Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: Easter Holidays: The Fourth Update.

Here we are, the second Tuesday of the holidays, over a week into the project and now exactly a week into the cold which has been accompanying it...

Good news is that the cold seems to be getting better to the point that today I feel I can actually get some serious work done. When last we left off, I had shown a cardboard mockup of the bad moon, and moaned about running out of plasticard. Well, on Saturday I bought six more sheets of 1mm card (not that I probably need more than four, but I don't want to take chances!), but not before I completed the bad moon on Friday using whatever came to hand - there's a fair bit of clapboard siding textured plasticard in the tip of the bottom half of the moon.

This is the only side which has had much riveting done. I'm just taking a short break to post this and straighten my back out before I go back and rivet the other side.

There'll be a bit more detail on here - battle damage and glyph plates.

This strangely glowing oddly focused shot shows the other side of the moon which has no rivets yet.

Round the back are some vents but not much detailing yet. There will be a launch rail for Supa Rokkits back here.

Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: The third update.

Yesterday I felt pretty rotten again, so there was not much progress on the build. This morning however I feel much better so things are starting to move again. What that means is that I've done all the rivets on the engine section, and I've made a paper mockup for the giant bad moon.

Here's the bad moon mockup. I'm going to start translating this into plasticard throughout the day. I only have one sheet of 1mm left (I miscounted before my last supply run and thought I had more) so I may not be able to get the moon completed just yet. If that happens, I'll move on to some more tube-intensive areas like guns until I can get to a hobby shop and stock up. In some ways, this cold has been a boon - if I had not been so badly slowed down I would have run out of plasticard by now.

Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: Easter Holidays update two

Here we are on the morning of the fourth day of the project and progress has been sadly slow. I felt pretty rotten yesterday afternoon and went to bed early. I'm feeling a bit better today, so I hope to get more work in. Although I am also planning to drive over to Wonthaggi (the nearest large town) to shop for some supplies and sundries. For some reason, I can't find bath toys at all where I live. This has nothing to do with the project, it's just been annoying me.
Anyway - photos.

The basic shapes and details of the engine section are now complete. I still need to add rivets and a lot of details like pipes and runes and smaller parts.

The big stack is actually the second attempt - the drill wrecked the first attempt so I had to get creative. I drilled the three holes three times with different sized drills and with a second tube nested inside to stop the bits tearing things apart. This worked fairly well, but not perfectly.

I have not really integrated the front edge of the engine into the upper bodywork yet. There are still some gaps which need filling.

And once more, the glorious yoghurt tube topper comes to the fore! The PVC pipe connectors along the top turned out to be an unusual size which I could not find any pipe to match meaning it was a problem to get them nice and solidly joined back to back. Then I found a cardboard receipt paper roll which was exactly the right size... To be honest, a lot of time yesterday was spent scrounging round for the right parts.

As usual, feel free to speculate on exactly what this is in the comments. I feel it should be becoming clearer, but then I know what it is so I have an advantage...

Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: Easter Holidays Update One.

After a relatively slow start on Sunday where I build the PVC skeleton seen yesterday and added some of the bodywork, things have started to tick along nicely. Yesterday I started adding detailing and working on the engines. I wanted to make things look a bit more three dimensional by not just sticking things to the surface, so the lower side plates both have cutouts for recessed detailing.

Where we left off last update - the PVC pipe skeleton. Those are connectors for 42mm internal diameter pipes, which means they's actually 56mm external diameter.

Here's the basic shell added around the PVC skeleton. The skeleton is modular allowing that lower part to be removed while I'm working on things.

Here we see how things look without the bottom part of the PVC skeleton.

This is the first panel I detailed up. It includes (gasp!) a kit part! Now I cannot claim this project is 100% scratch built and 100% GW part free! What have I done?

This is the lower part of the engine area, which is mostly completed. The grey fuel tank is from a toy petrol tanker of surpassing cheapness. I have started work on the upper works of the engine, but they have not gotten far yet. There will probably be more plating and piping in this area once I have the upper engine installed and know where everything needs to be plumbed in.

This is the other side. I wanted some exhaust fans because they always look cool. They have not turned out as well as I had hoped, but most of the detail in this area should be partially obscured, so I'm not too worried.

 Well, that's it for this morning's update. I'm going to go get some more work in. There'll be another update tomorrow morning (I'm planning on doing an update every weekday mornings, not so sure about the weekends because other commitments will probably cut into my modelling time).
As always, feel free to speculate wildly on what it is in the comments.

Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: Easter Holidays.

Easter school holidays are here, and there's something big on the workbench...

Stay tuned to find out what, or just speculate wildly in the coments.