Down but Never for the Full Count

Oh man where does the time go. The holidays really cleaned my clock along with moving of my web hosting so I had to take a bit of time off from the Exterminus. But now we're back and with a vengeance. Hopefully there should be no more interruptions as I move forward.

Starting off, we went right back to work with the engines. I've already completed the outside engine minus now we have to look back inside to complete it. Looking at the engine parts we have, some minor cutting and patching will be needed.

Internal Engine Construction

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The challenge here is to place the cut such that it looks sensible as an engine but fits the width of the interior. After some study, I started cutting one of the engine pieces vertically 22 mm from the left and 4 mm from the right hand side. These cuts combined provide the best of both worlds but leaves two small sections open. Two small pieces of plasticard seal up these holes nicely. This gives the internal portion of the engine an overall width of 71 mm on the bottom edge.

Moving on, in the normal Land Raider kit you get xx set of pressure doors to put on the inside. Now as we have four different possible interior openings that we need to provide doors for, I'll have to manufacturer two sets of doors. Luckily we can easily just "borrow" the design and measurements from the existing ones, rinse and then repeat.

Internal Toothed Door Construction - Work in Progress

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Now I've put off making the tunnels that span the interior and exterior doors. To start off with, we'll take the easy route and make the ceiling. I don't subscribe to the methodology that just because something won't been seen often that we can skimp on the design or the implementation. As I've never the ceiling of an assault door tunnel, I'll just have to wing it from here.

To start off I cut a piece of 1 mm thick plasticard into a rectangle of 24 mm by 21 mm. I then took 1 mm mm square rod and give the rectangle a border. This setup provides an internal width of the tunnel ceiling. The internal area of the ceiling is 22 mm x 19 mm. Now I'll put some detail on it.

Tunnel Construction - Ceiling Tile with Light Fixture Detail

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I started off in the center with a tiled piece of plasticard which looked a lot like lights. For those interested it was Plastruct PS-42 (.180 square tile) and the width of the piece was 5 mm.

On the sides of the "lights" that I build up two pieces of U-shaped channel plasticard whose width was 1.5 mm and a length of 22 mm (Evergreen StripStyrene Item No.261). To finish it off the horizontal ceiling sandwich, I added two pieces of 5.5 mm x 22 mm Plastruct 91681 HO Scale Tread Plate to the sides.

If we add up all of the widths of material, you'll see that it comes out to 19 mm exactly so no wasted space or gaps. The overall look I think is pretty good for my first try. Maybe when I do my Grey Knight ones I'll give a bit more thought but I think this is sufficient for now. The next post or two, I'll cover the remainder of the tunnel sections and their assembly.

On a final note, during the Christmas season, given how many future projects I hope to take on, I purchased a new camera. After some review, I choose the Nikon D90. I'm still learning all the features but I think that and a new photographic setup are going to go a long way in making better pictures for the threads. Any photographic advice is appreciated!

Nikon D90 Camera

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Thanks for hanging in there! Staying on track is tough with a full time job, looking for a house and other activities! I actually am much further ahead but have to catch up on the posts. Hopefully I'll have one mid-week sometime.