# My 4 foot jupiter 2



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

Heres the 4 foot jupiter 2, I got from Doug Hines in Dayton Oh.. there is some clean up to be done , but that is to be expected from a mold made from a model as old as this is,
but the 2 halves did lay nice and flat when placed on a flat smooth surface and the 2 halves went together with little effort for mock up purposes..
the wall thickness seems to be 3/16 and pretty consistant in thickness (scratchy too).. 

He said he could make 8 foot deboer seaview/subs also if anyone interested,, I saw batmobile cars and bikes from the original series (full size) All just as scratchy as the jupiter 2

If you want to contact him call 937-602-5080,, Doug Hines
or [email protected]

http://s904.photobucket.com/albums/ac242/skinnyonce/


----------



## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

What a beautiful hull! That IS the Jupiter 2. Wish I had the space. 
What a beautiful street! How come your real world looks like a movie set and your movie piece looks like it's real?
Good luck and I can't wait to see how this builds up. I know you have some pretty serious plans for it. All I can say about the interior is that I think the larger the scale, the easier it will be to build. Many, many times I wished I was doing 1/12 instead of 1/24.


----------



## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

What is the condition of your hull edges ? the left side looks pretty rough.


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

bert model maker said:


> What is the condition of your hull edges ? the left side looks pretty rough.


Yes the hull edges are in need of some work 

based on the sci-fi met- instructions i have,, you take a large flat surface (glass ) adhere large sheets of sand paper to it the same diameter or bigger as the model.. and rotate or move the model in a circular motion to get even sanding. or make a moving table and hold the model still, either way you get even sanding.. a slow and tedieus technique im sure.. worst case is I end up with a not so 4 foot diameter J-II..

Any ideas or comments on the right way to acheive a clean and consistant edge would be helpful.:thumbsup: 

I wont sand a stroke till I feel confident it is the right technique, so for now im just mulling round the ideas in my head..:tongue:

thanks for the help in advance


----------



## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

What you are describing is correct. get the sandpaper fixed to your table top or bench, and make sure to move the hulls evenly and make real sure that when you move the hulls back & forth or circular that the edges are sitting flat. You will get a flat edge on each hull and they will be even. have you any ideas as to HOW you are going to join the 2 hulls ? are you going to screw them together or cement them somehow ? On the 24 inch ones the best way is to do what you are now doing with sanding then, cement the hulls ontop of round or semi round plastic sheet. They don't have to be perfect so long as you have material extending out past the entire edge. the flat surface will make it easier to mate or screw your hull halves together & then sand the edge of the mated hulls until flush. you could use the method moebius did with locator pins that insert into one another or magnets. The flat plastic sheet will also give you a floor at the proper level to the viewport. here is a technique i was shown by Joel Tavera when he built a 2 foot Jupiter 2 for Guy Williams Jr.once you get the round plastic sheet plastic that your hull halves will be cemented to, trace a line around the outside of your hulls so you will have them centered BEFORE cementing them you can make the lines a little larger than your hulls as you will be sanding the plastic sheet flush with the hulls later. Next, remove the hulls and apply a good epoxy inside that line, ( it helps if you have a center hole cut out in each plastic sheet big enough to put your hand through now once you get the hulls centered in the epoxy and inside your lines. once the epoxy starts to set , pour some liquid silver paint that is close to the color you will be painting your wonderful Jupiter 2 along the INSIDE wall & plastic sheet which is now a floor and rotate the hull so that the liquid paint flows into the epoxy as best it can, use plenty since you won't be seeing the inside edge of your hulls. keep rotaing your hulls like a steering wheel and let that paint flow into any nooks & crannies just incase your hull edge is not sanded completly flat in spots, got that so far ? You may be able to mix the paint into the epoxy but i am not sure if that weakens the epoxy or not.The reason for this is that the paint will run under the hull edges so that when you sand away the outside excess flush with the hull edges, you will be sanding upto & into the now silver epoxy so that your hull surface edges will be the same color as your hulls just incase you have any tiny gaps. you will be sanding into silver epoxy instead of clear.I hope this helps, keep me posted on your progress. You are a lucky modeler to have a 4 footer !!!
Bert


----------



## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

He said he could make 8 foot deboer seaview/subs also if anyone interested


MMMMMMM
:thumbsup:


----------



## BronzeGiant (Jun 8, 2007)

junglelord said:


> He said he could make 8 foot deboer seaview/subs also if anyone interested


I wonder what THOSE cost.....


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

BronzeGiant said:


> I wonder what THOSE cost.....


See 1st post for the phone number and call him


----------



## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

Skinnyonce, did the Lunar Models 24 inch Jupiter 2 information above help you any ?


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

bert model maker said:


> Skinnyonce, did the Lunar Models 24 inch Jupiter 2 information above help you any ?


Yes Bert,
it did and thank you much for that, My only concern is how to turn or move/rotate this big honking thing, and still apply even pressure to the edge's,, I have a 24 inch sci-fi metro to practice on and develope a technique as it will,, similar construction method and material, I will apply that to the 4 footer only on a bigger scale


----------



## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

The 4 Footer I got from Doug had the gel-coat finish and was smooth, without the fiberglass cloth 'finish'.


----------



## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

Does Doug have an email address you could share?
Save me some phone cost.
Thanks.

I am interested in the Seaview of course...


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

junglelord said:


> Does Doug have an email address you could share?
> Save me some phone cost.
> Thanks.
> 
> I am interested in the Seaview of course...


Junglelord: 
give this a try [email protected] after I picked my j-2 up I told him people were interested in both the j-2 and the seaview ,,he said he was going to come to hobbytalk and present all the info of what he has to offer with addresses and email pics etc etc,, but I have not seen any thing from him yet, I am sure he is very busy...


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

Y3a said:


> The 4 Footer I got from Doug had the gel-coat finish and was smooth, without the fiberglass cloth 'finish'.


Mine also has a grey gel coat finish on it -or so it appears,,


----------



## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

I never realized it was the Batmobile Doug Hines.
I want on of those so bad.....you can make one yourself with a Canadian guy in BC for $37,000, if you have the frame. My next door neighbour has the frame sitting in his front driveway, a 1976 LTD 

When I win my legal case, I will have a Batmobile.


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

junglelord said:


> I never realized it was the Batmobile Doug Hines.
> I want on of those so bad.....you can make one yourself with a Canadian guy in BC for $37,000, if you have the frame. My next door neighbour has the frame sitting in his front driveway, a 1976 LTD
> 
> When I win my legal case, I will have a Batmobile.


I thought you wanted a seaview,,:tongue: LOL


----------



## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

This 4' Jupiter 2 hull is 4 feet in diameter, unless I've missed something. Sanding vac form kits on glass is age old and time tested. But most vac form kits are 10" long. Where are you going to find a 5 or 6 foot square of glass and how are you going to support it? How are you going to put pressure on it without breaking it?

While I think a 1/12 interior would be a lot easier to build than a 1/24 or 1/35 in a lot of respects (think of how much room you'll have to light the girders!), as far as the hull goes, this is not regular model making anymore. 

As far as I can tell, you're going to either try to free hand the sanding (but look at the mess Fox themselves did in making the Spindrift miniature), or make yourself a jig or two. A simple box, 5 or 6 feet square. The top a hole (preferably routered) to the exact diameter of what you want the upper and lower decks to be. You'll have to check that neither hull half is smaller than the hole. Of course, you can't get normal plywood 5 or 6 feet wide, so you'll have to make it out of several pieces, and two layers cross-hatched so it doesn't sag. Actually, baltic birch is sold in 5' wide pieces, and a single 1/2" layer should be thick enough, or use 2 layers of 1/2" home improvement center so called "plywood", which is easy to find and probably cheaper and certainly a lot easier to trash afterwards.

Find the exact center of the upper and lower hulls and pin those exactly under the center of the hole. (When you router or cut out the hole on the top of the box, clamp it to the bottom of the box and drill the center hole through both top and bottom at the same time. Mark the top and bottom of each and index one side so that they stay in the same orientation when you attach them to the sides. Even a small error will throw the hulls off square.) You'll want some kind of support under the hulls, either three or four ribs or perhaps just a block under the center of the hull. You could make two boxes with two cutouts, or using screws exchange the same top between the upper and lower hull boxes, or just one box with different supports under the hulls. 

A lot of work making jigs, sometimes, but sometimes the only way you can do a ten minute job properly is to spend four hours setting up for it. 

Once the hull is safely secured into the box with just the portion you want to remove proud of the box top, just use an electric sander to trim it exactly true. Wear eye and breathing protection. If you can find a sander with a D handle, that will make it much easier to keep the sander flat on the box top. You don't want it tilting and taking off too much hull edge. An oscillating sandier is easier to control, or if you have a lightweight belt sander, that would work, too, keeping 3/4 of the belt on the box (or the disk) on the table at all times. Don't use a heavy sander, particularly a heavy belt sander. And use a finer grit, so as not to eat the hull or the box top too quickly.

Switch the upper hull for the lower in the same circular cutout. Using the same cutout guarantees that the hull diameters will match. Indexing and pinning the centers to the center of the cutout ensures that the hulls will be the same height all around. 

Trust me, this is a whole lot easier than trying to explain to your wife what happened to the picture window. And it guarantees that with care your hulls will be exactly matching. And you can probably use the jigs, one side missing, to spin the hulls and mark windows and hatches and landing gear placements.


----------



## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

As I think about it, this won't work as I described it. It will work. Only there will be inevitable hitches and corrections, like if you use Baltic birch for the top, how do you straighten it out (invariably Baltic seems to have a small warp) (I don't even know if Baltic is available in the US but there are similar 5' x 5' products) or how you are going to ensure the top is perfectly flat (maybe screw some angle iron underneath as you would a router table). But it's solving all these problems and making it all work that's the fun of model making. Or miniature engineering, in this case. 

I have an incredibly faded scan of the blueprint for the bottom of of the 4'/10' miniature. The landing gear we always see the Robinson's descending from is clearly marked as having steps. The other landing gear is "clearly" marked as "No Steps". I'm wondering, are steps actually visible on the other two landing legs on the miniatures? All I see is the holes in the sides of the gear. On what is supposed to be a surviving landing leg, there are clearly no steps. Maybe they were never there? Kinoshita put steps on only one landing gear on the Forbidden Planet spaceship and why would you add steps to places where there were no hatches?


----------



## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

for sanding the hulls, find a flat cement area. Use tack spray glue on many sheets of the sandpaper to the floor. My garage floor is actually very flat.


----------



## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

starseeker said:


> This 4' Jupiter 2 hull is 4 feet in diameter, unless I've missed something. Sanding vac form kits on glass is age old and time tested. But most vac form kits are 10" long. Where are you going to find a 5 or 6 foot square of glass and how are you going to support it? How are you going to put pressure on it without breaking it?
> 
> While I think a 1/12 interior would be a lot easier to build than a 1/24 or 1/35 in a lot of respects (think of how much room you'll have to light the girders!), as far as the hull goes, this is not regular model making anymore.
> 
> ...


except the hulls are not symmetrical.


----------



## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

skinnyonce said:


> Yes Bert,
> it did and thank you much for that, My only concern is how to turn or move/rotate this big honking thing, and still apply even pressure to the edge's,, I have a 24 inch sci-fi metro to practice on and develope a technique as it will,, similar construction method and material, I will apply that to the 4 footer only on a bigger scale


You could use a big brush to apply the cement/paint mix on the inside seam, i forgot just how BIG those hulls are. When i was describing the method, i must have been thinking of the 24 inch.


----------



## Demoriel (Jan 4, 2010)

Custom Replicas is re-doing our website, and Jim Key has dug up a lot of old photos of his 16" and 4' J2. New site should up in a couple of weeks.


----------



## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

Thats great news, when will they begin selling things again ?


----------



## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

skinnyonce said:


> I thought you wanted a seaview,,:tongue: LOL


$600 for a 8 foot Deboer replica...


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

junglelord said:


> $600 for a 8 foot Deboer replica...


Batmobile $$$$$$???????? Fantasy's are'nt cheap


----------



## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Skinny, how's it going?


----------



## skinnyonce (Dec 17, 2009)

starseeker said:


> Skinny, how's it going?


Hey starseeker,
Good. did you get my message of wanting a disc with the floor plans for the j-2 in bigger file sizes from you, you said they could be sent snail mail. wasnt sure if you sent them or not, what did you want for them by the way $$, thanks a ton for making them available to us


----------

