Building a 'Classic' SF Spaceship, Part-2

A Report to the Cabal:

Yesterday I started turning the masters for the project. The overall length of the Flash Gordon ship is sixteen inches. The hull master is divided into two pieces: the main hull and the nose-cone. The engine nozzles are details yet to be worked out, so I'm deferring work on that till Steve Hickman comes through with more drawings.

The outboard wing and vertical stabilizer pods are represented by a single master, which will be used to produce a rubber tool, from which I'll produce the required number of pod masters.

The hull and pod masters are 'split,' they can be separated longitudinal along there centerlines -- the reason for this will become obvious during tool fabrication.

This discussion deals with lathe work. The smaller stuff (the pod and nose-cone) turned on my little Taig machine lathe. The hull, next installment, will be turned on the big wood turning lathe out in the back shed.

Concurrent with this work I've been in consultation with Steve Hickman - we're working over such details as control surfaces, high lift devices, panel lines, and the one-hundred-and-one other little things that have to be understood if I'm to achieve a set of masters faithful to Steve's vision ...

... And that, boys and girls, is the essence of professional model building: building what the customer wants. A test of your ability to communicate, understand, and to adapt your inventory of techniques in a way to best complete the assigned task; to provide the customer what he wants, not what you think he wants!

To work:

Recently I received refined drawings of the Raboy-Hickman spaceship, in which Steve defined the shape and location of VTOL thrusters, wing high-lift devices, canopy, and other details. The major departure from the original set of drawings is a change in form between the vertical stabilizer and wings -- initially all three surfaces were of the same profile. Got to agree with him that the changes there are an improvement.

I enlarged on the wing-flap idea by working up a compound Fowler type, multi-section flap system, like those seen by us aboard passenger aircraft lucky enough to get a 'wing seat.' Steve indicated hing/actuator fairings along the span of the flap segments ... and I took the bait. So, I drew up a rough of what our deployed Fowler type flaps would look like aboard our spaceship. The above drawing is what I came up with. Steve and I are still kicking the details of the flaps around, but it's taking concrete shape.

Can't draw? Learn! And I don't mean that electronic finger-painting crap ... CAD and CGI, that stuff is for lazy, know-nothing idiots who already have way too much daily monitor time under they're belts. Creative, innovate, exacting model building like what I'm talking here means you have to maneuver a pencil and pen, with accuracy and facility. The ability to draw, read drawings, and make changes on the fly is just one of the many specific talents needed by the accomplished Model Builder.

Or, are you one of those no-account types just waiting for technology to progress to the point in time when some Chinese finally plunks a 'replicator' in your lap ... American's having long ago relinquished the technological lead to China ... so some machine can do all the model building for you, providing you with toys to your hearts content, without any effort on your part, what's so ever! You no-talents can't wait for household sterio-lithography machines able to spit out a marked, painted, and weathered 'model,' can you! Remember what happened to the Krell! ...

... Or, you can do the work yourself!

Go to the local college campus used/exchange book store. There you'll find plenty of good books that go into any degree of detail on the craft of plan preparation, reading and conventions.

You can't effectively communicate if you don't know the language. Learn to render and read orthographic and isometric illustrations.

Steve's idea for the pilot's canopy is a simple 'bubble' faired in with the leading edge of the vertical stabilizers strake. That simply did not appeal to me. I argued that it was too 'fighter sized aircraft' looking and did not present the feel of a larger ship, which is what this is. But, as it turned out, Raboy himself had rendered some of his ships with just this feature.

Sometimes I should just sit, listen to teacher, take my notes, sit still and shut the fuck up!

But, being forever the compulsive, smart-ass know-it-all, I jumped in with both feet and submitted to Steve MY ideas of what this ships cockpit/bridge clear parts should look like -- the above working drawing is an example of how you communicate graphically specific physical characteristics of either a prototype or proposed configuration, a thirty-degree isometric representation of the ships bow. This master sketch used to produce tracing that would embody my 'suggested' canopy alternatives to Steve. It was a wasted exercise in this case, but instructive to you, my eager, attentive audience. I've instilled in some of you the reason why you need to learn to draw.

How many of you can render in orthographic projection and isometric? None of you?...

... Then you ain't a Model Builder yet. Learn how!

How can you communicate with an associate or client if you don't know how to string coherent words together AND draw out a proposal?!! Well ... do ya? ... Punk!

Idiot's! What did you do in school? Eat the Teacher?

How much time was spent learning math, composition, practical shop, and 'drafting' there at your Public School? Any!??...

However I bet you and your peers today have the equivalents of BA's in Black History, though.

Good work, Government! You've traded in our technological training for a curriculum that produces touchy-feely Social Workers and knuckle-dragging hamburger-flippers.

... Sigh ...

... Oh, well. Take what comfort you can in those abilities. I'm sure your prospective employer(s) will be impressed. Why to I bother with you people?

One of several tracings used to propose alternatives to the 'bubble' canopy design submitted by Steve. This is how stupid some of it got! Had I taken a moment and

talked with Steve a few minutes about the canopy I could have saved myself the effort.

But, the purpose of the Cabal Report is to give you an unrestricted tour of the sausage factory: Bone chips, brains, eyeballs and all! You learn more from my mistakes here than you will from hours of surfing 'SF Chat Rooms' Home Pages, and BB's - places were the blind gladly lead the blind.

Shortly after getting my ears pined back over the canopy issue, I scuttled back to the shop where I cut out blanks from Renshape 40, destined for work on either a machine or wood lath. The big piece is the split hull/fusalage master proper, the shorter narrow blank is for the split pod master (the streamlined cylinders that mount to the tips of the vertical stabilizer and wings). The block in back will be the blank for the nose-cone master that will cap the forward end of the hull.

The rough cuts were done with this circular saw. Finer cuts were done on the bandsaw. The one bad thing about Renshape is how tough it is on cutting tools --dulls them in no-time! Lath work is the worst: I'm constantly redressing the cutting tools during a job.

For reasons that will become apparent shortly (everything worked out during formulation of this projects construction methodology) I elected to split the pod and main hull masters longitudinally during the course of the lath work and to then reassemble them with assurance of registration. That's why the two halves of these blanks were secured with machine screws.

The master (and later the casting) of the hull nose-cone had to be hollow to keep the weight low. This necessitated some moves between head and tail-stock of the lath as the master was turned. First, with the nose end of the nose-cone master chucked up in the four-jaw I bored out the interior, then turning some of the outer surface. I then swapped the piece so the nose was pointed away from the chuck and I finished off the shaping of the nose-cone master, holding the work with a mandrel turned to make a tight interference fit between itself and the inside bore of the work.

Note that I sketched out the procedural steps needed to achieve this difficult turning job -- just a small part of the projects overall methodology generated to date, and a fraction of what will eventually be produced.

I retain shop notes, sketches and working drawings, stills and video of the work. They later help me chronicle the construction articles I later write and lectures I present at club meetings and conventions. Hey, that's what real teacher's do: they experience, examine, plan, experiment, document, collate, and pass on the 'new' knowledge to the great unwashed (you).

Outside calipers used to lift a diameter off the working drawing and to use that distance to check the depth of cut on the work. Of course, you have to stop the work from rotating each time you make a check. Fist turning step is to cut the blank to a constant diameter, that diameter equating to the maximum diameter of the part. You then loft the stations from the drawing to the blank. These longitudinally spaced radial lines represent the location of a specific station on the drawing.

Turning the nose-cone master to the specific diameters recorded on the working drawing. It was a simple matter to loft off each sections diameter from the drawing with a set of outside calipers and to then check the depth of cut as I proceeded with the lath work. Once the significant diameters are applied to the master I then 'connect the dots' with a gauging tool, files, and sandpaper.