Cutting the hooks? Yikes! You all are more courageous than I am. I guess you then glue the panels back into place during reassembly.

On 8/18/2019 at 2:59 PM, Gorsk said:

Cutting the hooks? Yikes! You all are more courageous than I am. I guess you then glue the panels back into place during reassembly.

Using my method, the hooks don't get cut, you just disengage them.

Has anyone reassembled their SSD? I'd like to see how they turned out.

Once the screws are out how easy is it to disassemble?

9 hours ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

Once the screws are out how easy is it to disassemble?

Pretty easy. No glue, just a few edge clips.

12 hours ago, Grathew said:

Has anyone reassembled their SSD? I'd like to see how they turned out.

It goes back just fine. I've test fitted sections as I put LEDs in various sections.

Yep find my thread on rebel SSD. That was the one I took apart and painted and put back together.

Okay, so far I managed to separate the big lower hull from the upper hull. After removing fifteen city blocks I'm stuck again now - I can't separate the the smaller lower hull containing the engine blocks from the upper hull.

There seem to be more hooks holding that hull part in place which I can't access and therefore not open. Can someone please provide a photo showing the inner side of the upper hull with the hooks visible so I see where to go? Or how do I remove that hull part?

Right now I've unscrewed 6 screws... are there anymore hidden somewhere?

15 hours ago, Laminidas said:

Okay, so far I managed to separate the big lower hull from the upper hull. After removing fifteen city blocks I'm stuck again now - I can't separate the the smaller lower hull containing the engine blocks from the upper hull.

There seem to be more hooks holding that hull part in place which I can't access and therefore not open. Can someone please provide a photo showing the inner side of the upper hull with the hooks visible so I see where to go? Or how do I remove that hull part?

Right now I've unscrewed 6 screws... are there anymore hidden somewhere?

There is a picture on the previous page showing the location of all 12 screws.

Wait, what? Are there more screws hidden under the engines?

*looks at pic and its headline*

Oh, yeah. 12 screws. Didn't see that sentence. 😑

Now the SSD is disassembled successfully. Thanks a bunch to you!

Next step will be cleaning up all those mold lines and, after that, painting the beautiful monstrosity... 😙

I'm doing an Armada SSD LED mod for someone. @fistfulofforce your instructions were super helpful. I did a video on the teardown:

https://youtu.be/KVliB--aVXM

Meanwhile, I got my Super Star Destroyer painted. As you were so nice to help me disassembling the model, I don't want to withhold the pics...

The model (without base) weighs about 410 g, with paint applied it's just 20 g more.

WOW great job. Are the engines LEDs or painted as OSL?

There are no LEDs built in. Everything is painted with the good old brush. So yes, painted as OSL.

6 hours ago, Laminidas said:

There are no LEDs built in. Everything is painted with the good old brush. So yes, painted as OSL.

That is some incredibly well-painted OSL! Good job!

@Laminidas ! I was all set to heap praise on that paint job, and then I got to the engine flare... HolyCrap!

It took me several minutes to decide if it was exquisite paint work, or LEDs. That is just amazing!

@Laminidas that is an amazing paint job. I wish I had half the skill to do mine.

The spirit of @Vykes is strong with this one...

@Laminidas How did you get the blue windows? I want to do the same effect on my bog standard SSD.

2 hours ago, RunJerZeeNets said:

@Laminidas How did you get the blue windows? I want to do the same effect on my bog standard SSD.

It just looks like a blue-white progression, similar to what I’ve done with Lambda engines and such.

Look up “SO, You want to paint some Rebel Squadrons.” In the painting area and you’ll see a quick guide - it’s just fine very well and on a very large scale here , and that shouldn’t be downplayed.

(I’ll link directly when I have time)

Drasnighta got it.

First I've applied white for a bright foundation and washed it with blue glaze, also covering a bit of the hull next to the window to simulate a slight glow. Next was some light blue, making sure to leave no white foundation uncovered.

Lastly, I took some white again and mixed it with glaze medium to dilute it. Starting in the very center of the window, I painted two light strokes of white just close to the corners while putting more color to the center. That ensured a smooth transition from blue over not-so-bright-white to bright white.

Wow, that must have taken forever to do... 😁

Just about four to five hours, if I recall correctly.

Have a look at the dates of my last posting asking about disassembling the SSD and the posting with the pics and you'll get an idea how long it took to paint the whole SSD in weekend sessions.

On 12/28/2019 at 1:06 AM, Laminidas said:

Which color have you used for the engine gondolas?

Quite a few citadel colors.

Starting with Wazdakka Red , serving as a kind of foundation, then going from Ruby Red over Fire Dragon Bright to Flash Gitz Yellow . Between the yellowish colors I used a lightly diluted shade of Casandora Yellow to smoothen out the color transitions. Same goes with Carroburg Crimson shade for the reddish color transitions. Lastly, as a final accent, I applied a tiny bit of Ceramite White .

Everything exept the yellow shade is applied by carefully controlled drybrushing - but...

...only for the glow effect on the hull...! The engine thrusters themselves are NOT painted. To save me from going insane by wet-painting thirteen thrusters with all the smooth color transitions (you can't drybrush those engines!), I prepared the engine glow in photoshop and printed that as adhesives which I then put on the engines. Went real quick and easy that way.

The thruster tubes are painted with Boltgun Metal and a strong Nuln Oil wash .

For those who want to learn more about OSL lighting and the like, I recommend a trip to the Massive Voodoo tutorials . Really talented guys who wrote lots of superb tutorials.