Four foot X-wing (ILM tribute)

[427 Cobra]

Another new beginning. This took me about twenty minutes to make from start to finish - believe it, or not! It took me another half hour to make it smooth, and even all the way around, and surface it for gluing. I had to bevel the edges, which is what took the longest. This still has the protective cover over it in this picture, it was sad that I had to sand all the gloss off it to make the parts stick together once glued.






Another shot for comparison between the old, and the new.



Please study all the pictures of the old acrylic panel. This is what modeling stupidity looks like. I'm not punishing you all with a lot of pictures of the same thing, I just want this to be burned into your memory - NEVER USE PAINT STRIPPER TO REMOVE GLUED PLASTICS!!!!

I have used this technique before, but that was to remove paint, and plastic from a model. This method does work if you are trying to make an inpenatrable weld between plastic pieces, but only in a small amount. This is what's known as "plastic welding". This would've worked at removing the styrene sheet had I been more careful with the stripper, and not allowed it to set so long, and slop over the sides where I didn't want it.















If you look closely, you can see that this cracked in places from the heat of the stripper in its' chemical reaction with the acrylic. I saved what I could after rescuing this from destruction, I'll use the rest for reinforcement. I'll just cut off the really bad part, and sand the rest with 100 grit to smooth it. I could've just masked this off last night, then sanded with 60 grit until I got through most of the styrene before gouging into the acrylic below, but I was too impatient!





Back to our regular program. I love how the glue beads, and shows wet even in the picture with this crappy camera. This is how I keep my glue from seeping out the sides in a oozing mess. This was glued together with the Bob Smith industries glue. I'm using two differnet types, and brands for this, thin, and medium. The thin closes gaps where the thicker stuff doesn't get into. The thicker is what I'll use for large surfaces, and thin to seal around edges. So far this has worked very well with no problems!






This is as far as I can go for tonight - I need more U shaped channel before this can go to the end. It's mostly done, so I'll get more plastruct tomorrow, or saturday. I need to work on the engine bays next, then work the wings together. The other parts I've started but haven't finished will take the rest of the week to get done. I wish I had casting resin for the right wing panel - I would've copied that, and saved myself a little time, and effort. Oh, well...... This will be mostly scratch made, so I can't complain. I didn't want to leave you guys with the trash/bin being the last photo update of the day! I hope to have more tomorrow, since most of this went so fast today, maybe I can keep rolling with this.