Seven or more years ago, I started the Pegasus Cylon Raider kit. At the time it was meant to be a quick throw together build just for giggles. I didn’t do the best job building it and it was a bit of a push to get it together well. Looking back, not sure if that was a kit or skill issue. Maybe both. I got excited about wiring up the Raider with some engine and cockpit lights, so I get that going with some EvanDesigns lights.

After a REALLY frustrating base silver coat, I got frustrated and set it aside. For a very long time. Post Nats23, I’ve had renewed energy around modeling and have been trying to clear out the model case and graveyard shelf of stuff I wasn’t going to finish. I was still excited about this Raider, so I decided to carry on and finish the project. Thinking all I would need to do is dust it off and start weathering on top of the silver base coat, I was excited for a quick finish job.

Nope.

Not only did I start over with the paint, I also envisioned a diorama base that blossomed pretty fast. There’s an episode of Battlestar Galactica where Starbuck hijacks a Cylon Raider and flies it back to the Galactica where they have a number of shots showing the Raider on the hangar deck. Here’s the screenshot:

The project will be loosely based on that episode. Not exactly a shot for shot recreation, but the same idea… the BSG crew locates a beat up Raider and starts to break it down to get to the good intel inside.

I’m writing this in real time, so I’ll come back with updates about the diorama as I work. Right now, I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to approach the overall base design. In the meantime, onto the Raider!

Starting over with the paint

After some inspection and some genuine effort to look past the paint flaws, I finally said “screw it” and stripped the paint. Even that fought back. But with a lot of oven cleaner and a ton of scrubbing with various implements, it was stripped.

Primed and base coated

Threw some primer on and base coated in silver. Locked in the base with a Mr Color GX 100 gloss clear coat.

The stand! 

This model came with a stand and I had hidden some wires for the lights on the edge of it. It had been drooping for years, but it turns out that it just wasn’t glued in very well. No problem, I ran some superglue against the stand and the model and bam! Back in action. Until…

I came back the next and and found the model drooping again, even worse. I soon realized that the weight of the model (and the age of the plastic???) had stress fracture the stand right in two. And thus, the diorama idea was born. Ugh. This was the point at which a small project became a big one.

Creating the grimy texture

The goal of this paint job was to make the Raider looks as grungy as possible but still realistic in the context of a silver/aluminum fighter. The grunge effects came in multiple layers.

First layer

Spraying very thin Tamiya grays and greens through a piece of pantyhose stretched on a sanding frame, I layered up a bunch of grungy tones to knock down the shine of the silver and add the look of corrosion and wear.

Second layer

Time for hairspray chipping with a layer of hairspray and then a layer of Natural Steel AK3Gen paint on top of that. The chipping came out pretty rough with some great spots and some really bad spots where the paint just pulled off in huge chunks. No problem, this isn’t a perfect reflective silver finish… I just touched up the problem spots with a burst of grayish paint.

Third layer

Using a scotchbrite pad I cut in half horizontally and then thinned even more, I shot more dramatic colors on top of the previous work. The best way to make this technique work is to hold the scotchbrite pad to the model and then spray really thin paint mixes very lightly. Check your work while you go so you don’t over do it. But honestly, don’t worry we’re going to come back with silver in a minute.

Fourth layer

To round off the base paint, I sponged on the natural steel AK3Gen paint all over the model in various per-panel patterns. The idea was to help make it look like there was still a shiny silver robot plane under all this wear and tear.

Fifth layer

Last but not least was the engine details and gun colors.

The guns were weathered and heat marked with Alclad dull aluminum and steel with Alclad clear yellow, red, blue, sepia tones. Other engine details were airbrushed with Alclad steel. Tons of masking for that last one!

Sixth layer

Pinwashes and panel filters came next! I used Tamiya black panel wash to outline every panel line and detail. I also used blue, green, grey, and black Ammo filters to add color and tonal variations in each panel for visual separation and increased wear.

This model needs a base

Here’s where things really went off the rails and turned into a “Jake McKee Venture”… what was meant to be a VERY simple weekend paint job turned into a several week ordeal, as I just shared. But the real craziness of this project started when the plastic kit stand just collapsed in the middle for no particular reason during the painting process. So I started scheming SIMPLE ideas for how to mount this ship to a nice base… something small and quick. Maybe a simple 3D printed Colonial forces logo I downloaded from Cults3D or something. But I made the cardinal mistake: research. I googled a few things, watched a few episodes, googled some more. And found the episode “You can’t go home again“, where Starbuck crash lands with a Cylon Raider. The only way home is to hotwire the Raider and land it on the Galactica. This “out of place” setting and the confined nature of the scene really spoke to me. So off I went.

The greatest thing about this project was finding some of the original blueprints (and other misc. reference photos) on Flickr. I found those thanks to a great article from this guy and some emails exchanged. Also a really helpful video of another diorama build. This was helpful but also gave me Idea Overload… and I quickly found myself scaling up and down the scope of this idea.

Picking a design

I had a few design issues I needed to address:

• Had to fit in my display cases, which have limited door size
• Needed to run electric wires to power up the lights in the model
• Represents the inspiration scene as closely as possible, even with creative compression
• Had a fun BSG vibe to it (including the mitered rather than square corners

I started sketching. On paper, with masking tape and foam, in my head. Just started playing with space and shapes.

Once I had an idea of the layout, I cut some quick shapes in the insulation foam I was planning to use for the base. I did a bunch of cuts and paper templates and eventually I had a solid vision in my head. As silly as this sounds when you look at these photos, I had a clear picture in my head of what this project would end up looking like.

To design the back wall shaped and the base cut down to size, I started playing with the ideas for the two support walls I was adding. First with paper templates, then with rough foam rough outs, then with more precise foam shapes. Check out the progression. Oh, and you’ll see one extra wall model that I’ll explain later.

#foreshadowing

I realized as I was preparing to cut the final foam pieces that something wasn’t sitting right with me. After a few braincycles,it dawned on me that the Pink Panther image was really throwing me off from settling into this design. So a thin gray coat of acrylic paint (not a quick process…oof) and my brain could settle into the design. It was time to cut.

Plan in hand, it’s time to start cutting foam. I used the table saw to get the big pieces shaped out. Hook up a vacuum when you cut the foam… that foam sawdust is really hard to get up off things. Thanks, static cling.

I also used my miter saw and the Proxxon hot wire cutter table.

Lots of tape, lots of cuts, lots of adjustments, lots of scraps, cutoffs, and trash.

Final base

After a number of hours of work over a number of days, I finally had a final base of foam to build on. The original intention was to cover the various components in other materials and coatings to get the right textures. I had built this with foam not only to construct a basic set of shapes, but because I thought I could use the foam texture itself as some of the textures. Plans changed in a multitude of ways. More on that below. But here’s the final base!

Creating the BSG vibe

In the TV show when we viewers joined the crew of the Battlestar Galactica they were working on decommissioning the ship and turning it into a museum. This was a well used ship, weathered, repainted and repainted again, rusted, dinged, damaged, repaired. But it was also a ship run by a buttoned up seasoned captain. So it’s still going to be tidy and clean. Dirty, but clean. I wanted to recreate that vibe with this diorama.

First step was to begin adding mechanical/industrial type details. I started adding strips of foam for texture. This was meant to create the vibe of a ship’s inner hull structure. I cut a bunch of thin strips out of the foam, intending to keep the textures all the same by using foam throughout.

I also started playing with various texture mediums to cover the divots and holes in the foam, as well as provide a better texture base. I used Foam Armor, Mig’s Foam cover product, and some AK foam cover. Hated all of them, even after some sanding. At least for this application. So I redid the wall sections I had used to test on.

Out comes the Cricut

OK, fine. Time for a new plan. Styrene! I was going to cover the wall sections in styrene. And for my next trick, I pulled out the Cricut Maker 3, set it to the Acetate cutting setting and off I went to cut out panels. I used Evergreen strip for the “ribs”. I can’t explain how awesome it is to get sheet styrene cut to exact measurements with completely square, parallel cuts. So much better than doing it by hand.

Once the pieces were cut, they were glued on with Aleene’s Take Glue, my new go-to for foam glueing.

After three versions, I had one I could settle on:

Texturing the walls

As you can see in the source image above, the BSG walls had a multi-strip design. My intention at this point was to use the Cricut to cut the pieces of styrene I needed. The trick was going to be getting them thick enough to represent the source material correctly. Something that would push the capabilities of the Cricut. But I figured out how to do it (right blades, extra passes, and snapping it off + cleanup after it came out of the Cricut). But boy did it not look like I wanted it. Well, not as good as I wanted it to look. Especially against the curves of the inner cutouts. So I set it aside and decided to work on it after I figured out the next problem: the “foot” at the bottom of each wall. Here’s where the project really goes off the rails…

And the walls with strip styrene tacked in place. Wasn’t excited about how it was turning out.

Fusion360 enters the chat

I set aside the wall sections to try to process how to make these look good. I’ve been wanting to learn Fusion360 since I first heard about it on the Sprue Cutter’s Union podcast more than a year (two?) ago. My buddy Will Pattison gave me a couple tutorial walk-throughs. My other buddy Matt McDougall had been encouraging me to just jump in. I figured I needed to pick something relatively simple to model as a starter project, and my original intention was to model the foot of the two side walls and just add it to the foam + styrene wall designs. But I figured I’d start with a slightly simpler model: the walkway against the back wall. I didn’t want it to be a single piece of foam sans detail, and Matt McDougall suggested that it needed to be “see through” of some sort. So I knew I needed to design something in Fusion360! Perfect simple starter project.

So over the Thanksgiving long weekend, I jumped in feet first. Fusion360 and Google were being used together to help me figure out how to model the walkway. It was so long, I knew I needed to print it out in sections, so I quickly sketched out a design, captured the dimensions, and started modeling it. And the first time I printed it out… WOW. It was so awesome. Such an amazing feeling of accomplishment!

The design of these 5 walkway pieces was meant to be three parts per section:

• Core frame
• Photoetch (steel) mesh cut to size and laid inside the core frame
• An insert rail that goes over the mesh and fits flush with the core frame to hide the mesh edges and sandwich the mesh in place

The first design was completely open, but the problem was that the uprights I’d already put in place didn’t look right just floating under the walkway. So I tried a full bottom…didn’t look right, too bulky. Then I cut out some of the bottom to let some light pass through… and we had a final design. Well, not so much.

There were several problems that I kept hacking away on. Once I got pretty close with the initial designs, I started working on cutting the photoetch mesh to fit in place. But you so much as look at that stuff funny and it’ll get all bent to hell.

So I tried a few versions with fusion created “bars” instead of the metal mesh. It took a minute to figure out the right spacing and bar sizing. The first couple versions were too thin and the “bar mesh” just warped like mad.

I finally got it dialed in with several different slicer orientation options. Perfect!! Well sorta.

There was another problem. After a couple days, the pieces warped in the middle. So I had to redo some of the design, mainly closing in the backside of this part so that it there was more mass. I also put some supports inside the part under the mesh.

The design was complete with locating nubs on appropriate sides. There’s three designs exactly the same save the nubs: Left side, right side, three middles.

After letting the pieces sit for a couple days, I used JB Weld to attached the 5 components into one big long walkway. Taped it down, put some weight on it, and let it sit overnight.

Here it is in place!

Put your right foot in… 

With some Fusion360 confidence under my belt, I moved to the next project: the foot for the walls. As you can see, I attempted to create this very particular shape/design with the foam. But it was terrible.

So I thought “Hey, I can just model up the foot and add it to the foam + styrene walls!” So that’s what I did. Turned out pretty good.

Wasn’t this a weekend project??

As a reminder, this whole project started as a way to clear a REALLY old model out of my display cabinet with a couple hours of weathering and that’s it. But… this project has taken a serious Jake McKee Venture hard turn to the insane overproduced territory.

When I took the newly printed foot and put it up to the foam wall with the tacked in place styrene strips, I hated everything about what I saw. Except the foot. It was beautiful. So in a stroke of genius/madness, my inner voice yelled out “You can model and print the entire wall, not just the foot!” And that was that. For the last three weeks, I’ve been designing both walls, splitting them into printable pieces, and getting ready to do some minor sanding before glueing everything together.

I started with capturing dimensions off my foam models.

Then I started building the short wall out in F360. It took a while. I was new at this. Leave me alone. And hey, the second wall was done radically faster.

Once I had it modeled, I knew I’d have to split it into sections to fit in my smaller Phrozen Sonic 8K Mini. I also realized I would need to hollow out as much of this thing as I could to make it lighter and cheaper to print. Oh, and to run the wiring. More on that in a second. Once I had broken all the pieces apart, I ran a mini version just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind and that this was going to be a cool thing to do. Hint: It was!

The first time I put the first section into the slicer, it was juuuusttt barely too small. I had to adjust some things to make it fit.

And it fit. Barely, but it did. The photo below is just before I pulled the final parts off the printer to clean. As you can tell, the final edges of the print are still sitting in liquid resin. I clearly should have bought the Mega version of the printer.

I also realized I needed some locating bins and recesses to help me keep everything together while I glued, so I added and reprinted.

And viola! The wall was done…after multiple 15 hour print sessions and me packing the build plate more full than I ever have.

Oh how far I’ve come

I had to print the foot separately since the base piece wouldn’t fit in the printer with it on. But when I printed it the first time I realized I hadn’t left any room whatsoever for tolerance to slide the foot around the base section. No problem, just open the Fusion file and tweak the dimensions and it’ll cascade to all the other parts and … WTF? Oh man, I did not design that part well. After 15 mins of futzing to try to fix it, I realized it would be better and faster to just start over. Yep, in just a couple weeks I went from knowing nothing to being able to recreate a model faster than I could fix it. So I did.

And oh boy… it fit like a glove. A beautiful $500 leather glove made by monks. Perfection.

Adding electricity

When I originally built this damn model years and years ago, I put a red LED in the “pilot” viewport and two blue LEDs in the engines. It lit up nicely and I iddn’t want to lose that. So I carved out a space in the base piece to glue the battery pack in.

“If I already have a battery pack, what else I can power?” … oh boy. Jake McKee Venture, indeed. I thought it would be cool to add some lights to the top of the walls. Nothing truly meant to illuminate, just something to add some visual texture to the diorama. So I opened Fusion again and reworked the short wall pieces to allow for wires to be run from the top of the wall (where I added a light to the top section) to the bottom where I’d run them through the base to the battery pack. I added a light on either side of the wall to match a traditional industrial style.

Info coming soon about the clear light fixtures

Modeling the second (long) wall

With the knowledge of the first wall fully absorbed, the second wall, despite being bigger, came together very fast. Also sliced into sections to fit into the printer, also hollowed out, and with locating pins and receiver holes. (This time I used tighter tolerances between the pins and holes and shaped them as “L”)

Mounting the walls

Matt gave me some great input on using magnets to attach, or simply stabilize larger pieces. So I remodeled the base of each wall to have some recesses that fit some 6×2 mm rare earth magnets from Amazon.

Adding textures 

With the 3D modeling mostly out of the way, I started adding details and textures to the base itself. First the back wall. The Galactica is a well used, old, about to be retired ship. If you see the interior of US Navy ships, you’ll notice that there are no truly smooth surfaces, really. Everything has dings, multiple coats of paint, etc. Especially older ships. I wanted to recreate some of that. A bit of slightly thinned Tamiya gray putty did the trick. I’ll add that same technique to the resin walls too.

I also added texture to the 3D printed walls to help them match the back wall and to give some non-smooth texture. The AK Easy Cast was pretty easy to work with. I dabbed it with a super cheap wide brush.

The hangar deck floor uses sandpaper squares cut to size with the sliding paper cutter (killing it’s blade, requiring a replacement). I also included some 3D printed WWII aircraft carrier deck tie down strips I found on Cults3d.com. The references photos didn’t have anything like this, but I thought it would be a cool touch to add some visual texture. To create the “trenches” for the tie-down strips, I used a ceramic carving tool on the foam. Multiple medium pressure passes with a straight edge fixed me right up.

Adding details

The back wall needed a little something to break up the design. I added a few electrical features with 3D printed elements and some guitar strings. I also added a couple pipes. The Galactica was a functional ship and couldn’t have hidden all the mechanical features.

It’s time to start assembling components

At this point, I had a series of components I’d been working on separately:

• Back wall
• Base
• Two wall components
• Spaceship mounting options
• Accessories
• Figures

This is the point of the project where everything has to proceed in a specific order. The dependencies were critical to follow in the right order.

Wiring up the lights

Like the rest of this Over McKeed project, what started as adding one or two lights turned into seven. And a light up spaceship. Here’s the design:

Before I could start attaching main components to each other, I needed to make sure to run the wiring for the lights and mount the battery box. First step was the three back wall lights. A little soldering, a little heat shrinking, and a little low temp hot glue and the wires were in place on the back wall.

Then the sheet styrene went over the backside of the back wall. This will serve as the base to build up the ribs that Galactica shows most of the show due to battle damage.

Cutting the ribs

I had originally intended to just use the backside of the back wall as-is. Namely, harsh angles. But the Galactica was a more rounded, organic design. But hey, whatever, I was going to ignore that. Until I started doing research for how to design the back of the wall and … well… I had to find a way to put some curves in that thing. In the show, the ship has its exterior sheeting blown off in battle and exposes the ribs underneath. I wanted to recreate those.

Adjusted for research and setup time, I spent less than 10 minutes going from paper sketch to Fusion sketch to SVG to Cricut setup to perfectly cut (the first time) piece of styrene. First time. One piece. No recuts. Beautiful. (One note… be sure to take your measurements and make your cuts AFTER you have the base surface finalized. I measured against the foam rather than against the styrene I covered the foam with. Dumb move, I had to tweak the design and recut the ribs. Lesson learned.)

 

 

  

 

 

    

   

   

Testing the layout… moving accessories around. Over and over.

• Green ammo boxes: Tamiya XF-11 JN Green + XF-4 Yellow Green
• Blue power cart: Tamiya XF-8 Flat blue + XF-1 Flat white
• Desk and desk shelves: Tamiya XF-57 Buff + XF-1 flat white

Perhaps my favorite accessory

When I was searching Cults3D early on in the project for BSG models, I came across a Colonial Viper model. The Viper is the ship that’s supposed to be in this hangar bay. So it made since that there’d be a scale model of it in the bay as a way to train or discuss. (Kinda like the plane-on-a-stick in Top Gun) This tiny thing took nearly two hours to paint.

 

Suspending the Raider

• Painted some painters tape on both sides with Tamiya yellow. I based coated with yellow straight from the jar and then went back with a cloudy pattern of yellow+buff to tone it back.
• Cut out strips to length and super glued the ends together. This was both to adhere the two sides, but also to add some heft to the ends where they would be load bearing.
• Punched a hole through the tape and super glue with a punch set.
• Put a split ring (like you have on your keychain) through the hole in the newly made strap. (The split rings were cut from some of the springs I’d made for the power cable talked about above)
• Attached short chain lengths to the split rings on the straps.
• After figuring out the right length, I cut down the chains and fed them onto another split ring attached to red cross member part of the crane. The name for that escapes me.
• Bent and soldered brass wire ovals to attach to the crane motors that will get glued to the overhead rail. These were fed into the upper slots on the red cross member part (you know what it’s called…hopefully) and then soldered together. Fortunately the head of soldering was brief and didn’t seem to hurt the resin or the paint.
• The straps were wrapped under the ship and the whole assembly was glued in place to the overhead rail with JB Weld.

In the meantime, here’s a few final photos and a few links to other pages on this site related to this build!

• Final project photos blog post
• Side project: Colonial Spec Reader (my project viewmaster with build photos)
• Making springs at home
• LED lighting basics
• Fusion360, 3D printing, and the Cylon diorama [LINK COMING SOON]

Reference Links:
Fusion360 – Coil along a path

Battlestar Fonts

LED Series Resistor Calculator

DRADIS Screens

Great blog about BSG