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Starship Maintenance trench wall hanging


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And once again, we're back in the Lincolnshire shipyards for the latest in the series of raids on the bits boxes.

 

I had this picture board, doing not a lot on the mancave wall. What to do? Well, I seem to be in a Star Wars groove at the moment.

Following on from my Vaurbian Freighter build,  I wanted a different way to mount it (Ooer!) and this popped into my head.

I also was partially inspired by the opening scenes from Red Dwarf, where we see a spacesuited figure painting a huge bit of spaceship.

In 1/350th scale the maintenance trench is between 100mm & 28mm deep. I am Indebted to @Madmonk for these figures.

 

Yesterday I measured up and cut some wood to make the basis of the trench. Some drilling and screwing (now then!) and we have

what you can see in the pictures below... (Which I tried to post earlier but either BM or Imgur was messing about).

 

hnZGYfn.jpg

So, Board on wall, bottle of TET and rulers to show the size. Two pieces of wood to form top and bottom of the trench.

And, a section of plastic card to partially represent the skin of the ship for these pictures. 

I need to obtain some appropriate card (plastic or otherwise) to become the skin. Suggestions are welcome. 

I will probably need to scribe it and will certainly need to paint it. 

 

moWcdo1.jpg

And a close up shot. The trench, as seen above, is 100mm in depth and height. I will use various false walls to 

vary the depth, and fill the result with lots of greeblies.

 

MlfKqdg.jpg

This will not be a direct copy of a Star Wars ship, detailed reference shots seem to be few and far between.

So I'm going for a 'in the spirit of' build. Something that could be. I'm not going to attempt the hangar bay,

I don't know the dimensions for a start. I did think to build the entrance and use a photo behind it, but maybe not.

I've made a start today by making up some sections of walls etc, The wood will be covered in 1mm plastic card, BTW.

Thanks for looking, comments, as always, are very welcome. Pete 

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  • Pete in Lincs changed the title to Starship Maintenance trench wall hanging

Ah Pete, just can't help the double entendre can you?

'Maintenance trench' indeed! (fnar fnar)

 

I really like the idea of a wall hanging display I must say.

Display space being a perpetual problem as it is.

 

Do you have some sort of scene in mind here?

Rebels screaming along the trench while  ack-ack blasts in all directions perhaps?

Maybe this is the recreation side of the Death Star, where all the executives go to hang around the space swimming pools to get space tanned?

Drinking space mai-tais with space bikini clad space secretaries.

 

Nice thing about something so huge, this will be about a square kilometre on something the size of a small moon, you could build anything and who's to say it couldn't be there somewhere.

 

What scale is this thing anyway?

I heard 1/350th being bandied about which would make your bottle of tamiya extra thin about 30-40 metres tall...

 

If you built the rest of the Death Star to this scale, I figure it would be roughly a half kilometre across.  (Apparently the Death Star is around 160 km in diameter)

You gonna need a buttload of styrene my friend!

(and a bigger man cave!)

 

Speaking of styrene sheet (were we?), a relatively cheap source I have found are those plastic sale signs that hardware stores sell.

 

 

Wow.

  :gobsmacked:

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On 25/06/2021 at 23:30, Pete in Lincs said:

I'm not sure if Diorama or Panorama is the correct description for this.  Perhaps neither!

how about a PanDiorama

 

its a neat idea

 

rgds

John(shortCummins)

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4 hours ago, Tzulscha said:

I really like the idea of a wall hanging display I must say.

Display space being a perpetual problem as it is.

It was just hanging around not doing much and I had a lightbulb moment. 💡 Display space is becoming a problem, as you say.

Yes, 1/350 is the scale. The same as the Vaurbian ship I just finished. That will become part of the display, plus probably a couple of others, yet to be built.

Maintenance trench is (apparently) the official term. As for space mai tai's, This is a 'dry' ship as per U.S Navy Regs!

Yes, this could be part of any several Km long Star Destroyer so I can do pretty much whatever I can with whatever I have to hand. (OOER!)

Good idea about the plastic sale signs. I'll have a look Her Indoors says a Death Star replica would spoil the light for the roses. Shame. :sad:

4 hours ago, Tzulscha said:

Do you have some sort of scene in mind here? Rebels screaming along the trench while  ack-ack blasts in all directions perhaps?

It might be nice to see, but AFAIK the Falcon is the only rebel ship in 1/350th. I've thought of mocking up a couple of Tie Fighters, but I need dimensions first.

This will primarily be a means to display some scratchbuilds, to use up the wallspace, and to keep me happy until it gets too cold in there to work, again!

BTW, I've changed the thread title. No more diorama, otherwise the mods might make me move this to that bit! I'm happy with 'Wall Hanging'.*

 

*I wonder if 3D plastic tapestry would be better?

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6 minutes ago, Head in the clouds. said:

any lighting effects planed?

It's something I'd not thought about. I do have some bits lying about (ooer!) so I might have a go.

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I don't know if you get them over there, but Fantasy Flight games does a series of X-wing and TIE fighter models for their Star Wars game in what looks very close to 1/350th scale.

The boxes don't actually call out scales, I am basing it on the size of the cockpits.

The bigger stuff comes in MUCH smaller scales, as you might expect.

 

 

:popcorn:

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Now you may have thought that I was slacking on this build. But I've been playing with my Greeblies (Ha Ha)

X0HB1L5.jpg

I've built this lot to go along the back of the trench. All approx 100mm. Except the ones I made on Sunday. I went all Imperial and built them to about 4 inches.

 

DsN505p.jpg

Sightly blurred close up. The bits boxes were raided unmercifully. Goodness knows what they are supposed to be.

 

26FXHzY.jpg

The big white bits and the one on the right here are megablox. (Cheap lego copies from the car boot sale).

R1kvtna.jpg

I've used lots of ship bits and on the right, the brass sheet is stuck to Megablox parts.

 

JClmd0h.jpg

More Megablox on the left, with added ships railings, which I've also used on other sections. 

I think once sprayed up and detail painted this lot should look the part. That seems to be how ILM did it.

Thanks for looking in, Pete

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If John Dykstra could raid every hobby shop in S. California for panzer IV tank bodies and submarine hulls to make the Galactica, I say the more megablox the merrier! When it comes to greebles there is no such thing as too much.

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On 6/30/2021 at 1:24 PM, LorenSharp said:

If John Dykstra could raid every hobby shop in S. California for panzer IV tank bodies and submarine hulls to make the Galactica, I say the more megablox the merrier! When it comes to greebles there is no such thing as too much.

 

I remember an old video game by John Dykstra, "Sewer Shark", where you had to navigate through trenches and tunnels to get to the end of the levels.  Much like Pete's build.  Good Fun!

 

Hey Pete, The big "4 inchers" are nice by the way.

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I enjoyed making those greebies so much, I made some more!

 

ia525oC.jpg

I found more bits to use!

 

wS0Ri9Y.jpg

On the left, two F-4 Phantom engines from a mid '70's Revell 1/32nd build that I used for parts a couple of years ago. Rather fanciful painting on the engines!

Next is two Airfix 1/32nd wheel arches (Jaguar or Aston) Glued together. The yellow bit is from a Japanese submersible kit and above that, bits of a pen.

 

3CY7Jh1.jpg

These three are almost entirely made from bits of Airfix Steam Engines (Biggin Hill & Evening Star).  They seem to be already weathered!

 

CBEoSsT.jpg

Another wheel arch, a bit of a rocket, and maybe a bit of jet engine (not sure). There are two of these which used similar parts.

I need to get lots of plastic card soon to build the body panels of the starship. In the meantime I'll paint & detail this lot.

Some of these greeblies may not get used on this build, I may not have room. But they'll wait for another build instead.

Thanks for looking in. Comments are welcome, as always. Pete

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Wow, what a crazy-huge project. Are you looking to clear out your entire stores of detail parts? There are easier ways…for instance, you could send them to me. 😎

All kidding aside, this is the kind of project that I dream about…a wall of greebles. However, since a typical model kit is $$, I will have to continue to dream and live vicariously though your build. 

Will watch with great interest. 🍿

 

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4 hours ago, bootneck said:

Are there any plans of this trench, or do you have to keep running the film sequence over and over for the details? :undecided:

 

Mike

I don't think there are any (official) plans and I don't recall a scene in any of the films where you see a close up of the trench, the closest was a scene towards the end of the The Empire Strikes Back but that was a Super Star Destroyer. That's the beauty of a project like this, you can let your imagination run wild and still come up with something which looks right.

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