[GZG] Sculpting was: Re: 15mm Phalon vehicle recommendations?

> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

> and that's a completely different sculpting technique

I'm interested in playing around with the same techniques used by Jon (and you
I'm guessing).

Where's a good place to start? Have either of you done a web tutorial?

Thanks!

> Mike Stanczyk wrote:

> >and that's a completely different sculpting technique

Yep.

> Where's a good place to start? Have either of you done a

I don't know of any step-by-step tutorials (though there are several
sculpting-related web sites and forae that ought to have them), but
Brigade Models' "Design Studio" section often has photos of work in progress
or finished styrene masters where it is very easy to see how they were built.
(Once you know what shapes to look for it becomes easy to identify the
components of cast-metal models too.)

Styrene comes in sheets of various thicknesses (the ones I have range from
0.12mm up to 2mm) and in rods of various dimensions and cross-section
shapes (squares, rectangles, round, semi- and quarter-circles,
triangles, hexagons, round hollow tubes etc., ranging from about.3x.3 mm up to
6x6mm
or larger). You'll also need a well-ventilated work area, styrene
glue/solvent, a good steel ruler, and sharp knifes (eg. X-acto).

Not absolutely necessary but very useful to have are fine-grained
sandpapers and/or needle files, a small mitre box and razor saw to make
it easier to cut rods etc. at funny angles, a *flat* area (preferrably metal)
where you can put glued-together bits to dry without having to worry
that they'll stick to your work area (or rather where they'll come off cleanly
when - not if - they do stick...), and pincers to handle tiny details.
(I've used a blob of blu-tack stuck to a toothpick instead of pincers,
but that can get rather messy if the glue doesn't run where you expect it
to.)

The tools and materials can be found eg. in well-equipped railway hobby
stores. Raiding old plastic model kits can also be very useful for getting raw
materials.

The sculpting itself is theoretically very simple: just cut styrene bits of
appropriate sizes and shapes and glue them together into the shape you want.
In practise, of course, it can be difficult both to decide what you want the
finished model to look like and to figure out what sizes and shapes of styrene
bits you'll need to arrive at that shape.

For me the biggest problem is to come up with an idea of what the finished
model should look like. Translating the idea into styrene bits is easier, but
unless the basic shape I have in mind is very simple I make a construction
drawing with measurements etc. of at least its basic structure before I start
cutting any styrene. (For fighters I usually include all details in this
drawing since they're usually integral to the main structure of the model; for
larger models where I can add surface details afterwards I usually only make a
drawing of the main structure.) Complex

shapes can require quite large numbers of simpler bits (eg. the master sculpt
for the ORC fighter, which is about 6x8x2 mm in size, consists of 22 separate
bits of styrene), so it pays off to put some thought into the design before
you start building it.

Example 1: FT-625 FSE Hydra-class DD. The core hull consists of four
pieces of a sprue frame from an old plastic model kit cut at different angles
and
glued together. The sprue frame I used had a trapezoidal cross-section,
so
I got most of the shape "for free"; it also had lots of T-junctions and
other bumps that I could use, so the round "dorsal turret" and the small

bit sticking out on the port side close to the bow of the ship were both

part of the original sprue while the "chin turret" was shaved off from another
place on the original sprue and glued onto its current location.

The rest of the model was built from scratch; the wings consist of thick

sheet styrene cut into shape and filed down to give a solid connection with
the core hull, the engine exhausts are thin slices of round styrene rod,

and the various hull panels were all cut from thinner styrene sheets.

Example 2: OUDF BCs and BBs (can't remember their GZG catalogue numbers off
the cuff). These were rather trickier to build than the Hydra was, both
because they are multi-piece kits where the pieces has to fit together
snugly and because I couldn't get any of the shapes "for free" by just cutting
styrene rods at weird angles. The hulls are built from square styrene rods and
sheet styrene, sanded down to shape before the detailing was applied. The
trickiest parts were the engines and the wells for the
outrigger pieces - the engines because I wanted them to be nozzle-shaped

rather than just straight cylinders (in the end I cut them from a styrene tube
and filed them down to shape), and the outrigger wells because they

had to be built into the hull structure from the outset (ie., I couldn't

first build the hull and then cut the wells where I wanted them) so I had to
be pretty certain of where I wanted them to be before I started gluing
stuff together :-/

Two more things to keep in mind if you want to sculpt masters for mass
production is to avoid undercuttings and internal cavities as far as
possible. Cavities will collapse during the mould-making, ruining both
the master sculpt and the mould, so the master sculpt should be solid.
Undercuttings can be handled to some extent, eg. by placing the model in a
clever way in the mould, but if they are too big there'll be excessive wear on
the production mould; in this case it might be a good idea to make the
model as a multi-part kit so each part can be cast separately without
undercuttings. (Of course there are other reasons for making multi-part
kits too, eg. if you want to reuse the parts in other models.)

Hope this helps,

I found some useful tips from:

http://www.starwarz.com/modelshop/tech.htm

> On 11-Apr-06, at 9:53 AM, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

> Mike Stanczyk wrote:

> Tony Christney wrote:

> I found some useful tips from:

I've seen it... the "making round parts" section is fairly useful in
describing the laminate technique, but I found most of the stuff described
on that site to be rather more applicable to "macroture"-sized models
than
to FT-scale ones (and IIRC the mould-making techniques they describe are

for resin casts rather than metal, which severely limited their usefulness
for me :-( ).

Later,