Accurately Building Steve Paper's 3ft Galactica, Part II

[DJPinter]

This post is a continuation of my adventure building Steve Paper's 3ft Battlestar Galactica. I'll be talking about my experience building the model's mid-ship section. If you want to see how this party started click on over to my first post, "Sometimes, you have to roll a hard six."

Having finished the lower bow I was stoked to start the mid-ship. The assembly guide shows that the construction starts with the keel so I started cutting the hull pieces, 1a - 1f. Since the port and starboard pieces are mirror images of each other I compared 1a to 1b and 1d to 1f. 1a and 1b matched perfectly, but 1d and 1f didn't.


That second picture shows 1d behind 1f. I asked Steve about this. He said that the gap is pretty small and I should damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead! (ok, that was my interpretation ). If the gap bugs me he would rework the part and sent it to me. Hopefully I won't have to take him up on that offer.

So I glued 1a - 1e together using my embossing method to get a smooth hull. Yes, I know Zathros, cut the damn tabs off. *sigh* Next time. Then I noticed that the lined file (I'm building the line-free model, but using the lined-file as a guide) only has fold lines on the "valley" and there's no indication where to put the formers LH2 - LH5. While I mulled over what to do I about that I started cutting out and reinforcing the formers LH1 - LH6 and CH1 - CH6.

What this model needs is MORE STICKS!!


It didn't take long to reinforce LH1 - LH6. CH1 - CH6, however, took 3 - 4 hours...for each part. Pictures of those pieces in the internal sub-assembly are below. But first, I'd like to delve into the world of relativity.

The assembly guide shows where the formers are in the keel, but doesn't give an measurement so I decide to calculate the formers' positions relative (see what I did there! lol) to a spot on the keel.

I knew that the pod bay arm sub-assembly is 3cm across (arm assembly is in the next post) so grabbing my trusty metric ruler and the assembly guide I did some calculations.



I contacted Steve to verify my findings. He says that everything was correct except for CH6. I calculated 10.3cm but it should be 10.5cm. YES!! OBSESSIVENESS FOR THE WIN!!

He also reminded me that CH7 - CH10 have guide marks for each CH former. <headdesk>

Two days (6 hours project time) I have the CH sub-assembly is complete.


The blue/gray areas are where the pod bay arms will be installed.

That's it for tonight. The landing pod arms are next.
djp
aka DataZombies

 

[zathros]

That is one of the advantages of removing the tabs. If you come across a problem, either by design fault, or accrued intolerance, it becomes easy to print out another part with the same pattern and fit it in, and the model is none the worse for it. We had a program at Sikorsky Aircraft called, "File to Fit". Sounds scarey, eh? It is coming out really nice, and Steve, well, your working with the best, so it's all good.

 

[DJPinter]

Pardon the pause, I've been gorging myself on UHU02's site (my hard drive just burped in Japaneese). I think I've probably have enough patterns for there rest of my life...we'll see.

Anyway, back to Steve's BSG.

I needed a break somewhere between reenforcing CH-5 and CH-6 so I decided to tackle the pod arms. I completed the the fore and aft sub-asseblies and noticed that the arms had vertical and horizontal wiggle. If there's one thing I really hate it's wiggly pod arms. I traced the bad fit to my using 3 layers of #110 card stock for the S1 strips. To get the required thickness for inside of the arm sockets (AS-1 - AS-4) and LBAC-1 and LBAC-2 I needed 5 layers. I disassembled the arm sockets, reprinted parts and redesigned the internals. Here's a combination of the two attempts.

I started off the pod arm assemblies with reinforcing LBA1 - LBA4.


Yup. That's right...more sticks . Using the outside of one of the LBAs I measured out where the bends would be in the LBA1-1 - LBA4-2; 3.2cm and 4.4cm.


Using my sharpened chopstick I scored parts and cut them out. After the LBA is attached I added sticks to the inside where the arm will attach to the pod, see the first picture in this post. While all this work was going on I laminated 5 layers of #110 card stock for the S1 strips and my modifications. What the heck did I modify? Glad you asked.

Instead of just having stoppers (the S1 strips) I included runners; 4mm strips that run perpendicular to the stoppers. This restricts lateral movement and guides the arm in the arm sockets and the sockets in the...whatever the LBAC-1 and LBAC-2 are. Here you can see that I have cut down the S1 stopper on the arm to 2.2cm (ignore the 1.7cm measurement that's on the picture, 2.2cm is a better fit). To reduce the friction between the parts and preserve the printing on the parts I use Scotch tape on the inside of the arm sockets.


Since I have a runner on the bottom of the arm socket I had to cut off the glue tab on the top of the part (see Zathros, I cut a tab off!). Here's two shots of the sub-assembly with the runners. The stoppers (S1) on the arm sockets are also only 2.2cm wide.


Allow me to point out a discrepancy in the assembly guide. No matter how you rotate the arm sockets, you can't get the part 's seam to be on the top.


Here's the runner modification I made to LBAC-1 and LBAC-2. The glue tab on this part is ok .


Using runners also fixed another possible problem I noticed. If an arm is pushed in while the opposite are is extended the arm socket could become stuck in an LBAC because the arm socket stopper would have gone into the LBAC too far. This pic illustrates the issue and also shows that the runners prevent this from happening.


The resulting sub-assemblies have almost zero lateral movement. Hopefully the runners will help the arms support the pods.

 

[F131]

Great looking job so far!

 

[zathros]

Very nice, and this kind of build report is very helpful for those that follow.

 

[DJPinter]

Hello again. I needed a break from learning Swift so I did some fit testing.

Since my last post I put finished the keel and installed LH-1 - LH-6.


If you read the 1st post in this stream you'll remember that I obsessed about the spacing of the LH and CH formers. Well, I forgot the cardinal rule of carpentry; Measure twice, cut once. For me make that measure four times, take the average and add 5%.

Yup, they're off. *sigh* I was able to slice off LH-2 and reposition it. LH-3 and LH-4 are OK, I think. I'll decide whether to move LH-5 later. First I've got a question.

What the heck am I supposed to do with this?


Here's a test fitting of the lower bow into the keel.


How far is the lower bow supposed to be inserted? Next up is mid-bow added to the ship..


...and the upper bow on top.


Everything looks pretty good.

 

[Danscrew]

Indeed my friend...........pretty cool

 

[zathros]

Great detailing and a great chronicle. It will be very helpful.

 

[DJPinter]

Last weekend I was getting ready to write a post about the landing bay recesses when I noticed that the parts are mislabeled. I first noticed that something was wrong when the upper hull part UH-1L...

...didn't match the bulkheads CH-1 and CH-2 on the left side...

...but it did match the right side.

So the UH parts were mislabeled; L is really R and R is really L. With this in mind I carefully detached the UH2 parts. This shows the incorrect installation on the left and the correct on the right.

BTW, I love the way those parts lay. The part width and the space between CH-3 and CH-4 are exactly the same and the top and bottom fit exactly to the CHs. They just fit well.:happy:

I thought that was the end of the speed bump, but I was wrong. So far, every part that is numbered "1" has been at or near the front of the sub assembly. Which is why what the next pic shows puzzled me.

Yup, that's LBR-R2 installed on the first former. The placement of the landing bay recesses is important because the fore and aft ends of the part have different shapes.

The left end (LBR-L2) has a pointed end while the right (LBR-L1) has a more rounded end. So the LBRs are also mislabeled: "1" is really "2" and "2" is really "1".

To recap:
Incorrect.....Correct
Part Number...Part Number
LBR-L1........LBR-L2
LBR-L2........LBR-L1
LBR-R1........LBR-R2
LBR-R2........LBR-R1
UH1-L.........UH1-R
UH1-R.........UH1-L
UH2-L.........UH2-R
UH2-R.........UH2-L
UH3-L.........UH3-R
UH3-R ....... UH3-L

So this weekend I'm going to have fun cutting off the LBRs from the superstructure, recutting the parts from my backup copy, re-folding the parts and installing them. *sigh*

I've let Steve know. Hopefully (I'm right and) this will be corrected in a future release. When that happens (the correction, not me being right) I'll edit this post.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Thank you very much for pointing this out! This info is very useful for any builder.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

Thank you for the information. I am currently (even though, I have not touched it in awhile) a "BLOOD & CHROME" version, using the 1.5 ft. model. I will be keeping a close eye in this build.
Thank you once again for sharing your finds with all of us!!!

 

[zathros]

I changed the name of the thread. It sounded too negative for such an excellent thread!

 

[DJPinter]

Thank you, but the title was a Starbuck quote.

 

[DJPinter]

I got a lot done this weekend. To make a long story short, I securely glued in the pod arms and started working on the upper hull. When test fitting the upper hull pieces I noticed that the arms are too low.

There's no way to move the arms up. I'm starting the entire mid-ship section over. I've learned a lot while working on this section so the entire model would improve, I think.

Lessons Learned

1. Don't need no stink'n tabs.
2. Even though there are no lines on the parts, the fold line can be determined by overlapping patterns.
3. Use a black marker on the edges. Don't, however, use that marker on the butt joint between two parts.
4. Use the marker on the back of each part, near the edge.
5. A depleted ball point pen is the only thing you should use for scoring fold lines.
6. LBRC-1 & LBRC-2 being called the "floor" isn't even close to being accurate.
7. A&W Root Beer and Jack Daniels isn't bad.

 

[DJPinter]

I cut the time on reinforcing the formers in half.

 

[DJPinter]

The LH formers are installed in a new lower hull.


I have no fracking clue if LH6 is installed correctly.


Landing pod recesses cut and assembled. Location of the CH formers.


Since this is the THIRD TIME I'M BUILDING THIS SECTION, I've found that the positioning of CH2, CH3, CH4 and CH5 is critical. If the space between CH2 and CHR3, for example, is greater or less than 2.9cm the position of every other part will be off. Yeah, I know. I'm picky.