ALL SCI-FI

[Brent Gair]

I was a bit dismayed to discover that virtually all traces of my greatest modeling project had disappeared from the 'net.

At one time, I had a huge thread on another forum about the scratchbuilding of the spaceship SPINDRIFT from the TV show Land of the Giants. That forum eventually shut down..and so did the photo hosting site that held the pictures. Going through backup HDDs today, I couldn't find the photos! Finally, I went to the old hard drive which I had removed from a fried desktop PC...and found the pictures!

I recovered the photos and loaded a number of them to a new hosting site.

I will now give you the $2.00 tour of my most involved project. This model is about 36" long and approximates the size of the studio model.

There were significant variations between the various miniatures and the full size set. I began this project by obtaining THREE sets of blueprints and "averaging" them to create my own drawings of a hybrid containing elements from all of the Spindrift sets and miniatures.



I built a backbone from plywood and used laminations of polystyrene insulating foam to build up the shape.





After shaping, the ship was covered with two layers of heavy fiberglass applied with epoxy resin.





I even built my own vacuform machine so that I could make the top bubble.



Intake details.



In primer.



Paint.



Done!

[Bud Brewster]

Emerald Duck Call Award

Congratulations on finding the lost pictures, Brent. Seeing a little bit of the hard work that goes into your creations is a real treat.

Please share as many of these step-by-step descriptions of your projects as you want. Seeing the finished projects is great, but gaining an appreciation for what it takes to make them is even better.

I included pictures of the unfinished version of the When Worlds Collide ark in the gallery devoted to your work because it has a beauty all it's own.





And by the way, I found this jpeg among the pictures I have of your work.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]

OK..here's a few more.

This comparison is interesting because it was a pure accident. I was looking at photos of my model and photos of the full size Spindrift set and I happened to notice that these two images were shot at almost identical angles so you can compare the two.



And here's a couple of photos of how I made the bubble top. I turned the pattern on a lathe then vacuformed it with clear plastic.

[Bud Brewster]

Emerald Duck Call Award

Brent, you should do a series of webcasts called Hands-On Sci-Fi, in which you're the Bob Vila of model crafting. You'd be terrific!
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Welcome to Hands-On Sci-Fi, with your host . . . Brent Gair! Today Brent will show us how to save the human race from extinction by building a space ark.
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Come on, folks, I know damn well we'd all watch a guy show us how use a lathe, a vacuform, a jig saw, and other manly devices in a sawdust-filled workshop -- to make robots, rockets, and flying saucers!

I'm thinkin' maybe anybody who says sci-fi ain't macho will have serious trouble with this guy!

Hey, ya know whad-em talkin' 'bout? Huh?


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ShadowLandz100]

Outstanding model work, that is one impressive ark and the Spendthrift is just beautiful, thank you for sharing. Karl
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Photograph what interests you today for tomorrow it may not exist.