Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

very disappointing. Went to a lot of trouble building a topic on my Falcon build, lighting, painting techniques - TWICE, after photobucket pulled their extortion stunt - just to find out now that it's been erased / pruned. I cannot fathom why those genre forums are being so ruthlessly erased. So man...

A lot depends on who produces the kit. I have some which require a lot of work to get the pieces to fit well, others (like Atomic City/Captain Cardboard) look like styrene kits just from a different material. Emphatically this. Be aware of or research the quality of the products of the maker. A pou...

The pin locations above and to the rear of the trigger opening and the shape of the trigger guard certainly look like a S&W to me and the sizing ought to be a K-frame. Pachmayr grips for it should have a Pachmayr logo / medallion. Were it a Colt, the grip might have had a Colt medallion instead....

I don't think that's a casting defect you are trying to fix, rather that it's an accurate casting. The threaded insert opposing that grip retention screw falls right against the Pachmayr logo on those 64/66 model S&W revolvers, on those old-skool grips. It's larger than the screwhead and Pachmay...

Sand the ends of the bulbs AND use at least one layer of diffusing material. Indirect lighting works great too. Don't point the ends of the bulbs at the 'exhaust'. Long, long ago in a small bedroom far away, I built a lightbox out of cardboard for the engine bay and faced it with aluminum foil. I ai...

Instead of throwing away the covers to your rattle cans.... turn them into paint brush holders. I did it by cutting out a notch, across from each other, on the cover. These notches will allow you to lay a paint brush across the cover and out of harms way while you are using it. So while I am brushi...

Those under tight noise constraints should consider a CO2 tank with a pressure regulator. You can run your airbrush for a VERY long time in this manner and refills are inexpensive. And the tanks come in all sizes to fit whatever space available you have. Those with expensive airbrush manf continuous...

good deal. I missed that the whole build wasnt' complete. Makes the rest easier and you can tailor everything to the same feed voltage and get all your parallel circuits running off the same power source.

I know how to calculate resistors for a parallel or serial configuration, but I am not sure how to go about adding the resistor between the power supply and a parallel circuit already built. In parallel you want one resistor per led, but as I explained above, I can't do it. It will have to be one r...

a well cured hard lacquer finish is pretty durable. make sure any clear lacquer topcoat is compatible with your choice of paints. or vice versa. Make sure the color coats are cured first, before lightly clear coating. Apply multiple light clear coats, rather than one heavy. Paint your object at leas...

the smoother the undercoat and the lighter application of ALCLAD the better. You can get some amazing results with it using 5-6 very light passes, building up the reflectivity a bit at a time. If you go for full coverage in 1 pass or two, you might as well be spraying krylon. 'Chrome' on a PVC pipe ...

Just use the thick carbide disks. The trick to it is let the speed do the cutting. Do NOT bear down on the cutting bit. If things start to glow you are applying too much pressure. Letting speed do the work will preserve the bearings in your dremel, which don't hold up well to severe side-loading (pr...

I just put an extensive post on just that subject in one of the stuck topics, one week ago. Ohm's Law is the equation you need. My post is near the bottomg, on the 23rd http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?t=38441 eta - you already have values for V and I, you're solving for R. You're w...

templates / stencils, with a random cutout pattern a la modern digital camoflage. Low air pressure, very low paint flow, darker shades first. Randomly move the stencil around, rotate it 90 degrees each shot, to randomize the pattern even more. Pre-mix the paint shades and be VERY subtle in their dif...

earlier today I picked up a few components, working on some lighting projects myself. I tidied up my old LED related stuff to see what I was missing, vs what I wanted to try. I also dug out my breadboard. So this evening I set about testing some loose LEDs to ID them, so I set up a sort of scale tes...

I've found and watched that sidelight fiber video, interesting stuff. I can think of a lot of model and diorama uses, 'power conduits' and the like. But I'd be surprised if it put out enough light to sufficiently light something like a warp nacelle. I'd like to see the end product from anybody who's...

I'm not seeing anything about the most basic circuit layout, or any discussion of the fundamentals. Stuff like Ohm's Law, which a modeler can use to calculate the root-level requirements for lighting an LED, or simple circuit of LEDs, using any desired DC voltage. A decent explanation and diagrams c...

Thanks a-lot, I really try not to shop at Wall-Mart if at all possible OK...Not Walmart eh...Wall Wort. A lazy American name expression for a wall socket plug power supply or comonly also refered to as AC Adaptors. You can find them less expensive ones at a WalMart. A place which I never do darken ...

If you're referring to shining a light source on the side of a strand of fiber, or counting on light spreading / shining out from it, that's kind of the opposite from how fiber is meant to work. It's generally meant to carry light from one end to the other with minimal transmission thru the sides of...

you have to put a known voltage to it and measure the output at the other end. But if it's shorted at the mounting that won't work. If it's burned out but shorted on the board, you'd still get the continuity. I really don't see a ready way to tell, short of dismounting it. And if you're going to tha...

I just stick them out ~1/8" then they don't really interfere with airbrushing much, particularly if you keep teh spray perpendicular to the surfaces. Then I just go back with some fine flush cut electronics nippers and cut the protruding fibers off. At the scales of most of the objects you'll l...

pin vice works great and is a must have for this kind of work, but man will your hands get tired using it, drilling a few hundred holes. Next time I do a large lighting project I'm going to see about chucking the bits in the wand extension of my dremel. Maybe with low speed I won't break many bits a...

how about using an actual metal scribing tool? A scratch awl.

salt. pour a pile, grind it up some, so you have some variation.

build / sculpt it using clear 100% silicone caulking. Build it up in tubes / layers, as if decorating a cake, but hanging upside down. Use a thin clear rod as a core. Sculpt / feather the final layers. End light with very bright LEDs. In fact I'd think arranging the lights in a ring inside the engin...