130E, with a touch of B29 around the nose. And then I made a fuselage from plastic pipe, clad in MDF 'wood'. This is when the problems started, because I made the fuselage too short, so the proportions were all wrong. No one wants a short, fat lifter. After some sulking I decided that perhaps I could salvage at least some of the work by making something that actually needed to be a shorter, fatter design, so I retired to the man cave with Mr Bower's book and some liquid refreshment and came up with this: It's supposed to be a space bus for moving people and cargo between spaceships and space stations. Unlike all my previous builds I want to add lighting, but this won't be anything ambitious as this will be my first attempt so I'll keep it simple. The model will be hollow so I'll probably put some battery powered lights inside, drill a few holes and let nature take its course. The photos below show the fuselage taking shape. The three tubes are the engines, these were made from some plumbing pipe I had lying around. If there's one thing I've learnt from @Pete in Lincs it is that anything that is "just lying around" is fair game for the spares box. I have now realised that making stuff from wood does involve a LOT of sanding and filling, and then more of the same, for quite a long time, so I suspect that this build might take a while. However, seeing as it's too hot to do anything else and too expensive to go anywhere, I don't think this will be a problem. Thanks for watching, comments always welcome cheers Monty

Hi all As threatened, I am building another interceptor as part of the UFO universe (see Scratchbuilt USAF Lunar Interceptor in RFI). This will be the RAF's contribution to the struggle against the pesky aliens while SHADO continues to build up its forces on the Moon. This is going to be a more complex build than the USAF interceptor as I want to detail the cockpit. I already have a 1:35 pilot figure from, I think, a De Havilland Venom kit (I don't have the box, just a pile of bits). Anyway, the model should end up around 25cm in length. This rough sketch shows what I'm aiming for, whether it ends up looking anything like that is a sweet mystery and all part of the fun. I have a plan as to how it will be made. It'll have a wooden spine, 22mm copper pipe engines and the cockpit will have to be built from 1mm styrene sheet. The legs will be an issue but I'm ignoring all of that for now in the hope that inspiration will descend upon me at some point. The armament will be 4 x 30mm cannons. Not sure if it needs missiles so there's another decision I can ignore for now and think about later. The photos show where I'm currntly at. I've made the body from 2 plastic pipes with styrene sheet wrapped around to create the oval. You can also see the MDF 'spine'. I made a start on the cockpit. This is very old-skool, I'm literally making ribs for the bottom and top which will be clad in more styrene. The 'glass' will be cut from an old CD case which, very handily, is clear styrene and a decent thickness as well. Don't ask me what album was in it, probably some cheesy 80s band. The pilot has been smothered in filler so I can sculpt a spacesuit helmet (I ended up having him looking slightly to his right which I thought would be a bit more interesting). I had to cut off his legs to straighten them out, his arms will need the same treatment probably to match his hands to the controls as it would be daft to have him waving his hands in thin air. It's all a bit Hannibal Lecturish but let's not forget he's only plastic and I'm in charge. All comments welcome, I'd love to know what you think out there. cheers Monty

This was my first large scratch build and it shows, but at least I learnt a lot from it. The body is made from square section drainpipe, the engine nozzles are square-to-round adapters. It has a wooden 'spine' onto which everything was glued and screwed. The details are greeblies from the spares bucket. Here is the before shot: Here she is on the bench: And here she is in action:

Hi folks, According to Hobby Search, Bandai are re-releasing some of the EX kits early next year, including the White Base, Musai and Hildolfr: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/list/747/0/1?state=1 The EX kits are a sort of semi-limited-run thing, they tend to be more expensive for their size than other Bandai models and you often have to use glue for some of the construction. I.e. like a normal kit Good crisp detail. I built their Salamis and it was pretty good: Quite tempted to pre-order the Musai to go with it, maybe the Hildolfr after seeing Brian's Zaku Tank Cheers, Will

All done! My first completed model in several years, and the first I've ever weathered up! Took nearly three months of restocking paints and whatnot, but I think it turned out quite nicely Did my best to match the griminess of the movie model Gaz.

I finally finished this little guy, after languishing in the bottom of a display case for around two years.. I painted it with Vallejo silver grey over a Tamiya German grey preshade. Weathering was done using citadel and oil paint washes, oil paint streaks and oil paint shading and toning.. If that's a word?

Hi folks, I finished off the Salamis yesterday and took some pictures today - here they are: (click for bigger, especially if you like dust!) I'm pretty pleased with how the Balls (sort of cut-price Gundam robots, apparently) came out - they look nice and chunky considering they're about 4.5mm across I wasn't really intending to light this, but realised that with some drilling and filing I could get a 5mm LED into the engine bell, and a 1.8mm square one into the bridge. Running the wires wasn't too hard - I drilled down from the bridge and back from the engine, and then diagonally up from the hole where the stand plugs in until all the bores met. Some more filing and a bit of stiff beading wire helped feed the stranded cable through. Pleasingly, the battery (a CR2032 coin cell) just fits into the base of the stand, so the whole thing is self contained. I made the battery holder from some bits of metal, but ran out of space for a switch so you have to pop the battery out to turn it off I thought this was a fun little kit, a bit more work than I expected but worth it. It's not very big compared to the box it comes in though: You also get a larger ship (the Magellan-class battleship) in the box, so I'll have to get on to that in the not too distant future. Comments + criticism very welcome, and thanks for looking! Cheers, Will