MPC Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha - Flimsy Base Construction

My prefered medium was landscaping plaster and plaster cloth.

Trickiest part is finding some soft foam to hold the base inverted, and level.

I would bury a machine screw with a fat washer before (mostly o_O) pouring the filler, which helped for "dead certain" mounting on a base (the base gets a caouter bore, the screwes get a nut and washer , then the screws cut to suit).

My 2¢, spend it as you will.

Mark,

That is awesome, I'm super jazzed that it worked well!  I also had excess CA glue pooling and not hardening.  And that is why I tried to hurry things along with accelerator and ended up with a melted spot in the hull!  And yes, paper towels work just as well as fiberglass, so long as you get full saturation.

The wall plaque idea is brilliant - I was wondering if the 1/350 K'tinga would also make a nice wall decoration!  You know, with a Klingon insignia base and halo lighitng...

Please post pictures of your progress!

Real G,

Your suggestion worked brilliantly!  Definitely going to keep it in mind in the future.  It's super easy to do, too.

My hobby shop had some glass fibre cloth, which I cut into strips and then covered with a layer of CA.  One layer gave me enough strength, but the great part about this method is you can do it as many times as necessary.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have spent the extra money on the glass fibre cloth, as paper towels would have done the job just as well.

If there is a "trick", I guess I would just recommend not "soaking" the strips too much.  There were a few places where the CA didn't have enough material to bond with, and still hadn't dried 24 hours later.  I spread a bit of baking soda around on it, and it hardened instantly.

Anyway... Now that I have a solid base to work from, the rest of Moonbase Alpha should be much more enjoyable to work on. 

Incidentally, I've decided to mount this effort vertically on the wall, since it's 18" x 18".  I absolutely don't have that much horizontal space anywhere, but I can probably negotiate with the wife for a section of wall out of the way somewhere.  ;-)

Thanks again for the assist.

Mark

Oh, that's nice.  I have the 1999 repop, so the base is in two pieces.  I was planning to make mine more accurate, so I'll have to scratch a new base.

Yes, this version was updated with fixes for the original release.

Hi Mark,

Has this version of the base been accurized?  I remember the original release and the 1999 repop were missing a launch pad, and some of the buildings or travel tubs were inaccurate.

That's a great idea!  Thanks for the info!

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but for my Modelkasten Oskar that had a big vac-formed hull, I cut thin strips of paper towels (yes you read that right) and glued them inside, much like fiberglassing a boat hull.  The paper towel strips were laid in place with thick CA, pressed down to conform to the hull contours, then carefully saturated with thin CA.  I gassed myself when I got impatient with the CA accelerator and melted a thin spot in the vac hull due to the reaction heat.  But it did result in a light, super strong shell that has held up very well.  If you do go this route, I would suggest doing it before you cut the panels from the backing sheet.

https://flic.kr/p/9UnkTn][/url]Oskar 1 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

One modification you could do is lay sprue or similar like rebar in concrete, in combination with the CA/paper towels.

HTH