By Lawrence Salisbury

This model began as a sketch I made whilst on holiday in 1997. It wasn’t until May 1999 that I decided to make my first ever scratch-build model. I had built kits during my early teens, but had never got around to building anything original. I could have made things easy by fixing a scale at the beginning and building something small, but oh no, I thought, ‘it’s taken me all this time to get around to building something..., so let’s go big!

From my small, three quarter view sketch, I drew a fairly detailed, full size, ‘port side’ elevation and plan view. This gave me the overall dimensions of the model (800mm - length, 220mm - height and 250mm width). The plans also gave the added bonus of a really good motivational piece, which I stuck to some artboard and pinned to the wall. Although the model would take nearly two years to complete (working on and off around major home improvement projects and holidays etc) I kept looking at this drawing and telling myself ‘You will get finished....honest!’.

Everything on this model was guled together with ‘Supergule’. I found it just sticks almost anything to anything ...very quickly!. Now, I could have simply made just one complete ‘container style’ box section and taken moulds to get the other two, but I choose to make all three individually. As a result they took forever to make and are all very slightly different, but ‘hey, I really enjoyed making them so, what does it matter?’.

Right from the outset I knew I wanted lights. Although I’d never done lights before, I thought, ‘I can’t build this size of ship and not have lights in it’. I choose fibre optics, thinking they’d be the easiest to install and powered them by a mains supply. A centrally located pole would provide the mount and supply the power cables. Knowing this from early on meant that I could build strength into the core frame around the support.

The basic structure took shape quite quickly, but a mile stone in the whole construction was sorting out the sculpted nose section. The base of the nose was a plywood covered box frame with holes either side for the ‘prongs’. The top section however went through a minor design revision. I figured carving it from a block of 'balsa' wood would be the simplest way to get the sculpted lines. A measuring miscalculation however, forced me to rethink the design slightly, plus I could't be bothered to begin again having made a start on the carving!. Once sanded to the new shape, (‘it doesn’t really matter that it doesn’t look like my own drawing’), I found a local plastic moulding company who produced 2 ‘pulls’ from my master ‘male’ former. The black coloured, ABS plastic sheet used was approximately 2.5 mm thick. The two ‘pulls’ gave me the added security of knowing that if I screwed up one, I’d always have the other as a back up.

Why is it, that no one warns you about fitting fibre optics? They’re ‘Soooo’ annoying difficult to install. For the first place how do you get ‘em to stay put? They’re glass right, so what sticks ultra thin strands of glass to wood or plastic ? - (Answers on a postcard please). I tried most solvents and adhesives but in the end, good ‘ol masking tape stuck inside was the only method that guaranteed that they stay put. As a consequence, instead of the ‘Star Destroyer’ style light show I’d planned for, I have ‘a handful of strategically positioned, scale defining lights’ - in other words, ‘I got fed up trying to install any more!’.

Lights in-place and the head section now attached to the main body, meant that the fun part of ‘kit bashing’ could begin. I had already started with the two, pronged communications / weapons arrays, completing them to get me in the mood. Now the whole ship needed detailing and this was the really hard part.

Up until now I had glossed over the issue of scale, maths was never my strong subject. I couldn’t decide whether the ship was massive in size like the ‘Galactica’, or just ‘quite big’, like the ‘Rebel Blockade Runner’. I think I ended up with something in between. I had a real urge to super detail this model and make every panel individually, but this would have reduced the scale considerably, so I ended up only really detailing areas of interest and that ‘sold’ the scale. The starboard side exposed hanger for instance and the front nose panel became highly detailed. So did the engines, which originally were motor cycle cylinders I’d had in my bits box for years.

Unless you kit bash yourself, you can’t begin to understand the sheer pleasure of finding that special bit of small plastic attached to a sprue or alone in the bits box, which was destined to be ‘just there...’ on your model. My wife thinks I am completely mad, starring into boxes of small plastic shapes, but she coverts ‘...shoes’, so each to their own.

The paint job was frankly a nightmare. My decision not to go down the standard ‘spaceship’ colour route of white or grey, meant finding inspiration elsewhere. Inspiration came from The ‘Trade Federation - MTT’s’ from Episode I and German ‘Desert Corp’ style tanks of WW2. A grey, car body spray primer went on fine and gave a good base coat, but trying to find enamel based spray paint (in the right colour), and in any kind of volume, was almost impossible. I eventually found a stock of half price, stencil decorating spray paint at the local DIY store. But as my luck would have it, it provided a paint finish not dissimilar to that of glass paper!. After saying a number of times ‘Oh My God, I’m going to completely screw this whole thing up with a amateur paint job...’, I combined a number of different coloured sprays and nearly sanded the whole lot off again using a fine emery paper. Although not my intended method, this produced an interesting affect, which when complete looked pretty good. With a airbrush I added subtle shading for weathering using artist’s water-based gouache paint. Again not to much strong paint detail worked well to establish the scale.

The display stand was made from M.D.F. (Medium Density Fibre) board and a wooden broom handle, with a hole drill through it (for the wires). The whole lot was sprayed in Matt black car spray paint.

Finally, using an old cannibalised (240 Volts mains -UK) fibre optic lamp as the light source, I made a small (aluminium foil lined) plywood box. All the fibre optics were bundled together and a hole drilled into the end of the box. This box would contain the exposed light bulb powering the lights and not allow ‘light spillage’ into the rest of the model.

As my first ever scratch-build model, I’m very proud of it. I’m proud that I kept going and didn’t abandon it. I hope that this article and accompanying pictures may inspire others to build their first scratch-built design.

Kits I can remember using include:

• Tamiya - British Cruiser Tank MK VII A27L 1/35th
• Tamiya - Challenger Tank 1 MK3 1/35th (Floor plan - Port side rear section)
• ESCI - LAV 25 Command Vehicle 1/35th (Upper vehicle body - main top rear
• section / Floor plan section - Bottom rear section)
• Revel - Jagdpanzer IV 1/35th (Upper Turret section Starboard side)
• Airfix - Four Stroke Engine (Very Old!)
• ERTL AMT - Star Wars STAP Battle Droid

Image: Rear view

Image: Starboard side

Image: Top view

Image: Details on top

Image: Starboard side, before priming

Image: After priming

Image: Closer look, primed