GLADIUS spaceship. Scale unknown, but it will be big.

[voozet]

Hi folks!

I had a break from building models for several months, because everyday life involved one hundred percent of my energy. But the long autumn evenings came and recently I heard the call of the workbench.

It started with this:

 

I got this from my colleague. These are pieces of HIPS polystyrene that were part of the room decoration, I think. Some kind of wall and floor panels, or so. I don't know the details. They are 3.2 mm thick and several square meters in total. I had to cut it into smaller pieces to put it in the car. A supply for life.

 

I decided that since I had so much of it, I could plan my next project on a grand scale 😉

 

As usual, I started working with only a general idea of what I wanted to achieve: a large interstellar ship, with a very elongated shape and a splitted bow. The inspiration was, among others, arts from the game Astro Empires but at this stage I don't even know yet if it will be cruiser or freighter.

 

If I choose the combat version, I will call it Gladius, because of the shape. Overall, the size is also correct: as you can see in the photo below, it is over 60 cm long (the ruler is 50 cm). Roman swords were about the same length as I remember 😆.

Under the ship's bow, you can see a rhomboid bulkhead, one of several that stiffen the hull structure.

 

Here you can see the bulkheads already glued in. In many places, I strengthened the joints with additional HIPS strips and L-shaped profiles. It may be an exaggeration, but I am afraid that with such dimensions of the model, the joints will crack due to internal stresses.

 

The lower part of the ship will have something like bays. Paneling them is quite a boring job. 😆 When making panels, I'm testing my new tool: the Olfa PC-L knife which I use for carving/engraving lines. So far it works better than Trumpeter's Hobby Line Engraver that I used before.

 

 

 

 

Here you can see the bays after adding details. The "shelf" at the bottom hasn't been glued yet, that's why it's crooked. Once it's all assembled, painting it would be a nightmare, so I'm going to paint it and assemble in stages.

 

 

 

These are the parts of the lower hull plating (not finished yet).

 

 

 

The whole thing is terribly angular, so I decided to add some curves here. It's hard to do it with HIPS sheets, so I'll use a proven trick: a PC mouse. I'll try to incorporate it into the bridge somehow.

 

And that's it for now. Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for watching.

Wiesiek.

[Yg Models]

huge ship 🥰

[Pete in Lincs]

Very different and very interesting as always with your builds. I look forward to the next entry.

[Hunter Rose]

Oh man this is looking cool already! Will enjoy watching this come together Wiesiek 

[rockpopandchips]

Dame that's looking ace already!

[Thom216]

Holy Sh*p!!! Looking very cool!

[ArnoldAmbrose]

On 11/1/2024 at 6:38 AM, voozet said:

I strengthened the joints with additional HIPS strips and L-shaped profiles. It may be an exaggeration, but I am afraid that with such dimensions of the model, the joints will crack due to internal stresses.

G'day, although my models are much smaller than this, one of my policies/philosophies is 'if in doubt, add more reinforcing now'. 🙂

This does look interesting. Regards, Jeff.

[HK-500]

I like it a lot , the general shape remembers me of the racers in a Playstation game : WipeOut 👍

[voozet]

Thanks for your interest and comments, gentlemen.

The initial stage of work on the bow is not very visually impressive, but it has to be done. First of all, I had to thicken the upper hull plating.

 

The edges need filler, but it's a stinking job. I'll wait until there's more of it and then I'll do it all together.

I'm not good at planning and calculations, so each larger element is created in small steps: I add subsequent pieces and assess whether it looks good. If so, I add another HIPS piece to match the previous ones.

You are looking at the underside of the front of the ship.

 

Let's say this is the underside of the flight deck. The black oval element is probably a piece of headphones. It had a lot of holes arranged in a circle that spoiled the look, so I covered them with a HIPS circle. The three holes in the middle seemed cool to me, so I left them visible.

 

 

It looks pretty good in my opinion.

 

Now I have to think about the design of the upper part of the bow. I would like the bow to consist of three separate, elongated elements: a flat, wide flight deck at the bottom and two narrow split structures at the top.

Be warned: trying to imagine what it will look like is doomed to failure. With this way of working, even I can't imagine it now 🤣.

Thanks for looking.

Wiesiek.

[Uncle Monty]

Another epic build, I can't wait to see where this goes

[voozet]

Some photos of recent works.

First, the bridge.
Let's say the circular structure is an operations room. I will cover the white HIPS strip around the perimeter with a tape from a video cassette. It will resemble glass with a reflective layer. I wonder what scale it could be? The strip is 6 mm wide. If this room were about 3 meters high, the scale would be about 1:500 if I count correctly.

 

 

The fitting showed that it had a bit too little detail...

 

...so I took some from the spare parts box.

 

The upper part of the mouse is not mounted.

 

And that's continuation of creating the bow. To make my work easier, I used the printer's toner cartridge instead of building components from scratch. First I cut off the piece that looks like the air vents and then I split it into two pieces.  I also prepared pieces of HIPS that will allow the "vents" to be connected to the bow, creating the lower hull plating.

 

In the photo below the ship is upside down. I took these photos without the panels that will be at the very bottom. It's difficult to photograph all the elements until they are attached with glue.

 

And here the ship is in the right position. The bow still needs a bit of HIPS glued on to cover the holes

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

Wiesiek.

 

[Thom216]

That looks like it'll cause more than a 'scratch!' There's a Fifth Element feel to it with that flat-ish profile and sharp superstructure, except for the bifurcated bow. Nice use of the cartridge, I am assuming it is a bow gun?

[voozet]

14 hours ago, Thom216 said:

There's a Fifth Element feel to it

 

I haven't watched this movie in so long that I forgot that there are more than just flying taxis 😉. But you're right: the similarity with the Earth warship is considerable.

 

14 hours ago, Thom216 said:

Nice use of the cartridge, I am assuming it is a bow gun?

 

No, it's just an unfinished bow 😆

I'm going to cover the holes with plastic. Something like this. Please excuse my level of digital graphics skills

[Richard E]

On 11/18/2024 at 8:32 PM, Thom216 said:

Nice use of the cartridge, I am assuming it is a bow gun

 

I was thinking "hangar bay" .......

 

Sitting quietly at the back and enjoying Wiesiek's obvious modelling skills conjuring the physical from his imagination...

[voozet]

This is what it looks like, what I tried to paint digitally in the previous post.

 

The bow is almost in its final shape. However, at the other end of the ship, work is just starting.

 

I also started creating the sides, or side walls, or whatever you want to call them.

 

This is the shelf that will be located above the flight deck.

 

 

 

 

These are panels that will diversify the appearance of the upper surfaces of the hull.

 

Thanks for looking.

Wiesiek.

[Pete in Lincs]

It's taking shape very nicely and does indeed look big.

[Uncle Monty]

Very impressive work! Your panelling is excellent as always

Have you mentioned colours yet? I rather like the blue....

[voozet]

3 hours ago, Uncle Monty said:

Have you mentioned colours yet? I rather like the blue....

 

I haven't thought about painting until now. I would prefer to use yellow, but it probably wouldn't fit here 😝

Blue is not my favorite color. So far only one model made by me is partly blue and there are only a few blue paints in my cabinet.

But I don't rule out this color variant. At least it would be pale blue rather than deep blue, because I'm not good at modulating dark shades.

[Uncle Monty]

I'm thinking blue with yellow stripes like a sort of futuristic emergency vehicle

[rockpopandchips]

That is a cracking-looking ship, to me, it looks like a massive railgun, sort of Gundam Meteor type but ship-mounted. 

[Malc2]

This is great.

Always a pleasure to follow your builds!

Malc.

[voozet]

I am glad that my work has gained your recognition 🙂

 

Work at my shipyard now has two directions. The first one is the tedious process of gluing subsequent pieces of plastic to close the hull structure. It's boring, and hard to show because I can't take a photo in a tight space.

But next to that, I'm slowly making details and smaller structures, like bridges, reactors, etc. I am also constantly improving the surface of the sides and decks.

 

The smaller bridge above the landing deck seemed a bit flat and uninteresting to me. Probably because I forgot to glue the small turret I made at the very beginning. 🤔 I added it now.

Next to it is a hangar gate, with an airlock made of a tank hatch and a piece of a Soviet jet engine casing. The hatch is of poor quality, and there are gaps when closed, so I will leave it open.

 

This is where the hatch will be placed. The side walls along and belo the landing path are enriched with various trinkets.

 

Here\; the same part of the ship  with the landing path control bridge. The deck below the path will be partially covered (white HIPS frame). I may have to cover the white pipe I put there because it looks like a sewer outlet...

 

Main reactor module. Tank turret base (I think 1:72), acrylic paint jar and part of a coffee machine filter. And some greebles.

 

The reactor section will be at the rear of the ship, just behind the main bridge.

 

It all looks a bit patchy and kitschy for now. But this is always the case when making a model from many different materials.

It's a bit distracting because it acts as camouflage, disturbing the overall view. Usually, applying primer is enough to improve the appearance. I hope it will be the same this time.

Thanks for watching.

Wiesiek.

[Thom216]

Yeah, adding that primer coat will unify the whole thing. Nice bit of detail work going into it!

[voozet]

Hello everyone.
Continuation of upper hull plates' paneling. This process is a bit like creating digital images: it is simply adding layers of texture.

I glue basic shapes onto a flat 'canva' until I think it's enough.

Here is an example of such a simple, basic structure.

 

Below is a slightly more advanced structure. HIPS pieces of different thicknesses and shapes, arranged in layers that also have different thicknesses to create the illusion of multi-level structures. Plus the first greebles. Probably the track drive cover of a German tank and the box from Matilda or something like that. There will be more, but the selection of bits is difficult for me. I have a huge amount of them, but they are mainly tank parts that are difficult to use when building a spaceship.

At the very bottom you can see a gray element from another AFV. A side part of the hull of some unknown vehicle. I got a whole box of modern AFV parts painted with black primer but not glued. This is one of them, cleaned of paint.

 

I was still not satisfied with the results, so I decided to add one more layer. A thing I made much earlier and which was supposed to go somewhere else. But I thought it would fit much better here.

 

This hasn't been glued yet because it will be painted separately. So as not to forget about it, I made "x" marks which you can see on the black panels.

 

 

Thanks for looking.

Wiesiek

[voozet]

Next small step. Really small, but it's a long-term project, so there's no rush.

These are the panels for the upper surface amidships. If the spaceship also has amidships, of course. Unfortunately, my English is poor in specialized vocabulary, and Uncle Google can give stupid suggestions sometimes.

 

Those of you who built armored models from World War II will probably recognize some of the elements glued to the panels. There are also here some parts of the helicopter fuselage.

 

 

As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of bits from AFV and aviation kits. But I don't use much of it in this project because most of it doesn't fit visually.

However, sometimes a small modification is enough to change it. The landing gear strut and wheel of a 1:48 Soviet jet plane look like a radar after replacing the wheel with some arched element, right?

Another thing is that such a radar looks quite archaic, considering that right now ship radars are basically just walls of superstructures. On the other hand: The Millennium Falcon has a radar dish.

 

 

I'm slowly starting to think about a color scheme and decals. Recently I tested printing decals on white paper. I mainly printed things for military dioramas for friends, so there's a lot of stars and stripes here 🙂. But I also threw in some hazard stripes for myself. And some futuristic corporate logos, as well as the USNC logo. The HALO'ish look is one of the options I'm considering if the ship will be a fighting unit.

 

And that's it for now.

Thanks for looking.

Wiesiek.