Gene's Viper-in-a-month - NEW Photos on page 14 !!!

[Wombat]

Gee if ya can get that wing off Jon that would be sweet.
Hell,get four litres mixed up if ya do,i'll take a litre of ya hands.

So far though outa you tests there i like that Krylon Pewter Gray the most.

[GKvfx]

Now we're cooking.

One of the cool things about this casting was that it came with a copy of the armature that was inside the Viper. It had the front/rear/top/bottom mounting holes. (There was a Viper that had a side mount out of the port side, but this one didn't have that block or the hole cut out in the fuselage.) And it also had the brass engine cans that housed the lights. Since I have a model stand that was used on the show, I figured it would make a nice overall display. I guess this armature was one of the main reasons I bought the thing in the first place.

I decided not to use LED's for the engine lights because I'm not entirely sold on their color. The halogen bulbs I found at the hardware store got incredibly hot very fast, so I wound up compromising and getting some small bulbs that kinda looked about the right size -



I made my own little bi-pin sockets out of some brass tubing. (I didn't want to solder them in place in case I blew one out.) The threaded tube was found at a hardware store in the lighting section. It's used for table lamps so you can run a wire up into a lamp and secure the whole thing to a base using the nuts. they are great for miniatures as it allows you to run wires up from a base into a model. If you don't like the threaded appearance, you can slide some plastic or brass tubing over it. In this case, I'm just using them as sockets that attach to the back of the engine cans.



Contrary to popular belief, the tubes that carried the liquid nitrogen were in front of the bulbs - not behind them. I left them off cuz it looked like it would be a pain to change the bulb (and I'd have to drill a hole in the brass engine can.)

Nothing really tricky about the wiring. On the real filming miniatures, hookup points for the lighting were mounted on the body next to the top and bottom mounting points. There were a couple of wires running to the nose that could be pulled out and hooked up if need be. (If you look at some of the original X-wings, you'll see a series of small holes just ahead of the wings. Those are just small brass tubes that allowed them to plug in wires to power the lights. The Vipers used the same technique.)



Since my Viper will likely only ever be mounted from the rear or from the bottom, I added a set of leads running to the rear and deleted the wires running to the nose and to the top. I'll add a couple of pieces of brass tubing to the top of the fuselage, but they won't be hooked up to anything.





Once wired up, I hooked it up to an old train transformer that I found I still had. They don't glow white hot, but that's fine, I can compensate with camera exposure.



The last step in this process was to spray the whole thing black (the interior of the engine cans stay a nice, shiny brass, though).


I was amazed at how quickly this self etching primer dried. Something like 30-40 minutes in a warm-ish room.


So, as of now, all the parts are ready for the main assembly. I need to open up the fuselage to get the armature inside (this takes a bit of work with the Dremel, so likely, I'll wind up opening part of myself up in the process.....). I'm hoping that by the end of the weekend, I'll have a Viper body with its armature inside, with the wings on, ready for a basecoat of paint.

Gene

[The Cat]

Thank. You. So. Much. For. Sharing. This.!!!

[RKW]

Why did you spray the armature black?

The brass tubes were visible on the originals.

[GKvfx]

Originally Posted by RKW

Why did you spray the armature black?

The brass tubes were visible on the originals.

Actually, the armatures and the outsides of the brass tubes were sprayed black. The inside of the brass tubes stayed shiny.




For some reason, and I haven't gotten a conclusive answer why, the brass tubes protrude from the back of the engine about 1/8" on the lower two engines only. On the upper engine, there is a slight resin lip that sticks out about the same amount and the engine can rests flush with this. Another way of looking at this - imagine resting the Viper body vertically on the engines and spraying it. The inside of the brass engines won't get sprayed, but the outside lip of the two lower engines will pick up some paint. Of course, with handling, there were probably chips taken out, revealing the brass underneath.



Gene

[Max Zephyr]

Nice work on that armature!

[RKW]

But what sense would it have made to paint every armature black? You can't see it other that the little bit that juts out of the engines. The heat produced from the bulbs would have caused the metal to expand and contract likely causing any paint applied to crack and flake off. The only time I could see it making any sense would be for a Viper whose engines were never to be lit like the one crashing on the ice planet.

Thanks for taking the time to show the paint comparisons. Will you get to see Jon's wing in person before you apply the basecoat?

[79 daytona]

Again thanks for sharing!! This is so COOL!!!

[GKvfx]

Originally Posted by RKW

But what sense would it have made to paint every armature black? You can't see it other that the little bit that juts out of the engines. The heat produced from the bulbs would have caused the metal to expand and contract likely causing any paint applied to crack and flake off. The only time I could see it making any sense would be for a Viper whose engines were never to be lit like the one crashing on the ice planet.

Yeah, well, there are a lot of things I question with these models. But I'm just replicatin' what I'm seein'. For the nose, there wasn't an intake part that covered up the armature inside. They probably painted it black to cover that up and just sprayed the whole damn thing. As for the heating up and flaking - I'm not so sure. The brass is fairly thick and it will act like a heat sink.

Originally Posted by RKW

Thanks for taking the time to show the paint comparisons. Will you get to see Jon's wing in person before you apply the basecoat?

Nope - Jon's heading out of town this weekend/next week and I'm hoping to get a basecoat on this sucker on Sunday night. I'm probably just going to go with one of the colors I sprayed the other night. This train has a good amount of steam and a long road ahead, so I'm not gonna wait.....

Gene

[Carson Dyle]

Wow, not only has Kozicki started another model, but he appears determined to actually finish this one!

One thing's for sure; the finished piece is going to look a helluva lot better than the original miniatures. The paint and weathering work on those things was abominable.

Very nice work, Gene.

Keep us posted.

[Bishop37]

Originally Posted by Carson Dyle

Wow, not only has Kozicki started another model, but he appears determined to actually finish this one!

You guys crack me up!

[GKvfx]

Originally Posted by Carson Dyle

Wow, not only has Kozicki started another model, but he appears determined to actually finish this one!........

I am ALWAYS determined to finish every model I start. I can picture them all finished right now.........

Gene

[OTIST]

Originally Posted by GKvfx

I am ALWAYS determined to finish every model I start. I can picture them all finished right now.........

Gene

Don't you mean you have pictures of all of them finished (just none of yours are!)

All kidding aside, nice work on this project Gene, it's looking great. Your saving Bob alot of legwork for when he does mine!

[REL]

Originally Posted by GKvfx

I decided not to use LED's for the engine lights because I'm not entirely sold on their color.

Gene, you can use Warm White LED's, they reproduce the look of the old light bulbs used on the studio models, not the blueish white like the white LED's.

And the work on this is above and beyond, truly fantastic.

[Mr. Wabac]

Originally Posted by GKvfx

(There was a Viper that had a side mount out of the port side, but this one didn't have that block or the hole cut out in the fuselage.) Gene

Gene:

Fabulous piece of work. The main fuselage doesn't appear to be in as bad shape as the starting point for some of the resin kits that have come out. It certainly doesn't look bent. I know what you mean about the orange stripes. RTV is amazing with what it will pickup for details. I made a mold from an industrial model I had, which had custom decals applied. The RTV mold picked up the decal pattern !

Regarding the quote above, are you saying that the custom armature simply didn't have the port mounting block ? Looking at one of your photos it looks like the circular cutout for the port mount is there on the casting.

Sure would love to be at the show in LA. At least I can say I've seen the pilot on the big screen before. Twice actually, before it aired in the US. Just a perk for being Canadian I guess.