Hi all i have just taken a leap into insanity and bought a Forgeworld GK Thunderhawk.
This will be a regularly updated (or as when often as i can) blog on the clean up, constructiuon, conversion , lighting and painting of the beast in question.
Ill have some photos uploaded as and when i can due to University work commitments and time allowing, but i shall have a lot of images on here and hopefully have a good amount of into on putting one of these things together.
Just to spice things up i am going to include full internal lighting and adding extra details.
BTW, people on here tend to ignore and be irritated by threads promising pictures but not actually containing any. Maybe next time wait until you have pictures to post before creating the thread. That way you'll get more people interested instead of being irritated that they looked and there was nothing to look at. Not being mean just looks like you don't post a lot based on your post count.
I am going to have photos up here on monday night of the un boxing and a break down of all of the parts (tons of them!) , even before anything is glued together i am going to plan the wiring and how im going to drill out the holes and chanells for the cabling, it is a massive kit but not too difficult to put together.
I have finally taken some pics of the monster, i am going to be installing a lot of LEDs, to show landing lights and on the wings, panels of the ship are going to be removeable to allow for looking into the model, plus ill be adding new details, as its crying out for more.
It will be a very intensive build, as the extra details are going to be made from sheet styrene and brass rod, such as little pins on the tail fins to allow them to move,
Tere will be flashing landing strobes and wing lights runing on separate circuits.
cjharrisman wrote:I have finally taken some pics of the monster, i am going to be installing a lot of LEDs, to show landing lights and on the wings, panels of the ship are going to be removeable to allow for looking into the model, plus ill be adding new details, as its crying out for more.
It will be a very intensive build, as the extra details are going to be made from sheet styrene and brass rod, such as little pins on the tail fins to allow them to move,
Tere will be flashing landing strobes and wing lights runing on separate circuits.
I love it man. I was wondering how many pieces the kit was and your pictures did a great job of showing me that. I thought it might be a million parts or something dumb, nice to see it's fairly straight-forward to build. Try to show how you do the LEDs. Cheers.
thats just the main body parts, it came with 4 large FW bags, missiles, doors, wing bits, heavy bolters, landing gear, interior detail everything, its a chunky 5 kilo model.
I have been doing some more work on the gunship, Work stopped for a while due to moving flat and going on holiday, but now i can get into working on this model properly.
Not sure, i have about 20 more to fit, then the converting inside, so should be a couple of months work ahead of me. The painting will be the fun part.
Your build looks well-planned. So this is probably a silly question, but anyways, here goes: Are you planning to have the lights in different colors? Green, red and blue?
I have some more images for you , i have completed the front section of lighting. there are 3 in the cockpit, 2 on the underside, 3 in the cargo hold, 3 in the landing gear well, 9 in the engines 2 in the wings , 1 under the cannon, and 2 lighting up the tail.
Being in podunk, America and having only one shop within a hundred miles that sells the glue I use, I have had to special order two cases to have some when I need it.......
BTW, I am using some of your images if you don't mind, as reference for the detail on my scratch......
I had to do some creative dremelling, i have carved out channels in the wings to the two landing lights. I am leaving the wings till last as i am not looking forward to them.
Here is another update, i have added the lights to the underside, all thats left now is the landing gear, and rear navigation lights in the body. Then its the wings. I have also built the flasher module for the wing and body navigation lights. Ill get round to painting it and building it eventually.
Thanks for all of the support you guys keep giving me. I have been making models for a long time and this one is by far one of the most complicated, FW models do not lend themselves for lighting.
cjharrisman wrote:I had to do some creative dremelling, i have carved out channels in the wings to the two landing lights. I am leaving the wings till last as i am not looking forward to them.
I wouldn't be either, so good luck and have fun. Looks amazing.....
Im more the model maker and painter, but this will boost my GK's to over 4000 pts, id like to play more, but i tend not to take the game very seriously
Where are you locating the Nav Lights? Also, I think the landing lights are wicked perfect. I think on Electro-Hawk II I will do landing and Nav lights. Hopefully by then I will have the EL Wire stuff down and can do a really good Turbo Laser destructor effect.... Is the red light below your cannon the only weapon light? or are you gonna do the barrel end
If i were to light the gun barrel up, i would have to drill the laser barrel out, the resin on the top part of the body is very thick, almost top heavy. so to avoid any mess and hassle, the gun is powered down, When the body is painted the bright red will be a lot less bright .
Makes sense, I am having bleed through problems with the LED's in the Plasti-card, too, but I imagine worse than with the Resin. Hopefully the layers of armor will cut it down enough that the paint job will finish off the bleed.
I am considering buying a FW T-hawk just to do this......
The resin is not too bad, its quite dense. The gunship is a pain of a model, triming sanding, heat bending a lot of the parts to fit. but its worth it.
I am considering the internal details, servitors carrying out maintainance, and maybe a onboard toilet, or a big flat screen for movies.
Its really not that hard to do LEDs, as long as you use a low enough voltage, say a 9 volt source or AA batteries, and resistors on all of the LEDs, you wont have a a build up of heat and a melted model.
This is actually my second thunderhawk, the first one was affectionally called the Flaming Thunderhawk of Death, which is exactly what happened to it,
12v battery, 12v LEDs and a lot of wires inside a cardboard model...... :-(
I need to do some clever drilling to fit the wires from the wings to the body and also pin the wings on,
Oh if anyone is thinking of buying this kit, you must pin the wing to the body as there is little room for the wing to sit on the body, i am going to drive a steel bar from one wing, through the body and into the other wing.
thanks for all of your support on this, its nice to see that my work is liked.
Hey, just wanted to ask.
have you seen this stuff that photographers use. its a spray that masks light sources so that they are more diffuse. It will help make those LED a little less pinpoint and spread the light a little bit. I cAnt tell from your pics wether or not you are using something like that, but one of our locals has a FW titan that looks like a christmas tree because the LED are just too pinpoint bright.
I am always putting LEDs into models of all sizes and shapes. the best was my scorpion landraider.
I was wondering if anyone would be interested if i were to put a how to guide on how i do my LEDs?
cjharrisman wrote:I am always putting LEDs into models of all sizes and shapes. the best was my scorpion landraider.
I was wondering if anyone would be interested if i were to put a how to guide on how i do my LEDs?
Yes, I'm mostly interested in the spec's on how to set up ones own system, ie, how to properly calculate LED's and resistance along with power connections.
My dad is an electrician, and he made something which to meas so incredibly difficult look so impressivly easy. I only use 3v LEDs, as they take a small amount of charge and are really cheap.
If your from the UK, do not buy from Maplins, I get them off ebay, There are several bits of kit you need, A multimeter , a good soldering iron one which is temperature controlled , not one of the plug in yellow ones as they are only good for burning yourself, a natural sponge, not a kitchen sponge as they melt. a pair of the helping hands.
When i am done with the thunderhawk, ill write a nice how to guide, although i am not an expert at all, just a model maker with a passion for burning things, the first thunderhawk i built i set fire to.
I have learnt all of this through trial and error and more errors. If you buy a copy of Electronics for dummies, you will spend half the book reading about Ohms Law and electronic thoery. This is all very useful if your building a robot or an atomic bomb, but if your just wanting to put a few leds into models then a little guide would be a good use.
Thanks for all of your coments, im happy to see my work is appreciated.
Another update before i head to bed, I am going in for surgery tomorrow so i might not be able to update for a few days.
Now that wing number 2 is on, and all of the leds are tested and fitted, i can now get to the interesting bit of tying off all of the wires into bunches so its all nice and neat and not looking like some mad puzzel. The flasher unit is going in last with a switch on the battery lead, so all of the wires are now in, lighting is all fiteed, then its down to detailing it, then painting.
this is turning out to be a bigger project than i thought.
I have learnt all of this through trial and error and more errors. If you buy a copy of Electronics for dummies, you will spend half the book reading about Ohms Law and electronic thoery. This is all very useful if your building a robot or an atomic bomb, but if your just wanting to put a few leds into models then a little guide would be a good use.
Totally, I'm a technician and studying electronic theory is completely different than application. Hope surgery is well. Cheers.
next after the lighting is finally done, ill be detailing inside it, extra details such as weapon racks, hand rails, all sorts of fun. Maybe even a small chapel.
I am going to add diffusers to the tail lights to angle them more towards the tail as they are too blinding and they take the focus away from the engines. The lighting is now finished apart from the blinking navigation lights which ill be fitting tomorrow.
I have had a response from Forgeworld after i posted the video and photos on their Facebook page, they think its most impressive and wanted to know how i did it.
Just got back from Mapins with new soldering iron bits, heat shrink and some other bits, back to work. Thanks for your replies, it makes me work even harder knowing that you guys like what i do
Thanks, but Horst is right, you though of certain lights that I didn't think of and now don't have the poption for. There are some that I do still have option for though.
For instance, I don't think I could do the front landing lights too easily. Maybe, but I have to look at how the external detail could be manipulated to hide wiring.....
But the rear fin tower lights and wingfront lights are still possible.
How did you make them flash? Bearing in mind that I have limited electronic knowledge.....
Automatically Appended Next Post: Engine lights have always been in the plan.....
if you have a local eletronics supplier, or even Amazon, you can buy a kit which lets you have 2 LEDs flashing, you can extend it to 4, its a simple step by step kit and is very cheap, maybe £5 here or a few dollars,
the kit has 2 , 5mm leds, which i removed and ran red and black wires to 2 smaller 3mm clear leds, i then ran another Led off the other, like a daisy chain, then attach the battery then all 4 lights flash. pretty good kit.
I only tried it with 4, but it might go to 6 or maybe more, but the 4 was the effect i was after. The pack runs off a 9v battery, and you can also have the static lights running off the same battery
if you connect a resistor to the LED, it wont burn out, i use 200ohm resistors on the LED, you can go higher but they will reduce the brightness of the led, if you use super bright leds then you need the lower rated resistor.
overkill76 wrote:Most would consider your efforts madness or genius!
Thankfully, I am in the later camp.
Really inspirational to see what someone can do with the right skillsets and dedication.
Thanks for those kind words, i have been working on my skillset for a long time, from some good results like the landraider scorpion tank, to some disastrous ones, the Flaming Thunderhawk of Death and the Warhound terrain piece....
I work on a model and i try new things on it, if it works i use it for the next time and then adapt it.
I am now going to start working on new detail pieces for the indside of the gunship, i am going to have a Nemesis Halberd weapon rack by the front door and other details i might think of later. any thoughts?
Insanity is contagious you can spread it from one post to another, enjoy it.
cjharrisman wrote:I have had a response from Forgeworld after i posted the video and photos on their Facebook page, they think its most impressive and wanted to know how i did it.
That is saying something! If forgeworld recognizes you- it means you are good.
