On The Bench 8: Joe Brown’s Phantom Cruiser

Another ancient post from the earliest days of the CultTVman website in 1998:

My primary source material was Space Ghost And The Sorceress of Cyba-3, a Big Little Book published by Whitman in the late 1960’s. I borrowed it from a friend and scanned all of the pictures of the Phantom Cruiser in the book, and was able to find a shot of Space Ghost charging out of the door located on the starboard side of the ship just aft of the control room/cockpit, and I made my measurements and scale judgments based on that door.

I started with a standard 12”x 3&7/8” Styrofoam cone, and carved and sanded it down to the spindle shape that you see for the hull. This was then completely covered with spackle, and repeatedly sanded and re-coated until a very sleek and smooth shape was left. I experimented with various thicknesses of sheet styrene for the wings, and was unsatisfied–then Spike, one of my cat-model assistants, knocked over one of the empty bird-seed cans in my basement work area. As I picked it up, I saw that the curve of the side of the can was virtually perfect for this wing!

I traced out the shape of the wing onto the side of the can, and went after it with the jig saw. After rough sanding the edges smooth, I used a propane torch to bend the forward and tail sections of the wing piece gently downward (to conform to the spindle-shaped hull), and the wing tip edges upward. After several coats of primer/ sand/ primer/ sand, I had a very nice finish.

I used Weldbond (a white glue) to join the wing to the hull. After that completely dried, I applied spackle–lots of spackle. When there was a smooth contour joining the wing and the hull, I let that dry, and then sanded it smooth.

Sanding was done in the following pattern: 300 grit, 800 grit, 1000 grit, 1500 grit, 2000 grit. These sanding papers are available at Walmart, in the automotive section, and used carefully, produce a very smooth surface.

I masked off the lower hull, and sprayed the upper portion with Testors Gloss Yellow. After it dried, I masked it off, and painted the lower portion of the ship with Plasti-Kote Enamel OSHA Safety Orange. The cabin door, the canopy over the cockpit, and a small patch at the rear tip of the ship were all painted Blue-Black, using Chessex Dragon metal Metallic waterbase paint.

The Space Ghost logo was drawn up on Superpaint 2.0, and the area outside of the Ghost silhouette was painted with Citadel Colour Ruby Red. When that dried, I trimmed it to shape (I trimmed off the point on top), and carefully glued to the top center of the wing.

I am pretty happy with the final results; I entered it into a local model show and while I didn’t place, I saw and heard many, many people walk by and say: “Cool! That’s Space Ghost!” Good enough for me!