Saturday 20 July 2019

MY SCRATCHBUILT SPACEX LAMA: PROGRESS SO FAR

Inspired by the ingenuity of the Apollo 11 moon landing and spurred on by my Rocket Transporter model I thought I'd have a crack at another Tri-ang SpaceX toy.

The L.A.M.A

Here's the original toy, another one I don't have.

Not an easy shape to recreate but I thought I'd give it a go!


I raided the toy cupboard and found this hungry hippos game.




The hippo body's look decent. The T-holes could be a godsend. I might make two LAMAs!


Starting with the green one I attached some green felt-pen cut-offs.


Some plastic drumstick ends provided the quirky legs.


A silver mini-radio dial snapped in half made for an OK engine plate.


The feet came in the form of these old plastic game pieces


The canon is an odd shape. Like an electrode. This white plastic rode was in my bots box. Not sure what it is but it'll do! A pen top became the silver cockpit dash and a row of staples made for a sort of canon blind.


The cockpit blister was a problem. I couldn't find anything in the house like the original so I cheated and went for a simple opaque blue lego tile to cover the silver dash. Not very precise I know but this scratch build has turned out to be more of a comic version of the toy rather than a straight copy.


A further raid on the Grandson's lego box garnered two neat black antennae. 


Its coming along.

The finishing touches to follow.

What do you think so far readers?


12 comments:

  1. I love it! How are you going to do the shiny paint finish?

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    1. Thanks! leaving this colour alone Kev. I may attempt a closer resemblance on the second Hippo.

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  2. Thats bloody marvellous! If I was going to be really critical, I'd say ditch the blue lego brick and look for a proper canopy or bubble, its too good to use a shortcut like that!

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    1. I know I know but I'm impatient and I don't have a dome Wote!

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  3. Looks good, Woodsy, nice one.:)

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    1. Thanks a lot Scoop. Still got some finishing touches to do like the Letraset and a stand. It keeps falling over!

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  4. You are intrepid and courageous, and I am totally impressed!

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    1. Thanks a lot Zigg. Its a lot of fun. Just start sticking stuff together and see what happens! ha ha

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  5. Nice work! I had a hot-rod toy in the sixties that had a similar vacuum metalized pink finish.
    If you want to achieve a similar look on your model, it's possible, but a little complicated.
    First the metalized areas need to be painted gloss black, then Alclad II chrome paint applied thinly with an airbrush. This is the closest you can get to an actual mettalized finish and I can send you some pics of a Gilbert James Bond tin toy that I renovated using this technique and the painted chrome is almost indistinguishable from the original parts.
    THEN... You'll have to airbrush some translucent pink Tamiya PS40 paint over the top to get the coloured tint. I haven't actually done this yet, but I have the paints and will be utilizing them in a future project.
    Happy Modelling!

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    1. Ta Lewis! Was your metallic hot rod toy a Hot Wheels car?

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