1/12 Atomic City Mercury Friendship 7 - COMPLETE!

Thanks, Buddho.

Movin' right along with the aft bulkhead details. Seat is now affixed, with additional weathering added. Apparently, the seat received considerable wear and tear before Glenn's actual flight, as seems to be the case with most systems on the capsule. This is nice, because it allows for some weathering fun.

So far, I painted several components black, added battery cables (the black leads), added the life raft, survival kit and whatever the sack is on the astronaut's right (made with masking tape, painted with chrome silver and covered with dullcoat - the effect is exactly what I was looking for). The white tube leading from the green oxygen bottle provides additional pressurization to the helmet area when the visor is down. I still have several details to finish up, then the wire harnesses go in.


http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury74.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury75.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury76.jpg

Wow! This is finescale modeling personified.  Could you remind us how you do the labelling and stenciling?

Thanks. Most of the decals on the aft bulkhead come from my scrounge box. I also used the kit decal sheet, specifically the stenciling used for the escape tower, which I will not be building.

The decals for the instrument panel are custom, simply reproduced using scanned images of instrument panel line drawings and making a bunch of tiny text, all printed on decal sheet.

SUPERB project and amazing scrachtbuilding, I can't wait to see this miniature masterpiece compleated. I have this model in my "to do list" awaiting it's turn to be built and after seeing your rework and build not only shows the amount of work needed for an hyper accurate model but also the potential of this model spacecraft and the 1/12 scale for superdetailing.

Fred

This is some of the highest-quality, most convincing scratchbuilding I've ever seen! Crisp, neat, and beautiful work.

Kevin

STOP using real photos of the craft and trying to pass them off as "models"...

I have seen some mighty ecellent and detailed work on various models, but nothing really compares, especially that overall finished efect of.."real"!Everytime you add something it's another Wow factor.

Hi Astrazoic!

Nice work yet again. To help me in my project, what type of wire are you using in your model?

And, how do you create the rubber connecting ends between the wire and the instrument boxes? (not sure of the technical term)

Thanks heaps!

Regards

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement.

Made significant progress on the wire harness attached to the instrument panel. Mostly, the cable locations and such are made up, since each Mercury had a different configuration and detailed photos are scarce. No big deal - the intent is to make the area look busy.

http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury83.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury84.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury85.jpg

Much of the detail will be hidden, unless you know where to look. There will be no cutaway. Mostly, I do the extra work because I enjoy it :) 

Wire is from a variety of sources, with some coming from radio parts (copper) and others coming from a hobby shop (very thin wire on a spool).

Connectors are made by bending solder to an elbow, then cutting off ends to size. Paint boxcar red.

Long after we are all gone, some historian, museum curator, or archaeologist will come across this gem and gaze at it in wonder. Then he'll scan it with whatever device the future holds for looking into sealed objects and say "The guy that built this was crazy!"

I guess most of us have heard of the fully detailed interiors of some old wooden ship models that were only dixcovered by the use of boroscopes.  The modeler didn't care if anyone would ever see it, he knew it was there.

Fantastic job on the Merc, Astrazoic.

Wow! Is this the kit instrument panel, or did you add detail to it? All those perfect little toggles switches, t-handles, and circuit breakers are amazing. Beautiful work!

Keivn

Thanks, Kevin.

Everything you see here, with the exception of the outer hull and heat shield pieces of the capsule, is scratchbuilt.

Beautiful. I take it that the wires that lead nowhere will be hidden behind the panel?

Once again, just awesome work.

Kevin

SUPERB DETAILING!!!!!!!!!! This model is so realistic and with so fantastic detail, that a photo album should acompany this model everwhere with all the progress photos you have posted, so people can see all the magnificent scrachtbuilt prototypical detail of this spacecraft model.

In my personal opinion, the "icing on the cake" would be an astronaut figure standing outside of his ship...like a postflight press photo.

Congratulations on a work of art!!!

                         Very great job !!!I have the same kit and if i can just do 1/10th of what you've done, i would be happy.You will certainly light the interior, it would be so sad to let all your scratchbuilt interior hidden.Any idea of what is the most accurate mercury mission to build the Atomic City kit ( as you know there are a lot of differences for each capsule/mission and it seems that the MRC replica is based on a MA mission, not an MR. 

Wow, this just gets better and better. Way to go, Astrazoic!

Kevin

Thanks again, everyone

Ok - almost at a big milestone: the joining of the aft bulkhead to the forward section.

I installed the instrument panel into the forward section, and added the mirror and window doors, among other minor details.

I then added wire harnesses and other details to the aft bulkhead, including the cooling hoses you see in the lower right quadrant. What remains are two more cables and the clock over the astronaut's left shoulder. Once that's done, the scary moment comes next!

Once the parts are joined, the model will be "over the hump"...

http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury96.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury97.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury98.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury99.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury100.jpg
http://www.philsmith.us/Mercury101.jpg

......well, words are not everything to discribe this amazing work of miniature art!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, your links are not "active" directly from the thread at the moment when I posted this, I had to see the pictures by replacing the picture number one at the time.

Again SUPERB work!!