Set 11 - Padded Walls
[ My Pod Home | Batch 1 | Batch 2 | Batch 3 | 4: A  New Interior Begins 5: Interior w/ Overlays | 6: Revised Interior ]
[ 7: Cutting Plastic [ 8: Real Progress | 9: Ceiling Taking Shape | 10: More Ceiling & Walls | 11: Padding the Walls ]
[ 12: Real Ceiling Work | 13: AC Vent Beginnings | 14: More Interior | 15: Misc | 16: Ceiling & Walls ]
[  17: Joysticks | 18: Handles & Base | 19: Decals | 20: Primer! | 21: Colo(u)red Paint ]
[ 22: Joysticks Redux ]
assembling.JPG (175889 bytes) Assembly. Gluing strips in place. port_antechamber.JPG (170295 bytes) Port Side wall in place. starboard_antechamber.JPG (170324 bytes) And the starboard wall, too.
wall_comparison.JPG (35174 bytes) Comparing the new pieces to the originals.
 
Although impressive looking, the padding is comparatively straight-forward to do . The process is pretty simple:
  • Cut 3/8" wide strips (except for a couple of places where differences were necessary due to design and/or f**k ups in cutting out the handholds) from 1/16" thick styrene sheet.
  • File a 45° angle on the long edges, then round off.
  • Trim to roughly the required length.
  • Glue all the pieces in place for one wall. (You can kinda see in the assembling shot that I've used a strip of 0.04" styrene as a spacer between the second and third pads from the bottom to keep all the padding equally spaced and parallel.)
  • Trim the pieces so they're flush with the other wall.
  • Add strips for the other wall (overlapping the ones on the first wall).
  • Trim to length and round of the corners.

The toughest bit is the little bit of padding in front of the handholds and the cutouts around the consoles and lightboxes.

You can see in the starboard wall view that I'm adding a piece that sticks waaaay out at the handhold. This is different from how I did the port wall. There, I added the piece on the handhold wall first, then filed down with everything else. Decided to experiment on this wall - found out I'd done it the easy way the first time. Ah well, I'll know better next time.

Now that the walls are basically assembled, I'm quite happy with how they're turning out. 

Viewing the model interior next to the photo from Scott I've noticed some inaccuracies that I can't do anything about at this point (see below): 

  • Light boxes are about 50% too tall, and a shade too wide.
  • Rear walls (the ones with the consoles on them) should have been significantly thinner.
  • Triangular consoles tilt in too much.

(And yes, I know that the bottom piece of padding on the antechamber walls is waaaay to tall, but I wasn't going to add an extra piece - this is the way the unit fits together and there's no way, given the height that the consoles need to be at, for the distance between the floor and the top of that first padding piece to be any different. Must be nice to have been able to build an interior set without regard to how it would fit within the exterior!)

Aside from these accuracy problems, I'm very please with the work thus far. Seeing this king of progress makes me really ticked that I have to disassemble the card table I've been working on so my house can look spiffy clean for potential buyers. Although I may be able to pull the Pod out occasionally, my guess is that there won't be any really progress until mid to late August after I move.

Stay tuned ...