AT-ST scratchbuild

First off I commend you on trying something I've wanted to do for years and good luck. Here are some tips I learned the hard way during my first scratchbuild.

First off make multiple copies of any plans you are going to use that way you can use them as templates and white glue them to the sheet styrene or whatever it is you will use for the built.

Second if you start scaling with a calculator to get the right sizes for measurements, especially for multiple parts in an array, round off to the same decimal point everytime, it hurts if you don't my own experience.

Don't be suprised if when you get an assembly done you think of a better way to do it cause you probably will.

Get a metal straight edge for prescribing cut or break lines with your exacto knife. Straight lines are essential especially for what your working on. Better yet get a metal ruler and use it for all your measurements too. I know all rulers are supposed to measure the exact same but I find it easier to use the same ruler because you get used to the way the gradients are done on that ruler and you tend to start working quicker.

Drop some change at hobby lobby or an office supply store and get some shape templates, circles squares that stuff, you know. Also get a couple of triangles and a protractor, one with a swing arm to mark the angles is even better than a regular protractor, plastic ones will work fine.

 A framework inside any large structures will help with strength when you get the big parts done so building a honeycomb like structure to attache the sides and such to will help the trueness of the sturcture but it will slow the build time.

K&S  brass tubing ans plastistruct parts can be a lifesaver for this subject so see if you can find any "project" bags of multiple pieces or just go to the hobby lobby or whatever with a list of the sizes of stuff you need.

Also if you have a hobby shop around that has train parts they are invaluable for gizmology for scratch building. That and the new Dragon 144 scale armor kits which are softer plastic and onlt cost about 5 bucks for surface parts. They used tank models for alot of surface detail at ILM when they made the studio models.

Squadron White putty and testors red putty are good putties for scratch building. The red putty is softer than the white and cam be sanded much easier and quicker plus you can see it against the white of the plastic easier.

A plate of glass like a smooth cutting board or a small piece of plate glass will insure the structures are square as you put them together as it will not have any warpage to it, Noboty likes a crooked AT-ST LOL.

Don't try to do bevelled edges, just butt the edges up together and glue them then flat sand then on the piece of plate glass to ensure a true corner, you'll fight with bevelled edges till the world looks level

 To tell you the truth there are as many tips as the day is long as far as scratchbuilding goes anmd I bet you'll discover some that no one here has thought of but the biggest and best tip for scratchbuilding is patience, Patience and more patience.

Now someone else can rattle on for a bit

Tracy

P.S. Get a sanding block a piece of hard wood works fine, softer materials tend to cause malformations of the sanded part.

Thanks for the advice.  I think I am going to raid my local hobby lobby in the next few days, and i have some money burning a hole in my pocket.  After much debate i decided not to throw the AT-ST iinto the diorama because it would end up being 1/11 scale, too big for my first scratchbuild, instead I will probably do around 1/32 or even 1/39 to keep measurments simple. 

Do you know of any paper model templates on the web?

-Chris

I hit my local Hobby Lobby and Michaels, looking for some styrene stock and found.......nothing, absolutely nothing!!! Hobby Lobby barely had any balsa either.  Oh well I have enough left over from what i bought in the past it should get me through this model.  Well here are some pics of what I have so far.  I hope they come out i havn't exactly had good luck with pics in the past. 

if the pics don't work try the link

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/spacemonkey_369/album?.dir=/5e6cre2&.src=ph

Hey it's looking pretty good so far, don't give up for sure. You can work out the tricky parts. My only suggestion might be to make some of the major parts out of thicker styrene I can't really tell how thick your using but you'll need the strength later in the build.

Tracy

Yes, right now it's .02 inch sheets but the .04 was too thick.  I am going to reinforce it with a frame though.  Just started it today but i'm hoping with school it will still go quickly, at least the main sections.

-Chris

Here are a few updated pics.

This is the first "skull" i created.  As i was dry fitting it i noticed nothing lined up right even though the paper templates i used did (not sure how that happened).  I ended up shaving slivers off to make it fit correctly, the end result was off by at least two millimeters in all directions (makes a big difference in a smaller scale).

This is the second second skull disassembled with some of the plating layed on top.  with a dry fit i found that the second skull fit together correctly.

And here is the second skull completed.  It is much crisper than the original but more importantly the dimensions are correct

And finally here is the second skull with most, but not all of the panels on it.  I still need to round out some of the corners.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier but this is in 1/48 scale so it will end up being about 5" tall.  I was also wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how i could make the semicircles on the sides which hold the weapons. 

-Chris

Tracysw wrote:

Don't try to do bevelled edges, just butt the edges up together and glue them then flat sand then on the piece of plate glass to ensure a true corner, you'll fight with bevelled edges till the world looks level

Man! Aint that the truth!

Also on the AT-ST one of our club members just got the incredible resin studio scale model (VERY limited availabilty on those on the RPF forums) and th master used as many of the original parts from models as possible, including a opposed engine block for the core ofthe lower unit. most of the fun onf this thing is to figure out what is what on the kit!  

Since this beast (in scale with the Biker Scout ) will be huge it will be very topheavy and spindly. You may well make the lower unit out of as much brass tubing/square stock as possible. You can get a bag of offcuts at Hobby Lobby for 15 dollars and I love the selection in the bag. I would build heaver at the bottom and lighter as you get to the top. Good luck with it, I want to start my speeder bike sometime this year.

David

ilikespagetti wrote:

Another thing you could do, is for all the big main shapesuse a paper model kit for templates

That sounds like a very interesting way to do things. Makes a lot of sense to me. 

Chris89 wrote:

I was also wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how i could make the semicircles on the sides which hold the weapons.  -Chris

Look for wooden balls, or plastic hemishperes about the same size and sand and shape to fit, or you can cast an existing shape from an item close to the same diameter. 

agreed on the circular shapes. You will find that the vast majority of shapes in sci fi are based on tank road wheels or existing hemispheres from Evergreen, etc.  Sometimes its making the investment in another, old (cheap) and robbing it of everything useful (and its ALL useful) for getting the details we want.

head over to lizardstomp.com and you will see how he integrates his shapes into his models and hides what they started out as.

David