New Laser Cut Project - Sci-Fi Corridors

I was asked by Durham Wargames Club (well over a year ago) if I could produce a set of Sci-Fi corridors. I spent a good while mulling over plans, and earlier this year I actually started work on the design. I have been very busy with other projects, so it has taken a while to get to the stage where I can actually show you something.

These photos are very much a work in progress, it is far from finished and I need to tweak quite lot, but I have the basic design pretty much sorted out now...

I designed the system so that it can be used with Fenris Games Sulaco Corridor tiles. In these photos though, I have used 6mm MDF for the floors, as that is what the Durham club requested.  Most of the structure is built in 3mm MDF, but there are also parts made in 1.5mm grey card.

I have designed a system that locks together with pegs, this meas that it will hold together well, but be easy to rearrange!

Wall sections have push out sections that can be used as windows or access panels.

Finally, in this photo you can see a Reaper Sci-Fi figure, to give you some idea of the scale.

Now I have the basic sorted out I should be able to generate the different corridor sections and rooms quite quickly. I still need to design some door systems, possibly to vary the look form bulkheads to sliding high tech doors, or possibly some lower tech ones too. I will also be adding more engraved detail, and possibly replacing the grey card sections with 1.5mm ply.

I will post some more photos once I have taken it a bit further...

Alliance Model Works Steampunk Submarine Build Part 05

Time to get the tail section built. This is made up of the largest pieces of etched brass, and the parts are all fairly substantial. However thee are also some very thin and fragile brass grills which are quite fiddly to handle and take some care to position correctly.

Firstly I removed all of the for each piece from the etched sheet and cleaned up the edges.

The larger pieces are etched into thicker brass, but three small vent pieces are from the thinner sheet. It proved really quite tricky to get the three vent pieces into place without bending, creasing, or in some other way damaging them.

However, once I had them set in place the rest of the assembly was relatively easy. Due to the hlaf etching on some parts the location of each piece was fairly clear.

A little cyanoacrylate and the job was done. About 30 minutes work for each one.

Next I had to look at attaching the tail piece to the hull. This involved pushing the thinned down edge of the brass fin into a slot in the four resin “diamonds” at the rear of the hull.

The “diamonds have a slit in them, but it is closed up. Using a needle file would have opened it up too much. Fortunately I remembered I had a set of Tamiya razor saws. These are thin engraved stainless steel saws that are used for putting panel lines onto plastic models. I bought them years ago but have never really needed them until now. Tying out a couple of different saws I found the one that best suited the job and then slowly opened up the slit in the resin.

Once I had done this it was simply a matter of gluing the fins in place.

The next post will probably conclude the construction of the submarine. Then I will be able to move on to the painting.