Skin Job

Oh! How long I have waited, and dreaded making the detailed surfaces for the Flight Pod retraction pockets.

So many aspects had to be dealt with before I could even attempt this. The hull slices, for one, had to be at thier proper thicknesses. Since that was done many weeks ago I only had my concernes about fitting getting in the way. They turned out to be unwarrented. These new pieces dropped into place with the minimum of fuss.

These skins are made from two layers of material. The innermost, and thickest, being of ridgid vinyl. The outer being made from a 2" wide strip of electrical tape. The tape lazer cut just like most every other part on the Galactica. And since it IS tape it is self adhesive.

Skin Patterns

Skin Patterns

The only thing that I worrried about in this process is how well the tape would hold up on the pattern after a couple of mold pulls. I am avoiding this problem by molding the skins and using casted skins instead.

Mold

Mold

Cast Skins

Cast Skins

Casting also give me the advantage of only making one set of originals as well as being able to be formed to compund curves much better than the sheet vinyl.

Skins in place

Skins in place

Skins in place

These look fairly good to me. With a little fitting and some minor gap filling I can be done with these.