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MPC Vintage Star Wars B-Wing rebuild


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Back in the 80's I purchased, as a job lot, the MPC Snap versions of the X-Wing, A-Wing, TIE Interceptor and the B-Wing, the subject of this little revisit. (They may have been in a 4 ship box set thinking back)

Image below for reference

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I recall I assembled the B-Wing on the train home from Oxford.

Once home I painted it... not very well.

It had a stand, long since lost to time, marriage, children and house moves.

I still have two of it's stable mates more or less intact and shall turn my attention to them in the future.

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The finish on the B-Wing didn't look any better.

So I disassembled it (sorry, didn't think to take a piccie before I had done this and started work).

Filled and sanded some significant holes including the original stand location on the engine housing on the right

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Thinned the intake walls to produce an impression of scale thickness

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Fixed the seam on the cockpit section including removing some serious misalignments in the detail around the circumference and cleaned up the hole at the back to a more consistent profile.

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Spent a cosy evening yesterday recreating the intake at the front of the main engine nacelle from plasticard so it wouldn't look so much like it was made from thick sliced bread

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Really rather pleased with that

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I also drilled out the guns but no piccie for that yet.

That's as far as it goes for now.

 

Thanks for looking in

 

Phil:thumbsup:

 

Edited by Phil Lewis
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On 12/28/2016 at 7:21 PM, Mechanised Dwarf said:

Very nice! I managed to get the 4 ship box off of evilbay several years ago, I keep looking at it and wishing they were made by Bandai :P I shall be following this closely, who knows your enthusiasm may rub off on me ;)

Thanks MD. I'm pretty certain it was the original 4 ship box I bought in Oxford originally.

The A-wing and the TIE Interceptor are actually quite reasonable in detail and shape and with a bit of work should build into nice representations.

X-Wing was pretty dreadful and I think its in pieces in a box somewhere.

A-Wing needs rescribing and I'll probably do that for my next SciFi build/restoration.

TIE needs some refinement of detail but seems to be a good base.

 

Anyhoo a little more activity on the B-Wing.

My original cockpit and pilot painting was pretty poor.

Repainted pilot figure and cockpit with a mostly imaginary detail.

The pilot figure is pretty crude so its a bit like polishing a :poop: but as it'll be mostly hidden under the heavily tinted canopy I'm not going to go too mad.

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On with the canopy with gaps big enough to demonstrate explosive decompression so out with the plasticard to shim it in all the gaps.

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And Mr Dissolved Putty applied all round to fill the remaining gaps.

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On the right hand picture you can see the glue mishap at the rear of the lower window panel and the generally poor clarity of the canopy.

A quick session with the micromesh polishing cloths later and...

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Not perfect but a definite improvement which is the effect I'm going for here.

 

Thanks for looking in

 

Phil

Edited by Phil Lewis
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That kit brings back memories!   I must have had at least 5 or 6 over the years. They didn't stand up to the rough playing around that I put them through as a kid.  It had to be the third or fourth kit I ever built.  First being the Xwing and second was the Awing. I can't remember if the Bwing or TIE Interceptor was third.

 

They were much cheaper than the toys of the ships. In fact, I could afford one every week on my allowance.  I kept telling myself that I wasn't going to buy the little ships and save up for a Falcon or Shuttle,  but I never did. Too impatient. 

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On 12/28/2016 at 10:01 PM, Mike said:

Bah, I missed out on this kit when Jedi came along, and never did pick one up :(  I live in hope that Bandai will kit one soonish :pray:

I'll have 3 Mr Bandai please sir... and 2 more in 1/48 while you're at it

A very small update.

Removed the misshapen blobs under the nose and have cleaned up the detail ready to accept drilling and application of correctly sized brass tube.

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Hmm.. closeups are very revealing of rough work :(

May need to do a teensy bit of filling and sanding there.

 

Anyway thats it for tonight and Happy New Year all.

Thanks for looking in.

 

Phil

Edited by Phil Lewis
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A little more detail refinement under the pilot module nose.

Looking at (the limited) references I could see an extra recess and the small rectangular nose piece needed to be deeper and extend back under the overhang.

A little work with a razor saw, plasticard and a bit of evergreen 1.5mm channel, followed with a bit of filling and sanding produced this.

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and the side view

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A tad better now.

Probably ready for drilling to accept the various sizes of tube for the guns/sensors/widgets.

 

Thanks for looking in

 

Phil

Edited by Phil Lewis
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  • 1 year later...

Where does time go?

Wow, I haven't touched this since January 2017.

I have been working on other things and I found myself struggling to decide where to go with this old bird.

Fast forward to Sept 2018 and a packaged drops through the door all the way from Japan containing one of my grail kits, an accurate, standard scale B-Wing from BanDai.

Do I rush to build this beauty?... nope, I look at the exquisitely detailed parts on the trees and realise I can now correct some of the issues with the old kit.

I hate to give up on an old model so here we are with a new round of updates.

Lighting

Drilled out the engines to accept 3mm yellow LEDs with 200ohm resisters on the positive lead of each led.

This is to power them with 2x 2032 coin batteries in a switched carrier.

Wired the LEDs together in parallel, insulated and light blocked with Tulip.

Gave all the interior and exterior surfaces a good coat of UMP Black primer to provide additional light blocking.

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Nose Job

The nose of the MPC B-Wing was particularly underwhelming in the detail stakes so I set to with drill, scalpel, files and plasticard and arrived precisely here

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More to follow... I hope :)

 

Phil

Edited by Phil Lewis
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Hi!

Did the same a few years ago. Used 1/72 Panzer Mk IV barrels for the two laser guns.

Had a blast upgrading this old kit, and it looks great with the right paint job.

Good luck!

Ciao

Iwik

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finished!

This post essentially covers the reassembly and painting of the B-Wing.

Circumstances prevented me from posting the ongoing build at the time it was happening but here's the process.

Masked the canopy and primed everything with UMP black primer.

Here you can see the main wing, cockpit module and engine pod shell assembled along with the brass mounting rod and power leads installed ready for connecting.

Some seam issues have been addressed...

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And re-primed

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Base coat of XF-2 Flat White and a little deck tan to warm it applied

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Masked off and applied the blue-grey panels.

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Decided to change the blue-grey mix to the one recommended in the Bandai Kit instructions

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Added a little detail to the port on the rear of the cockpit module. This was a main wheel from the Airfix 1/72 Vampire kit cut thin and with the tyre bulge sanded flat

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After a coat of Tamiya rattle can clear I applied some spurious stencil decals from random decal sheets in the spares box followed by a sealer coat and a judicious application of Tamiya Dark Brown panel line wash.

Engines connected up to the power leads and brass tube used to created the nose mounted guns.

Further streaks and smears applied using powders etc and all sealed under a matt coat.

Unfortunately I cannot post a lot of the pictures as they show a shop card for another forum I post to.

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And finally mounted on it's MDF base with a heavily processed image of Home 1 to keep it company.

Battery pack connected up and set into the underside of the base (temporarily held in with masking tape.

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So that's it for this build

Apologies that things got away from me so we didn't get a blow by blow account.

 

Thanks for looking in

 

Phil :thumbsup:

Edited by Phil Lewis
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  • 3 months later...

Great to see another Star Wars rebuild! I had my own similar oddysey with an old Fine Molds X-Wing so I can relate to the struggle. Your B-Wing turned out great, lovely colours!

 

The A-Wing and TIE Interceptor look very good as they are but I have the latter, so if you do rebuild it, would be very interested following the thread.

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