Got both kits light proofed and tested. Trial fitted some parts of the third kit to see if it still plugs and plays. It does. There’s no glue in the un-primered model. Just a nice tight fit.

All the windows are open on both models. Tomorrow I can start the actual build.

Steve

White primer over the black primer.

This is one star hat warm white LED. This LED has a very wide angle. It’s doing all the lighting alone.

Look Mom no glue.

Re: Kit of the USS Daedalus NCC-129?

This is not the unofficial start of Summer. Or the 3 day weekend of fun in the Sun and barbecues. Or an excuse to get falling down drunk, stuff your face and have loud parties. It’s the time remember those that fought to preserve your right to act to do all those things. Got three days off? Then you need to know who to thank. It’s not just about WW2 either but all the servicemen and women who fought and died for what they believed in.

The media is awash of this Memorial Day weekend. What to cook, wear, and and do, but I haven’t heard one of these embryonic amorphous masses ever once mention what the holiday is really all about and to give thanks, memory and honor.

Make it so…

Steve

It took almost two days of playing around with different approaches to some of the smaller stuff which gave me the most problems with trapped air. But it very minimal now. I think you guys can fill a bubble or two.

I have a bunch of parts in that two days. Enough to build three models with back ups.

Randy of Voodoo FX got me all my lights and boards today for the strobes, NAV lights and all the rest of the lighting. Rob starts on the decal on Monday.

So over the weekend I’m going to get as much built as I can. So check back often.

Steve

Today I got to open all the cored molds and clean them up for pouring. It all went very well and I didn’t need to drill any relief vents or injection holes. I did a few tests and got good results just pouring and shutting the molds. I did get a few bubbles more than the usual on the engineering hull with all the raised detail but I found the talcum powder worked spectacularly and I didn’t have to use the pressure pot.
Tomorrow I’ll have the rest of the parts I need. I poured up three sets today of the balls and the secondary hulls. One set gets put away for a raining day if the molds every need to be remade.
More tomorrow,

Steve

<img src=”http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l114/U-812/Daedalus%20Class%20Star%20Ship/IMG_7099.jpg”&gt;

Not much to tell today. Removed the molds from the boards and cleaned them up. Added a barrier of clay and brushed up a thin layer of silicone. The green is a different silicone I used to thicken up the edges and thin corners. I ran out of the other blue silicone.

Once the silicone set up I remove the clay and added clay over the the edges of the Ultracal to aid in venting over low of Alumilite and to relieve surface area. Keys were made with a router bit and drill.

Then I poured up Ultracal 30 to back the silicone. I will let these sit until Wed. when I can open them. Thursday I’ll run three kits. One as a master to put away. One to build for ads, instructions, video and my own pleasure. Another as a gift to Doug Drexler.

More on Wed.

Steve

Got all the silicone poured today. Vacuum chamber wasn’t working I have to fix it so I did a surface coat first and let the bubbles pop using compressed air. Then closed mother molds, bolted them down and poured.

I use Klean Clay all around the edges and possible leak points. The one picture you see where the silicone is starting to come out the small hole is a vent hole that I plug with clay once it fills. This relieves the trapped air and lets me know that part of the mold is filled.

All the silicone has gelled by now and will wait through tomorrow before I open them. I’ll leave the masters inside and fill the insides with more silicone on Monday to create the cores. This will produce nice even thin pieces to make it easier to file out the windows.

More on Monday,

Steve

By now some of you are probably lost but as they say one picture is worth a thousand words. Well here are several pictures.

I’ve removed the case mother molds after drilling holes through them for alignment and holding them to the surface.

I use little compressed air through the tops where we eventually will pour our silicone and the cases float off leaving the clay behind.

We carefully remove the clay as not to lift the master from the board. Clean it up with a brush and water.

Then I put them back together to let dry over night.

One neat trick is save the clay, compress it and fit it into a one gallon bucket. I now know that I will use about one half of a gallon of silicone.

As you can see all that is left to do is pour silicone through the open pour holes and we have a silicone case mold. These will be poured tomorrow.

These will sit for 24 hours so Monday I’ll make the cores.

More on that later,

Steve

Back to the Daedalus project most of the day was spent running around town picking up necessary items.

Some nice smooth press board to cut up and mount the individual master parts to. Nuts and bolts for the case molds. Styrene strips to extend the edges of the masters. EM 210 layup water based clay for the case molds.

And I picked up a vacuum pump and a pressure pot converted into a vacuum chamber. An old friend of mind had it on hand a just gave it to me! Talk about lucky me. The one I looked at two days ago was 600 bucks.

At this point you are probably wondering what a case mold is. We made plenty of these at the studios as it was the best way to do two things. Save silicone, and make and even thickness, smooth silicone mold.

This is how it works. You mount your master to the flat surface. I tack glue them in place to be later removed while keeping them inside the mold (this helps with doing the cores). Once mounted you build a smooth even thickness of water based clay over the master. What you envision here is the eventual silicone mold jacket. You also use half rounds and make a nice set of keys around the base. Later these will be used to capture the core.

The clay should be built up at the top in a cylinder. Like a volcano spout. This is where the silicone will get poured in.

Now you mix up the Ultracal 30 which is a tool stone over very hard plaster. You build it over the clay and down on to the base. You make a flange all the way the way around the base.

Once the tool stone sets up you drill holes through the flange and through the wood it’s all mounted to. These will be for those bolts.

Next remove the tool stone mother casing and clean all the clay off the masters.

Next mix your silicone and brush a coat on the part. Put the mother mold casing back on and bolt it down. Pour the silicone into the open hole up top until you fill the mold.

When you open this mold the facing side of the mother mold is all smooth and even, the mold jacket is of an even thickness. About ¼ inch will do.

I’m starting the actual molds so you’ll see better what I mean. But after you see this you’ll never do brush up molds again. This gives you real control. And saves you money.

As you can see the parts count on this kit will be low. They are all clean and ready to star molding.

Believe it or not it took all day to lay in the styrene strips, mount the parts to their boards and key them. The styrene raises the master parts up above the mounting surface rather than having the edge of the part butt against the surface. It also gives you a nice crisp line to cut and flat sand once you have the part cast.

The pegs are keys that will later key the cores.

The inner lines are where the silicone jacket will be and the outer the stone mother mold.
Tomorrow I’ll make the mother molds and drill them through for the bolts.

You can just see the dark dots where they will be drilled through the stone in order to key the mother mold back to pour the silicone.

More tomorrow,

Steve