MechTech

Sorry to hear that Pengbuzz! I hope all works out for you! - MT

I saw a guy building the Hatchette Bismark. That is just insanely expensive for a kit. That display is CRAZY cool!!! I didn't know they had small screens like that commercially available, but then again, I haven't needed something that size. Would be cool if you could do that for 1/72 scale. - MT

He looks great, in an evil sorta way. Great work and scratchbuilding! - MT

Pengbuzz, Rustoleum for metal is hot towards plastics. This stuff is great. I use the primer for most of my models. Cool Thom and Derex! Looking good! This place is starting to look like the Starship Modeller's Boards Its slow going, but you can see the helical drive from last posts at the bottom and the bolt it drives above it. The backplate will hold everything and the semicircular part is where the caps will feed around. The round milled piece (on top of double sided duct tape) will be cut in half to also be part of the cap feedway. It will all eventually come together. - MT

I like the colors SunDuk! Clean finish too. Nice mods Thom! Cool way to get an obscure vessel. Joscasle, that Tomcat is looking awesome! Great finishing details are going into your build! - MT

The YF-21 and Enterprise are looking great so far! I was having trouble trying to fit the old cap gun mechanism into the turrets I built. Hopefully this is the start of one that WILL fit. So far this is a steel sleeve with a helix soldered around it. A bearing fits on the front to support it. The planetary motor fits into the sleeve for compactness. This mechanism drives the bolt forward and releases it on the cap gun. - MT

Wow, I missed a lot of stuff the last few days! Some cool stuff going on! The Ghost looks like a cool kit! Derex, glad to see you and the other species are getting along now - MT

Cool Electric Indigo (on both). The Minerva cockpit is a cool idea. I'm glad you guys made up Derex. Cats actually make good modelling partners. They don't talk much, though mine keep bumping my hand for loves. - MT

That's great! I love the monster! I was going to share about the printers on sale too. I'm tempted to get one, but gotta replace my mill head first. - MT

Cool, thanks for posting! -MT

You're on to something BigS!!! Things have been slow going lately. I'm redoing my ship's turret. I had issues with the smaller 76mm turret sizes - I just couldn't get the cap gun guts to sit in them nicely. So I had to move up to the good ole' American (now owned by BAE) Mk-45 Mod 4 5 inch gun turret (used all over the world). This thing has more facets than a diamond! Thankfully there are good drawings for it online. I made the buck out of box wood and just sanded it on the disc sander with the table tilting and a compass. Forget doing this thing free-hand!. A "T" nut was added to the bottom to mount it and make pulling the formed plastic off of it easier (use duct tape to grab it if it get stucks). So no one thinks I'm the Martha Stewart of the modelling world, my first pull failed - not enough plastic surrounding the buck to pull down. The second had bad webbing on the backside. The next two were great! Until I sanded down the outside to make the angles crisp. That took too much and made holes. The fifth was with thicker plastic and worked out better. I STILL made a hole in it though! Thankfully small. Now I have to redo the cap gun inside to make it fit and fire at the slower rate of fire (one round every three seconds). - MT

Was having trouble with my PC... See, they like box art too! - MT

Sorry Derex, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you! I have two full grown cats. One LOVES the model ship I'm building, the other chewed on the mast. The first keeps trying to sit on the flightdeck, and collapsed it through the sides -three times! Nothing broken, but I had to add carbon fiber arrow shafts to support it. Now he doesn't try to sit on it anymore! If you save your boxart, protect your boxes! They make perfect beds for cats.

Derex, your fleet is coming along nicely! Now you can go where no man has gone before - actually having multiple models that are completed from a series! Thanks for sharing Big S. I saw those kits and was thinking about getting them. Looks cool. Electric Indigo, that looks smooth n clean! I'd love to see the Minerva. I had the original (Nitto?)kit reboxed as Battletech decades ago. I liked the design, but I forgot what scale it was. Never saw the series though. Joscasle, your Tomcat looks GREAT! For those that don't know, the kit is a masterpiece! I don't have one, but someone in our modeling club has been bringing it in. He said it practically falls together. He also used the mottled paint technique, but opposite using white. It looked like one of those custom Japanese anime paint schemes with snow flakes all over it. He used a mask to get the effect. That was before he started painting on the gray. - MT

Thanks for sharing these! What a blast from the past. Better be extra careful to stay within the lines now! - MT

Great pose and building it with more "action" than it comes out of the box! It's still one of my favorites despite how awkward it can be to work with. - MT

Lots of great builds guys! There's a lot of cool builds going on. Electric Indigo, that is coming along nicely. It's smooth, nice n clean. - MT

He he, redshirts. So that's what happens to them. That looks great Edstuff! - MT

That came out AWESOME Arbit!!! The video thoroughly highlights just how cool this project came out! Congrats on an excellent execution of a great idea!!! - MT

Thanks Derex. Yeah, I do remember building those. - MT

Cool Derex! I think they'll turn out alright. I wonder if the Round 2 kits are the same ones I built decades ago! They didn't all fit that great if I remember correctly. - MT

Looking GREAT Cap'n!!! -MT

Nice n clean build anubis! The color scheme works well. Great build CrossAir! Great photos too! Congrats on garnering a trophy Neptunesurvey! Great lighting job! Vifam, that is a cool model! I've probably seen that model several times and not realized how "Macrossy" it looks! I'm going to have to get one of those. - MT

This is looking awesome!!! - MT

Thanks Thom! Looking nice n clean anubis! Thanks for sharing Arbit! That is some cool lighting. I also got the crud too. DON'T take Zicam. I lost my smell and taste for a week. Thank God I'm getting them back. I searched and found out people have lost their smell and taste permanently, mostly from the nasal drops. Its some nasty stuff! So, I built those nice compact servo switches, glued them into my ship model, and they BOTH stopped working! Talk about frustrated. It turns out the diodes dropped the voltage too low to give the motors enough "umph" to move anymore. I could hear and feel them try to move, but they both jammed. Using only three volts really lowers your opportunities. So, I went even lower tech and older school and used wind-up toy motor clutches and a single micro gearmotor (6mm diameter) to drive them and cammed switches. One clutch faces upward and the other faces downward. When the motor turns one way, only one cam works and visa versa. It also weighs 6 grams less so that's another positive. It is not my prettiest work, but only you guys are going to see it. More detail work got done on the crane and more work on the ship's bridge as well. Bit by bit its coming together. - MT