I can only echo what everyone else has said, I absolutely loved the build, your are truly skilled and I love your humour. Also, thanks for recommending Greg’s models and clonefox80 Take care Jason 🇬🇧
I don’t think anyone could do a better job than you did on this kit. Absolutely stunning! That base is very impressive. Your buddy did an excellent job! I remember having a hard time painting those black lines on the boosters.
The most brilliant and beautiful scale shuttle build EVER! That thing belongs in a museum my friend and if your going to do anything with it please share it with the public and remind everyone of the incredible ingenuity the free people are capable of! Your talent is representative of that ingenuity! God bless America!
i was interested in buying a space shuttle but found there isnt really anything great out there, so i decided to look into model kits. found your channel, and this piece is amazing. I've never done a model kit before, and im not sure I want to do this as my first project, but i will for sure work my way up to it. Thanks for the info and inspiration!
Absolute work of art. I f my own 1/144 build is 1/144th as good as this I will be delighted. Your work is an absolute pleasure to behold and an inspiration, I'm sure, to countless model builders the world over.
Thanks Chris! As for the coffee thing, I really don’t see why it’s a big deal to some. If someone doesn’t like how I do my videos, they shouldn’t watch them. I enjoy sharing my work with content that might help my fellow modelers, but I won’t let a few crybabies dictate to me what I do on my channel. I don’t get paid for putting these out, so as far as I’m concerned, they can suck it :)
Breathtaking!!!! Such a beautiful work!!! Just amazing !! And a month actually is quick!!! Truly a crazy , detailed master piece!!! Inspirational. The work on attaching the orbiter and External tank must have been a little tricky. But it's so cool Cheers!!!! I salute you on the memorial Day weekend !!!!!
I am just blown away by the fidelity of your model compared to the prototype. I’m a very amateur builder, trying to compensate by really taking my time on a Tamiya 1/100 orbiter. It’s crystal clear to me now, just how challenging a good scale representation will be. The design seems so complex that it is very easy to over or under do it as a modeler. I’m hoping to keep myself honest in the quality of my build by posting my work here on RU-vid. ...but that would be the only reason as there can be little to no instructional value to my work. People need to come here for that! No doubt, I’ll be incorporating many of your techniques. Thanks for sharing. 👍
Don’t short yourself my friend. I checked out your channel and watched your orbiter episode...looks like you’re doing a heck of a good job to me, can’t wait to see it progress.
Watched the whole thing start to finish in the past couple hours. Holy moley! This is awesome! I might have to bite the bullet and get one (if I can find a kit). 1/72 is just my size. 1/144 is good and all but these larger kits let you add so much more detail that can be seen! Love it! Awesome work!
Best to date my friend! Superbly done all around! I can’t get over how big that kit is. Your attention to detail in every part of the build is inspiring. Thanks for showing the other build but I’m not sure that guy is ready for prime time :-). I look forward to getting this monster on display in the office. It would be cool for you to do a video with pictures of where your works of art end up and how they are displayed. Thanks again for taking this on for me!
Incredible job! Well worth the work invested in it and the display stand paint work really sets it off. Nice strategy keeping it with three posts on the bottom. On my stacks (STS-117 and Moonraker) I went with a pair of rods (K&S music wire rod) sleeved into brass tunes going up through them pretty far. It has to be done that way because the orbiter really puts serious stress on the internal supports. Plus the bipod strut for the nose is fragile. My STS-117 stack is on display at the SAC Museum in Ashland, NE and I had to fix that strut twice within a year before I had it beefed up enough. It has held up almost a decade now. For Moonraker, I was missing the bipod strut (which I scrounged to fix the 117 stack) so scratch built a stronger one made with music wire and styrene. It didn't have to look as good since I was building a model of a model anyway. By going with a three post display, the stack is much more stable in the long run.
Jay+ you should see on Pinterest they build the same kit and built a dinamck display of the of the shuttle taking off it looks like they used form for the blast and smoke trail and they scratch built the very top of the launch tower in the smoke trail it's very neat looking display
Should add LEDS to the acrylic rods, mounted from below, to light the rights up. Get yellow LEDs, add two more rods to the orbiter, and light pipe some ignition flames up the rods.
I'd like to get another and make a launch diorama with smoke and fire. When I was a kid, I had a smaller scale shuttle with launch pad. That was a very cool kit. Hard to find now. It would be perfect to create a replica 39A.
Hey it's Ringo! He's really turning out to be a ball of fur. Great job on the SRB's. WOW! The whole kit came out beautifully, from base to Shuttle to fuel tank and Boosters. Your scratch built base looks much better. Congrats! Great job!
You should see on Pinterest someone built this same kit and they built a display of it launching from the pad it look like they used a foam to simulate the smoke and they had leds to light up the engines and they scratch build the very top of the launch tower in the smoke trail
Great job Sean! I think is one of my favorites from you. Question: for round surfaces, do you have a favorite filler to tackle the seams? I noticed you use the CA glue mixed with pigment and im thinking of giving it a try.
Thanks Luis. It’s not my best work but it is one of my favorites as well. As far as filler, I almost exclusively use CA and metallic pigment (Ammo Mig Gun Metal). Most if not all CA works but so far, I’ve found only the Ammo Mig gun metal pigment works. I’ve got some other metallic pigments like Uschi van der rosten and some other cheaper stuff but they won’t mix with the CA. You’ll also want to get some glue loopers, they’re a must for this method. I like it because it’s strong, sands easily, and doesn’t chip away as bad as a lot of putties...plus it dries instantly with kicker, so I don’t have to wait to sand. It’s great for filling in seams and I even use it for leveling out steps as well. It works just as well for rounded areas (I used it on the XSL-01 rocket tubes to even out my splices). For really big jobs like the fuel tank on this shuttle, I opted for regular putty as it would’ve have taken much longer and would’ve eaten through all of my ca to fill that large of an area. I’ll put together a video dedicated to just to this topic as I do get a lot of questions about it.
One of the best shuttle builds I’ve ever seen. I know you’ve mentioned it multiple times - but I can’t find which video you mentioned specifically. What AK “metallic” pigment do you use? And what sort of mix ratio do you use with the Zap-A-Gap Thin CA? Thanks!
It’s Ammo Mig Gun Metal pigment and you can mix it to whatever ratio you want. The more pigment you add, the thicker it is and easier (but messier) it is to sand. It works with any type of ca glue as well. I can’t remember the video either.
Look fantastic! Great job! Keep it up, might have to start doing articles for FSM (Fine Scale Modeler) on your spare time. Also Ramon was the youngest Israeli pilot to fly in Operation Bullseye (the raid on the Iraqi nuclear powerplant back in the early 1980's)
Hi, thanks for the kind words. It took me six weeks. I started with the launch towers, then pad, base and finally the shuttle. Sean got me back into building last year after more than 20 years away. I’m am slowly learning and developing my skills. He has been super helpful.
Jody Pombrio I had gotten back into it about 6 years ago, building 1/12 MotoGP bikes, having traded a childhood around military bases and aviation for motorcycles in my teen years. I hadn’t built an airplane since I was about 16 until I saw Sean’s SR-71 build last summer. I didn’t recall any SR’s bigger than 1/72 available as a kid, so when I saw that there were 1/48 kits floating around EBay, I had to build one This despite the evidence in Sean’s video that it was really a pretty crappy quality kit that would require a low of work to make it not suck. But it’s done and I’m mostly happy with it, so thanks again Sean for the inspiration, tips and techniques.
Hi Shannon, I’ve built several of those 1/48 SRs, but none as good as Sean’s. it’s a neat kit, I wish someone would do a modern version of it. I wonder how many people Sean has inspired to either start building or to get back into it. The new tools we have now are so helpful as well.
No I didn’t Douglas...I built it before I started posting videos. I do show it toward the end of this video though ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zKRgjIIK5x4.html
