CultTVman On The Bench 219 John Bednar

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CultTVMan Presents On The Bench

What's on your workbench? Show us!

John Bednar brings us this impressive looking project from the original Alien movie:

First of all I would like to thank Martin Bower for his help and inspiration. The project took about three months to complete. Actually, to be honest I'm still adding detail. I'll step back from it and see something I don't like and make the necessary changes. I started this project back in February with the rear left tower. I never intended the project to go this far. I thought I would start it then put it away as I have with so many other projects. Then, something happened, I found myself unable to pull back and continued to work on it every day.

The towers were constructed from Plastruct plastic with the detailing added from tank kits. The platform itself is sheet plastic with a plywood center. There are between 600 and 800 domes detailing the entire ship. Other detailing has come from about 20 different tank kits as well as an assortment of other kits. Lego's actually comprised a lot of the detailing as well. Computer parts also found their way into the detailing. The arm holding the Nostromo actually moves back and forth. I collected information about the Refinery from the internet, movie and books. Martin Bower was kind enough to give me some information as well. The overall measurements of the platform are 28" long, 24" wide and about 20" from top to bottom. The Nostromo is roughly 5".

The next project is a figure conversion from Tom Hering:

This is MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER, 4000 A.D. The build is complete, and took about three weeks. The Magnus figure is a conversion of the Revell re-issue Superman. Two-part epoxy putty was used to give the figure the right hairstyle. His collar is styrene card and epoxy putty. The arm holes in his tunic were created by outlining them with polyester carpet thread. The thread was saturated with super glue after it was tacked in place, and then back-filled with green putty. His belt and buckle are styrene card. The lower edge of his tunic was outlined with aluminum wire, and then back-filled with epoxy putty. The Superman boots were sanded away, and Magnus-style boots were created the same way as the bottom half of the tunic. Soles and heels were made of styrene card.


	The robot is scratchbuilt from junk parts and costume jewelry items. The head was cut from the end of an old bicycle pump handle. The eye housings are shirt buttons, and the eyes are transparent, costume jewelry "rubies" with reflective backings. The big ball joint under the head is a roll-on deodorant ball. The neck and collar piece is from my spares box - not sure what kit it came from. The shoulder yoke is a piece of vinyl drywall corner bead. The shoulders and waist are matching bottle caps. The shoulder, wrist, hip, and ankle ball joints are two sizes of costume jewelry "pearls." The torso is the bottom half of an old electric razor, detailed with styrene card, and the backpack unit is the battery cover from an old VCR remote, boxed in with styrene card. The pelvis tube is an aluminum spacer from the stock of an old paintball gun.

The arms and legs are brass rod and plastic "pony beads," with the gap between each bead - created by the curvature of the arms and legs - filled with spackling compound, and smoothed with wet cotton swabs. The fingers are thick styrene card, with the five joints of each finger created using a triangular jeweler's file. The feet are built from styrene card and filled with epoxy putty. Before the putty set, a solid socket was created for each ankle joint by pressing and twirling a costume jewelry "pearl" into the soft putty.

The base is built from styrene card. Two large metal pins secure the figures to the base - one in the left foot of Magnus, and one in the right foot of the robot. A small metal pin joins the right fist of Magnus to the robot's head.

Everything will be primed before painting. I plan to match my paint colors to the ink colors in my original, 1960s Magnus comic books. The painting style I plan to use will echo '60s comics art - solid color fields, without gradations. No blending, shading, drybrushing, or weathering techniques will be used.

Finally, we have this Trek project from Han Erickson:

This is a vision of what a possible final refit of the Excelsior class might look like. Seeing so many of them in service during the dominion war I figure that they would eventually have to be given suitable upgrades to hold their own with ships that are far more modern.

This Excelsior class ship uses a saucer from the AMT/Ertl excelsior kit with the Ent.-B auxiliary impulse engines mounted further in to clear the warp nacelles (something that I always thought was a design flaw). I used the Ent.-B secondary hull with the excelsior's main deflector and Don Matthy's detailing parts. I also added an extra set of Don's Torpedo tubes to the front of the secondary hull. The nacelles have been lifted (again to clear the impulse engines) and the lower hanger deck reworked as well as Ambassador class style phaser arrays.

I finally got some primer on it and ready for paint. It'll soon be detailed using Walker Enterprises painting templates and detailing decals from Don Matthy and JT Graphics.

Discuss these and other models in the CultTVman Fantastic Modeling Forum

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