Sweeeeet

Well played, Knight Models. This is a much higher quality product than I was expecting!

75 tons of Awesome

..but not actually an Awesome! The Griffin, Thunderbolt and Stinger are coming along nicely but I have only done the base colours on the Marauder so far because I'm not sure whether I should convert it to a more standard 3025 era loadout or keep it equipped with the SRMs and Blasers. Hmm..

Stick a fork in it..

..it's done!

http://warzone.prodosgames.com/downloads

Normal service will resume shortly

So a prior commitment to help with a project arose at the end of June and it has taken up absolutely all of my free time. This project is now in its last few weeks and once things are wrapped up I will be straight back into the AvP board..

Chopping up wood

Of course, the airlock isn't really an airlock. It's really just the room that leads to the airlock. Tonight I've been chopping up some of the pieces of a corridor section and a single wide door section to make the airlock itself. I think this one is going to need a lot of plasticard, not to mention some green stuff..

Airlock progress

So it turns out that it's actually five times the charm. With four sheets consigned to the bin, the fifth one finally turned out okay well enough to do 90% of the airlock. I will be adding a space behind the four smaller doors to store some EVA suits  (most likely the Ainsty ones) but right now the only other detailing step are the four walls leading into / out of the airlock. I was originally going to leave them blank but now I think I might put some detail on the lower part of those walls.

A watched pot never boils..

..but an unwatched Portrait never cuts. Three more sheets of plasticard and four hours down the drain. Let's hope 4th times the charm because I was hoping to get most of the airlock done tonight.

Dead Ends

Some of the dead ends I have customised and primed. I used some regular card for the one on the left to create a section of raised wall but I don't like how it turned out as it's obviously card. I will probably stick to layers of plasticard in the future.

Exits are: North, South, East and West

Have now assembled enough parts to do all four walls. One strip seems higher on the wall than the rest and my superglue seems to be turning into a gel when it dries which is another thing I have to clean up when it's done.

But.. we're getting there.

No really, actual progress!

3 layers of .25mm (10 thou) plasticard per doorway detailing. Ouch! Luckily I can still do the floors in the thicker .38mm with 'etchings' and there are only 8 or so rooms to do. Er, plus about 20 freestanding door sections. Gulp!

Progress

So, some progress with the plasticard. The new blade still wouldn't cut through the .38mm / 15 thou material but at least it cuts the .25mm / 10 thou card without crumpling it. Of course for every step forwards there are two steps back - even with the sheet taped to the mat, the fact that I have to run it through the Portrait twice means that a lot of the horizontal cuts are lifting off the mat and catching, causing all kinds of mayhem. I've salvaged a few pieces from tonight's test but now that I need two pieces so they can be sandwiched together (a single piece of .25mm just isn't thick enough for detailing) I still don't have enough pieces to build anything. Bah.

Tomorrow, maybe..

Sad Face

Well, I found out why you can't buy the SRM-6 from a Thor separately.. it's moulded on to the upper torso. Bugger. Now if I chop it off, I'll have to repair the Thor if I want to use it (sans SRM).

On the plus side, my new Silhouette Portrait blade arrived today. I'm really hoping my other blade is a bit blunt and this is going to solve my problem cutting the 15 thousand plasticard.. because right now it only cuts 2/3rds of the way through, and doesn't even cut all the way through on 10 thou plasticard either. Getting it cutting all the way through is essential if I am going to detail all of my sci-fi corridor sections before the end of the year..

..and now, something old school

A couple of months ago I broke open my Battletech Introductory Box Set to see if my kids could get to grips with the quick play rules and they took to it well enough that I ordered some nicer mechs for them to use. Of course, all the cool looking ones they picked out were only available from the US and they finally arrived last week. 

So we have Thunderbolt TDR-1C standing in for a 5SS (I originally got a 9M but the new Thunderbolts just look too weedy), a Marauder MAD-4X standing in for a 3R and a Super Griffin to be used as a regular GRF-1N. Now all I need is the SRM6 from a Thor for the Thunderbolt..

It begins with the end..

So after months and months of watching my sci-fi corridor mdf kits pile up, I decided I should finally make a start on building it now that my AvP pledge has (mostly) arrived.

I have started with the simplest components in the set - the dead ends - both to test how easy it is to customise the pieces and to get a feeling for practical its going to be to paint the parts individually before gluing them together. The primer is drying on those pieces right now but I'm already running into some problems with the detailing. It turns out my Silhouette Portrait just doesn't have the chops to cut through the 0.3mm plasticard I am using, even at the highest settings. This isn't a problem when it comes to separating large pieces from the sheet as I can bend the material and pop those pieces off.. but the small details have to be removed with a knife and the results aren't good enough.

Damn.

I think I have an MDF problem

Dry fitting all of my sci-fi space corridor sections so I can check for missing parts. That's a 6x3 table there and it's almost entirely covered. If I added on the rooms as well.. heck, it simply wouldn't fit.

Storing all this could be a problem.

..and then it was almost a year later!

Shhh. If you don't draw attention to it, maybe nobody will notice..