C-9979 Federation Landing Ship

Tackling my first resin kit. Got this one as a bonus from another transaction.










Not too many pieces. This is the point that my inexperience with resin kits comes into play. I really should have spent more time in the prep work. There were a few bad spots, bubble voids, etc... I really wish I had the foresight to rescribe the panel lines before I primed and painted it. O well, I bet I think of it next time.







Base coat













Thought this would be a good time to try out the liquid mask.












Simple little color pattern. Had I scribed the panel lines, I would have attempted a more complex pattern truer to the on screen version.











Other side













Dark Panels added













Assembled












Got the seal coat of Future on. Tomorrow I will do a satin varnish and start the weathering. Hopefully I can disguise some of my newbie mistakes. Bubble voids = battle damage, right?

Alex's Blocks

Almost 2 years in the making, this project turned out to be much more of a pain in the ass than expected. Paw Paw decided to make Alex some letter blocks. Simple right? Sure, when all you have to do is cut the wood and give em a little sanding. Ship em off to daddy for finishing.

So here's how this "little" project turned into a colossal job.

1.5" cube blocks, edges sanded down and all the burs and splinters knocked off. First step, stencil the letters, numbers, shapes, and symbols on each side. 42 blocks x 6 sides = 252 individual numbers, letters, shapes, and symbols. UGH... So i decided to throw in some color blocks and make a few into dice just to cut down on at least a little of the work.





Once everything is stenciled, comes the time consuming process of woodburning out all the letters etc... This process seems like it would be pretty simple, right? Not when you're working with barn-dried MS yellow pine.








The sappy wood slowed the process to a snail's pace due to the resin gumming up the tool. It was almost like wood melting instead of burning.










Once that long painstaking process was complete, time to prime them.











Decided to make the top coat black so that the individual lettering would really stand out.











Here are some after the lettering was finished. For the color blocks, I burned all the edges to make separate color squares.










2-3 coats of shellac for a final seal. I gotta say I am extremely pleased with the final product. No other kid will have a set of blocks like these. Makes the hours and hours of work really worthwhile. I wonder if he'll ever really appreciate it all? Prolly not.... O well, that's just part of being a parent, right?

Fairly productive day

Spent most of the day today working on my new spray booth. Check out the page if you're interested in my progress thus far.

Bear with me folks...

This is my first attempt at a blog... Learning as I go.