NERD ALERT. As one my crazier projects, I set out to reproduce a door (and a few other things) from the Expanse Rocinante military spaceship.
Once I made a model in CAD, I split the design into pieces that could fit on a 24" x 31" panel without putting seams at awkward places. This ended up being a 7 piece machining job on 1/4" MDF. I glued up 3 of the panels to build the lower portion of the door before hanging it.
Then I placed the top and the two side filler pieces, and started filling the seams. As posted earlier I had an issue with the bit walking down during this job, so some of the panels were severely scarred. I filled with bondo and epoxy (depending on the area) to recover it.
Primer helped to highlight remaining “problem” areas, which got more touchup before final paint.
Then it was off to decal land, jointly designed in CAD and Photoshop. I used removeable vinyl (as opposed to permanent) so I could reposition without tearing my paint if I got the placement wrong.
Final build is 36" wide by 80" tall. Two coats of paint and a bunch of decals later and it’s finished! Pretty proud of it.
If you’re an Expanse fan, drop me a line and I’ll share the rest of the project with you!