Author Topic: Aquan Battlestation  (Read 1336 times)

Stephan

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Aquan Battlestation
« on: February 12, 2016, 10:18:52 am »
I'm not entirely happy about how this turned out, but I thought I'd post for anyone else thinking of putting one of these together.  The main resin parts of this model were really simple, just hemispheres with detail, and it's pretty nice detail.  the problems came in with the hole for mounting the model on the flight stand and on putting the two halves together with the acrylic pieces.

I don't have a drill-press at home, so I had to free-hand the drill to deepen the mounting hole.  I got close, but the model still sits a little off kilter.  Spartan, this is really an endemic problem among your models.  I've had to drill out the mounting holes (stop giggling) on at least half of my models, and it's always hit or miss as to whether the model sits evenly on the peg afterwards.  Please, please, please figure out how to fix this issue.

Regarding the acrylic pieces, those are just a pain to work with.  I've been in the hobby for over 20 years and have figured out most things, but those pieces gave me fits.  It started with the painting.  I painted them separately from the rest of the model, so that gave me some breathing room, but it seemed paint just didn't want to dry onto the acrylic surface.  The acrylic also doesn't seem to react well to my standard super glue that I've used for assembly on everything from every other game producer for two decades. 

In the area of actual assembly, the two halves of the station don't actually fit together in such a way that you can simply slot in the acrylic pieces.  No, that would be too simple.  In final assembly, there's a gap between the two hemispheres that you either have to fill with something or you have to rely on the dodgy structural integrity of the acrylic pieces themselves to hold the whole thing together.  I chose to fill the center with Milliput, which worked really well for getting the two pieces to fit together at just the right distance to let me slot in the acrylic pieces.

Last, there are four holes in the top of each half of the hemispheres that were just begging to have something done with them.  I drilled them out, clipped some toothpicks down to size, and then inserted them as a bit of extra detail.





Dakkar

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Re: Aquan Battlestation
« Reply #1 on: February 12, 2016, 01:12:46 pm »
You NEED to play tonight and bring that! :D ;)
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Stephan

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Re: Aquan Battlestation
« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2016, 01:50:17 pm »
I wish!  The best I could hope for would be to skip the first round and show up for the last two.

Quickdraw

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Re: Aquan Battlestation
« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2016, 02:40:33 pm »
Interesting. I didn't realize there were acrylic pieces to this. I guess it's not clear from the renders I've seen. I've never actually seen the model. The acrliyc pieces don't take paint well at all. If you want them translucent but colored the best thing is a sharpie. However, any full paint seems to need a VERY generous amount of thick primer...