Hi, There!

If you've found your way here via our Facebook page, let me just say "Thanks for dropping by!"  This is the site where I actually offer my models, well most of them, anyway, for download, and where I try to do more in depth explanations of what goes into creating them.  Over the past year of so, most of my modeling time has been divided between the S.S. Raven, which is in the the test-build stage, and the series of small Star Fleet ships I've been tinkering on for the past few years.  If you'd like to see more, you can always check out my most current work on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Rosco-Bilt-Paper-Models-834283816633121/?ref=br_rs  or feel free to check out some of my previous work here. 

PLEASE READ!!!!!!

Hi, Folks,  I know there isn't much new on here lately, but I AM still working on several new model projects, and revisiting a few old ones.

In the midst of all this, I'm going to be reworking my online storage for my model files, so some of the models offered on the site here, may come up with bad links or be unavailable as I move things around and add new links to their new locations.  If there's a model you want, and it comes up unavailable, just drop me a message and I'll make sure you get it.

Thanks!!

P

Paper Modeling and the Art of Procrastination

Well, Folks, I've done it to you, again.  Last night I had reason to check to check in here on the blog and, while knowing that it had been a while since my last updates, realized that my last post was from A YEAR AGO!!!

Now, I haven't been dormant over the last year, in fact, far from it, but I have indeed been neglecting this page.  This is partly due to some big-time craziness and upheaval in my day-to-day life as a small-business owner, partly due to the family issues that affect everyone occasionally, and partly because I've been really busy in between on working on models instead of writing about models.

Mainly, I've been hammering away in what I last referred to as the "Jefferies-class Frigate" project, which has grown from one model into an entire series, with running changes over the two years and counting incubation of this design.

For added effect, I took these photos with a flashlight during a black out.

The most recent iteration, was initially called the U.S.S. Sternbach, named for artist Rick Sternbach, designer of Star Trek's U.S.S. Voyager.  In a Facebook post, Rick had posited that while all on-screen Federation ships had used warp engines with integral Bussard collectors, there was no reason, within the bounds of the fictional technology of Star Trek, why the collectors could not be mounted remotely from the engines.  Given this as a possibility, he wondered what such a ship might look like.

The U.S.S. Sternbach, though some have called it "Rudolph"

I took this as an opportunity to see if I could come up with something worthy of his idea, and was very pleased when he gave my design his nod of approval.  That made me want to go forward and finish the model to a decent level of detail, but not just that version, but all three models, so, over the last year, they have had their surface details completely re-drawn.

Other projects of note nearing completion include the Eichler House, which is currently in the test build phase, a reworking of my TOS Build Your Own Starfleet set, and an updated higher-resolution version of the Chaffee.

Stay Tuned...

Recharging Batteries

It's been awfully quiet around the the blog, lately, as I've been taking a pause from my own design projects to work on something very cool, and a bit outside my comfort zone just for the fun of building something cool.  

For the past six years, most of my time spent on my hobby has been put toward either creating brand new subjects or repainting and refining older models, and all of the building I'd done over that period had been related to that.  In fact, during my design work on the DS9 runabout, I built the same wing section over two dozen times, the vintage car project required a test build of each of the 50+ versions I designed, and my ongoing Federation Frigate project has required enough test builds to fill two bankers boxes.  Not that I'm complaining, as I believe that the process of test-building a model is an integral part of the design process, but all that repetition had left me a bit... unmotivated, and often frustrated to the point where I was repeating mistakes.  I was so caught up in trigonometry and the math of creating models that I had forgotten that it was supposed to be fun.  

I needed a break from what had become routine, so I've taken a bit of a sabbatical, in the form of a new model from Julius Perdana, owner of the site Paper-Replika.com.  Now anyone who has been in the paper model hobby for more than 20 minutes is familiar with Julius' rather prolific body of work.  He is known around the world for designing some of the best, and often biggest, paper models on the internet, and I have to admit that I have often been completely intimidated by the scope of some of his designs.  But not this time.
I've jumped into this one with both feet and am completely enjoying the break from the norm. 

So far, I've gotten the head and torso sections completed, and have moved on to the legs, which are still a work-in-progress.  Here are a few photos of what's been done, so far...

The head of the model, which is the first assembly section, with a quarter for scale...

Inner structure of the torso.

Rear view of the torso with the repulsor pack taking shape

The completed torso with the poseable head in place

Inner structure of the hips, where the legs will attach. (shown upside-down) This part, build from heavy cardboard, was colored black before final assembly.

Standing on its own two feet.  This is as far as I've gotten until now.  The feet are well-along and the inner structures of the poseable legs are all ready.  Work will continue with adding more detail parts to the feet, and adding the outer sections of both legs, before printing and assembling the arms and finishing the model.

Hudson-class Runabout

If you've visited The Garage here on the blog since the recent reboot, you likely noticed the work-in-progress photos of this project, so I thought it was about time to put it out there.  

Here's the backstory:

The Hudson-class is a descendant of the earlier Danube-class, and is similar in size, and capacity, while offering improved range and speed, with a maximum of Warp 9.1.  The more angular appearance of the Hudson-class vessels is due to the use of a stronger, more rigid space frame which, in conjunction with more powerful warp engines derived from those found on the larger Defiant-class vessels accounts for the increase in speed.  The larger size of the now-shielded warp coils made in necessary to relocate the impulse drive to separate pods above the main warp engines.  While the Hudson-class vessels share the modular construction of the earlier Danube-class, most of the vessels built early in the production run were preassigned to dedicated functions and constructed at the shipyard in such a way that it precludes them from being reconfigured. 

During the Hudson-class' early stages development, a need arose for several small ships to be assigned to Starfleet Headquarters for use as diplomatic couriers and transport vessels, and several of the Hudson-class vessels were requisitioned for this purpose.  These ships were assigned Starfleet Command registries and wore a different livery that the standard Starfleet vessels.  The U.S.S. Hudson, during its testing phases, was the only ship of the class to wear both liveries, and for a time wore a mix of the two, though it retained its NX registry designation throughout.

The Model:

This model began as a side-effect of my larger Jefferies-class Frigate project, when I began playing with docking ports on the rim of the larger ship's primary hull.  I thought it would be cool to include a Runabout type of ship which could be docked to the ship.  

By this point, I was well into the design of the frigate, and had already roughed in the basic shape of the shuttlecraft for the open shuttlebay, so it wasn't too difficult to double the little shuttle design in size and dress it up a bit as a new class of Runabout.  I liked the finished look of the tiny, little ship so well, that I decided to do a larger, better detailed version, and that's what we've got here.  I've added separate parts for many of the surface details to break up the texture a bit, but I'm sure that a few builders I know will take it far beyond what I've done.

When it came time to name the ships of the class, I made a list of all of the possible names for runabouts that hadn't been used on Deep Space Nine, and the first two river names that came to mind were the Hudson, and the Jordan.  These also just happen to be the names of old cars, so while I started with good intentions, I quickly decided to satisfy my own sense of humor, so all of the Hudson-class ships are named after old cars, instead of rivers....

You can download the models, here:

U.S.S. Dodge, NSC-82838

U.S.S. Fargo, NSC-82830

U.S.S. La Salle, NCC-82822

U.S.S. Packard, NCC-82823

Happy Modeling!

Hey, I'm over in The Garage

I'm working on a brand new project, today.  Come on in and check it out...

The Garage

He's Not Really Gone, As Long As We Remember Him....

It's a very sad day for anyone who has ever called themselves a Star Trek Fan, as we learned this morning of the passing of Leonard Nimoy, at age 83.  While he was best known for his iconic portrayal of "Mr. Spock" in the original "Star Trek" TV series, eight later films, and a guest appearance on "Star Trek: The Next Generation", he was also an accomplished film director, teacher and photographer.  He will be missed...

New York Times