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.

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..

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.