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Yet another Thunderbirds Entry! (Completed!)


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So today was a very momentous day... the day for the pod to be assembled and sealed! Sadly I forgot to take photos of the progress, there is just photos of the final result after the Isopon filler has been sanded back...

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Here you can see the front of the pod, showing the filled joint of the internal platform with the lower edge of the opening. This took several rounds of filling and sanding to eliminate it.

The two halves of the pod were glued together with 5 minute epoxy and once that was set, the joint was covered in Isopon which I spent a while sanding back again this evening.

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The panel "lines" were reshaped with a file once all the other sanding was done.

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Here again you see the entrance showing the joint between floor and hole. You can also see the painting/weathering done to the inside. This has been extended to the outside and the ramp:

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Now one of the things I'm kicking myself for is that I closed up the inner pod without taking proper photos of the internal paint job. My excuse will be that I was too busy listening to the 5th day of an exciting test match :) Anyway, you can of course see inside from the door...

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Hmm, thats a bit of a tease really, lets see if we can do better by messing with the camera settings...

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Howzat?

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You can see particularly in that last photo that there still needs some clean up for the pod opening in the upper part of the pod shell. I still need to do some more filling and sanding on that part of the joint, but I'm done with filling and sanding for one day!!!

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Oh man - those shots at the end are pure magic! So very well done!! Love it. Even the first one there looks quite cool in its own mysterious way :)

Brilliant scratch building, paint looks awesome and so does the weathering

Love the whole thing

Can't wait to see the whole ship done.

MH

(Edit: bad spelling)

Edited by Madhatter
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Kallisti is there anything you want to tell us? Like what it was like to work on the Gerry Anderson shows in the 60s because you were clearly a member of Derek Meddings team! :goodjob:

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Thanks for that compliment :)

So the pod made its first public appearance at Salisbury show yesterday and there were quite a few "wow" reactions when I told people to look inside the pod :)

The previous few days had seen it given a coat of green paint, but I'm not entirely happy with the colour, but more of that later. I've also been working on a few more additions to the front of the pod, in particualr the girder bridge footplates that you can see either side of the door in this photo

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Although I've got several sets of the Airfix (now Dapol) girder bridge, the footplates are too big, so I had to scratch build them, scaled down to about 60%. You can see them here after they've been painted metallic grey:

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Once again as with the door ramp, I don't want to permanently fix these to the pod as they will then prevent it sliding up into the main fuselage of Thunderbird 2, so they 've had a 3mm diam hole pinched through them and molybdenium magnets inserted:

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and matching holes have been drilled in the pod front face to accept the corresponding magnets

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Here you can also see the green that I had painted the pod with. Its alright but I think it might be a bit too dark. I'm going to experiment with it a bit and also add some slightly different shaded panels.

Edited by Kallisti
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Attention now turns away from the pod to the main Thunderbird 2. The tail has now been araldited into place and various gaps filed and sanded. Joints around the engine intakes have had particular attention paid to them. Here is what it all looks like with the pod in place

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Taking the pod out, we notice something that will be of use to use regarding the inside surfaces of the pod bay

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The inner surface is curved so that really only the top and bottom locations are in contact with the pod itself. The same is true of the rear panel. This gives scope to be able to build the internal detail that is only visible when the pod isn't present, eg

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So the shape of this panel means I can do this on each end

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So I've done some "digging" and created an inset for the panel, with a deeper hole beneath the central section which will be cut out to allow me to build at least somelevel of detail that sits "behind" the rear panel. This will be built essentially flat but I'll try to build some fake 3D-ness into it to try to represent more depth.

Rear face:

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Front face:

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In addition, the pod has been painted, weathered and matt varnished - you get a glimpse of this in the first photo. I'll do a proper set of photos of the pod itself when I get a chance.

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I hope to take it to Telford - if it turns out well enough I'll put it into competition :)

So the last post showed the work I was doing on the faces of the pod opening, here is the panels that will go on the rear face

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On the left is the inner panel which has some flattish detail added to make it look a bit more interesting, while on the right is the outer face with an "X" brace that on the studio model would have come from the Airfix girder bridge kit. Here is the back panel in place

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and what it looks like with the outer panel on

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Looking at the front face, here is the outer panel on the left

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and here is the inner panel in place. This would have been one of the girder bridge floor panels upside down - a regular feature in many Thunderbirds models, but I had to scratch build this with some plastic sheet and rod to get it to the proper size

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The inner panels will need to be painted before the outer ones go on, so I took this opportunity to spray primer over the whole thing to check the various joints etc. That will be my task later today once the primer is fully dry. In the meantime I'm going to do a proper set of photos for the now completed pod... more later!

Edited by Kallisti
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So here are the photos of the completed Pod 3:

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The "3" was painted on with the help of masks created my Mal from Miracle Masks. This was the second attempt as the first was slightly off centre and - ahem - upside down :( It sanded off okay and so after a fresh coat of green it got masked up again and came out perfect this time.

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Hi Andrew

Ignore my comments in the RFI about scale etc - I had completely missed your WIP (which has just amazed me and wowed me out - very jealous) as I have been away for a week or so and missed all the action so far

I will be following this build most days now... blooming marvellous stuff so far

John

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Kallisti it's fabulous

Speaking of the real thing...

I found a picture this morning on line,

Cruising the river Thames in Thunderbird 4!

Life size T4 going past the houses of Parliament. Awesome!

I found it on tumblr.

Perhaps someone could post it on here?

Failing that I can email it to someone?

Not sure who's address' I have nowadays!

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I saw those photos earlier in the year - it was a PR stunt for the new Thunderbirds are Go! TV series.

Pictures: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=thunderbird+4+thames&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9q52VZLwGoXBmAWu3IPYBw&ved=0CCEQsAQ&biw=1329&bih=776

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Edited by Kallisti
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