30 June 2010 | vacuform and soldering..

here is the shape as vacuform, that\'s the first try, it\'snot perfect and I have been burning my fingers (the plastic was too thick and Ibroke the wooden frame around, so i had to vac form it with my bare hands, howstupid can I be..

Anyway, most of the shape is there and I only need to use a small part

so here it is while being further deformed with my Dremel

Now something more exciting, the side way,a ll done insoldered PE and brass rod, it IS strong :)

You can also see some of the stanchions I use/ will beusing, actually I wonder whether the top cabin needs them.

 

that\'s what really cool with feeling \"free\" towards what i model in that i can sever this or that part for pure aesthetic reasons ;)

 

20 August 2010 | the tricks of the masters

Like I told 2 days ago, my 12th or so \"proposition forbetter dioramas\" is

« Never use anything out of the box, especially a trickshown by another modeller »

well, now one of the main aims of that dio was to try thetricks of da masters.

For reference I used that:

http://www.migproductionsforums.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3293 Some all stars sort of manual with explanation on the salt trick and thehairspray trick.

Yep let\'s do it my way.

First let\'s undercoat my elements with some rust sort ofpaint (various Vallejos)

My first difference is that I already used the direction ofthe light so that some parts -mainly in front of the thing for the anchor, oneof the size of the cabins etc- with some lighter shade while the underside ofthe cabin and the \"rear\" of the hull is undercoated with a far darkershade.

Then let\'s airbrush a thin layer of water and put some bigsized salt grains on the hull. of course those were so heavy that they didn\'tstayed in place on the anchor thing but then it could be useful for the base ofthe hull.

So same thing, several other coats of vallejo acrylicsdarker or lighter depending on the place I sprayed.

And then a  third coat with this time some much finer saltmixed with broken big salt grains.

Okay one conclusion from now on:

- If you put too much water for the grains to stick, thesalt tends to melt on the surface which is really very good because it givessome extra texture to the rust which would otherwise lack. (I usually applypastels mixed with paints to do that texture).

When i found out that, I sprayed some thin coat of waterABOVE the salt and let it dry a bit BEFORE spraying some paint coats.

Ah well second conclusion, it really works might fine :)