Epic Scratchbuilt Interstellar Spaceship - Kitbash Model USS Pathfinder RV-01

hello fellow Cosmic hobbyists Come Along on this inaugural episode of cosmic Quest hobbies and watch as the first of many space exploration vessels is constructed the Voyages of this first vessel named the Pathfinder will open up whole new worlds for us to explore with new and unique space vessels planets and many other outer space machines being imagined and created along the way every good project should begin with an idea or sketch no matter how rough it looks this drawing gives me a basic idea of what direction I want to go with this build in a side view here will give you an idea in the top that's where the living quarters and research lab will be the center will be the engine room back here will be a a warp exhaust I promise that's what that says right there this ship is mostly built out of basic styrene sheet with the average thickness being about 30,000 thick I designed and built this to be an inscale vessel which I used the 1 160th Scale based on that scale the finished product would be about2 90 ft long in real life and the bonus is that since it's an inscale It Go great on any inscale train layout I love working with styrene it's very forgiving easy to shape and you don't even have to cut all the way through a sheet to make the piece you need all you have to do is score the piece and you can crack it the rest of the way you may need to do a bit of cleanup but it's not bad I started the structure of the ship with a basic rectangular box as a main core this gives a great body to build off from of course as I was building the vessel I made sure to keep within the appropriate scale once I made the basic box structure I continued on with the main body of the ship styrene is pretty flimsy on its own but becomes pretty strong when you start to add internal bracing structure to it it is also quite light which Mak makes it a great material for building scale models with if this vessel is going to be out exploring amongst the Stars the crew will be pleased that it is a solidly built structure to help resist the stresses put on it from warping space or even entering planetary atmospheres styrene also Sands very easily which allows the smoothing of seams for a cleaner look and better fit of the miscellaneous panels while the main structure of this vessel is being constructed let me tell you about what I imagine the background story is for this Mighty ship being built in this fictitious Universe one of Earth's new orbiting telescopes peered out into space toward a star system called Proxima centuri which is a distance of 4.2 light years away this telescope observed evidence of hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of one of the planets orbiting the star which might hint at the possibility of life this exciting news couldn't have come at a better time as new and unique Technologies explained later in this video will allow travel to these star systems in a reasonable time frame with this information it was decided a large planetary based Consortium would design the first research vessel to go out amongst the Stars to explore the planet around proximo centuri the very first vessel which is being built in this video has its fictitious Roots at a newly constructed Shipyard in the town of grenell Iowa this ship was designed with only a few amenities in mind for its crew of approximately 30 which consists of a captain first officer Pilots Navigators scientists medical crew and ancillary support staff the crew might get a little bit bored cruising around in space without too much to do but they do have a workout room so at least they can stay in shape I'm sure they got plenty of movies they can download to their personal devices I decided that the front part of the main body needed some angled sections to add to the overall shape of the front not that a ship needs to be streamlined in space but it does help it to look pretty cool of course our crew crew would like a bridge to be able to control the ship and to be able to see where they are going so I needed to build a bridge section to attach to the main body this section will also eventually house the shuttle Bay entrance this section attached easily to the rest of the ship using Weldon 3 solvent I also added some larger panels to the skin of the ship to add some overall shape and depth to the structure after I got a lot of the basic structure complete it was time to start adding depth to the hull with a piping and other items other unique Parts I use were a couple of barbecue dip cups as the base for the two ion engines I had no issues gluing styrene to the barbecue dip cups with my choice of adhesive which is weld on three I learned about this solvent for welding the plastic together from Adam Savage's testing YouTube channel it works great and the amount you get for the price is far better than buying small containers from The Hobby Shop I just decant some into the old cement bottley one of the things I love about this solvent is how easily it Wicks into the seams and welds the pieces of styrene together I do think I tended to overdo it and use too much solvent in the seams but I guess I figured if this vessel was going to be flying through space I didn't want it flying apart gluing to the fruit cup was a different Beast however the solvent cement did not work for that so I sanded and scuffed the entire surface of the cup to give super glue something to bite to this allowed me to glue bits of styrene to it which allowed me to glue the other pieces of styrene to that with a wellone solvent as I'm thinking about this fruit cup makes me think about the different Technologies I like to imagine are part of this build one of them is what this fruit cup actually entails this amazing bit of technology is based on discoveries by the engine at CQ Aerospace that will allow vessels to reach nearby star systems in weeks as opposed to many years it works by warping space and time and this fruit cup at the end of the ship is the warp exhaust that I drew in my original sketch another unique technology that CQ Aerospace created is an emitter system that will counter gravity this allows vessels like the Pathfinder to enter and leave planetary atmospheres without having to worry about using chemical Rockets or similar this this must be one heck of an impressive company Ugg that's what I get for not having a more secure setup to hold the glue I learned my lesson though and fix that by using a small thin piece of Masonite and hot gluing the glue bottle to the board it's super stable now I knew my workm was going to get dirty but I didn't think it would happen so quickly I also started to learn how to use a resin 3D printer to make some of the greeblies one of the big things I made was the shuttle bay door this was actually a download from thingiverse I did a few changes to it with tinkercad which is an online software for creating and manipulating 3D objects I am pleased with how it turned out I did get a few different files from thingy B and I found this to be a great tool for getting some free 3D files to do digital kit bashing with before actually printing them out some of the locations we picked up miscellaneous pieces for this build and others to come are the various Goodwill and secondhand stores there are a lot of cool things you can find there to use as gribi such as this old toy train which I cut out the windows from one of the cars to use as Windows on the side of the ship I imagine this is where the labs will be located I took apart a lot of toys to get miscellaneous pieces as well like the sides of the the ship these are from a kids's toy truck I really like the way the different pipes and things looked on it one of the big mistakes that's a bummer for me is partway through the construction I realized I didn't have a way of mounting this ship I had to take a bit of a step back and open up the bottom to add in a reinforced structure made from a block of wood with a threaded insert installed into it I utilize some 5-minute epoxy spread all over the surface to ensure this whole mounting structure wouldn't go anywhere in the future it's definitely stuck in place once the epoxy cured I just used my standard weld on three to adhere the pieces of styrene to the rest of the build and to get it back together so I could continue on with the rest of the structure of the ship once I created that I closed the bottom back up with a hole for the threaded Rod to go into with the main structure mostly complete it was time to start adding bits and pieces to the structure I added all these pieces in a way that I imagined would actually do things that were important to the operation of the ship here I am adding some much needed High Press plasma lines that go to the twin ion engines competing aerospace companies were pushing to use low press plasma but anyone who knows anything about Interstellar travel knows that would be just too [Music] inefficient [Music] and I 3D printed a piece for the nose I've been trying to figure out how to make the nose not look so plain so you can see I drew out a rectangular spot there and this piece right here actually go right in that spot so that'll fill up there we'll say that's like a deflector Shield or generator of some sort this really filled in the front of the ship nicely I'm pleased with the added interest it provides and while this is only a research vessel it will undoubtedly make the ship look tougher if the need [Music] arises [Music] I thought I was getting closer to the end of the build when my wife reminded me that the ship might actually need to land on a plant surface while there are shuttlecraft that can take the crew down to the surface that may not be enough I needed to add some kind of landing pads to allow it to safely set down I created one large landing pad on the front and a pair of landing pads on the back and a supersized tricycle style Arrangement and if the ship landed on a planet surface somewhere the crew would also need to be able to disembark or even a way to bring some small cargo aboard for that reason it was also recommended that I add this entrance gangway near the front of the landing pad it was a lot of fun finding different bits that add depth and interest to the outer structure of the ship for instance I use things like raised detail from the top of McDonald's coffee cup lid or this piece which is the top from a dental floss container or this big round piece which I took from a spice container these ribbed Square pieces were from a plastic food plate I saw flying in the breeze while walking my dog Lily and these pieces are from a car and Battleship model these two bits at the end of the ship are obviously from a keyboard but will look great once painted I really enjoyed adding all the bits piping and wires to make this look like a functional creation once I got all the pieces together it was time for a primer coat I set up a makeshift paint area in our garage which allowed for great ventilation but definitely not the best lighting setup I am always amazed at how a coat of paint can bring things together all of a sudden it's hard to tell what some of the random pieces on the ship are after I got the primer coat on I thought I would try some pre-shading of the larger panels I spent a ton of time masking everything and I have to admit it looks pretty cool with all the masking tape on on [Music] it [Music] once masked I hit the panels with a dark gray coat of paint I peeled all the masking off from The Vessel and gave the whole thing a CO a thinned to light gray paint you could tell this was my first time trying this technique as my coat of light gray paint was nowhere near thin enough once I painted it back over you could hardly tell there is a darker gray color under it oh well live and learn I'll know better next time the ship still turned out good I gave the engines a coat of Steel color and highlighted the inside of the engines with a Steely blue color for a contrast for the warp exhaust I used a reddish color of the inside to add a little [Music] Pizzazz my thoughts when making these windows copper colored is added as a special coating that stops solar radiation from cooking things inside the vessel these inscale people really put into perspective how big this ship would actually be in real life don't worry Little inscale People the crew won't forget you're out there as I went along I also painted most of the pipes a steel color I was imagining a ship like this having pipes on the outside must have been made out of a special alloy that regular paints and Coatings wouldn't stick to that might change on future ship builds as the CQ Aerospace company is able to create a technology that will allow codings to stick to them I also figured some of the bigger pipes on the sides of the ship hold highpressure coolant so they would be painted a green color since this ship won't routinely enter an atmosphere it is important to have a method to launch a shuttle or other vessel to be able to bring the research Crews to the various planets asteroids and other as yet unknown surfaces while I touched on the construction of the shuttle bay doors earlier now it's time to add the custom paint to make the shuttle Bay Stand Out from the rest of the ship there's also imagined flashing lights to Mark the edges of the entrance and on the port or left side of the ship is a smaller set of doors that is a launching point for the mark one mod one space probe this is a basic science probe that lands on the planet surface ahead of a shuttle based Landing party these probes have basic instruments that will relay information back to the Pathfinder to help ensure the overall safety of the landing party after I got all the miscellaneous items painted the way I wanted I applied a coat of all clad gloss to the the spots where I wanted to place decals that I printed myself this gloss coat will help prevent the carrier film from showing when the decals are placed on the model I actually bought the laser water slide decal paper a few years ago and finally got the chance to use it on this model build once I created the decals in Photoshop and pred them on a laser printer I placed them on the ship and one stried I sprayed another coat of clear over the entire ship and allowed it to cure after the gloss coat CED all the way it was time to start applying my weathering washes in places to really add some depth to all the nooks and crannies to make my wash I mixed some burnt umber into odorless mineral Spears to create a nice grungy wash color the gloss coat on the ship allowed the wash to work its way into all the cracks and crevices by capillary action I also used a grungier gray color for some of the areas after it all dried I used cotton swabs and some of the odorless mineral spirits to clean off the areas that I didn't want the wash to stick to I let that all dry really well then applied a generous coat of all clad flat to take all the sheen off the model the all clad flat has a pretty strong odor so make sure you're spraying in a well ventilated area I really thought the vents on the ship needed some life added to them so I used some dark weathering powder to make them look like an exhaust was coming out of the vents I think I'm pretty happy with the effect I also made sure to put more of the flat clear coat over the exhaust so the powder wouldn't come off after all this the ship is basically complete [Music] thanks for watching if you enjoyed the video and would like to see more of The Adventures of the crew of the Pathfinder hit the like And subscribe button to catch more of the videos as they come [Music] out [Music]

Channel: Cosmic Quest Hobbies

Views: 10,314

Keywords: Scratch build, Star Wars, Kitbash, Spaceship, Space exploration, Scale model, N scale

Id: rJNANGWWp9o

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024