So I spent most of yesterday expiramenting. Result are... well not stellar. I got the Eze Dope that did not mention anything about shrinking figuring that was the non-shrinking variety that Danfolf mentioned. Well... apparently that is not the case, as it warped the parts like crazy. So now the question is how do I tell the Dope that shrings paper from the Dope that doesn't?
Another problem I encountered, even after 4 hours the pieces were soggy to the touch. The image you're seeing aboce is the end result of leaving it to dry for about 10 hours. So... what did do wrong here? Everything I read said I should be able to apply the Dope with a brush straight to the cardboard and it would be dry in 2 hours. I used a 1/4" Oxe hair brush and literally just painted the Dope on in a single coat.
So I put some thought into it and thought I might have come up with a solution to both problems, though it was going to take a little while to do. So I set everything up so I could try several mixews of Dope and water. I hopepd into photoshop, made an image that looked like the HellCat V5 from Wing Commander 3 and 4, added a note about how much dope and water was in the mixture for that part, printed out the token, slapped 'em on some cardboard and went to work.
I set up a series of 4 mixtue variants, 100% dope, 1:1 dope and water, 1:2 dope and water, 1:3 and 1:4. Then I was going to vary how I applied the mixture: Across the entire part, or just on the edges. So all in all I had 8 expirament. I also set these up a bit differently. Before I jsut used magnets to hold the pieces down... and well 10 hours later and all.
This time I took 2 baking sheets and sandwiched the parts between them using magnets to hold them together. I then used an heat gun to head the sheets to prompt the mixture to dry faster. 2 hours later I popped the magnets off to see the results of my efforts.
And... once again not so stellar. Any of the parts that were treated with a mixture that was more then 50% water just pulled apart with a couple of them adhereing to one of the baking sheets.
the couple that were more then 50% dope... well they didn't seperate into layers and didn't adhere to the pans... but they also didn't sand very well at all. It was a like trying to sand wet sappy pine. It just turns gunky and doesn't produce anything useful.
So... yeah unless someone has some suggestion for something different I can try, I'm just writting the Dope off as a waste of time and effort for this project.
I did come across another possible idea: Mod Podge. Basically all I did was paint a layer of Podge onto a segment of cardboard, sandwiched it between the baking sheets and left it for an hour. The piece came out relatively rigid and sanded moderatly well (provided I sand out from the center). Sanding in any other way produced a sort of waxy build up.
However, a couple hours after I sanded the part, I noticed it was warping not as bad as with the Dope but still notably so. So not writing the Mod Podge off entirely, but there may be a time-factor to consider if I use it.
I also did some graphic work and designed some material for the landing bay of the Cruiser. I got a bit ambitious and applied a little fibre optic lighing to the bay. Not intended to be any sort of 'final effort' just more of a "How does this look if I try this?" sort of thing. For a first effort it works out well, though doing this with cardboard is somewhat challenging. I suspect it'll work better when I try it with styrene.
