Andy Moore

There is a newer version of the scale comparison poster in a different thread with the B-Wing on it, although I should probably redo the whole thing now to add the Razor Crest. I don't have the Bandai Vader's TIE to make a comparison, but I know it's a little larger than the Finemolds version. It's funny you should mention the Revell one being listed as 1/121, as the Finemolds kit actually scales out to around 1/124 if using the quoted (DK Complete Vehicles book, Star Wars.com, Wookieepedia) length of 9.2 meters. That's also roughly the length of a Spitfire, which is why I used it in the comparison shot above. Of course, scales and sizes in Star Wars are open to a large degree of interpretation, but subjectively the Finemolds X1 does seem far too small to my eyes to be considered 1/72. Having said that, it's still a very nice kit - I wish they'd reissue them again. Andy

Thanks for the comments everyone Cheers Matt, yeah, the work on the house is done now. Yes, this is one I printed myself. Very little clean up required though, just needed the supports removing and a quick wash, and it was ready for paint. The sculptor has a few figures from Holy Grail. You can find them here if you scroll down the page a bit. Andy

There are some who call me... Tim I've not had much time for modelling over the last couple of months, but I have managed to get a couple of bust prints painted. The first is this one of John Cleese as Tim the Enchanter from Holy Grail. It's a single-part print that stands just under 2" in hight. Painted with a mix of Vallejo and AK Gen 3 acrylics. Quite! Thanks for looking Andy

Thanks, The Revell kit is approximately 33.5cm long and 12cm high. Your Bandai version looks great. Andy

They look great Warren. Some nice figures on their website, might have to order a couple. I take it they don't come pre-supported? Andy

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Andy

Thanks everyone. The finished shots are up in RFI now. I've not tried that one but, yes, as far as I know it's the same minus the UV protection. I'd imagine it would work just as well over a metallic finish. I did notice that Scale Model Shop has the UV cut flat in stock, but not the gloss - they didn't have either a few weeks ago, so maybe it is just a delay in stock coming through. I'd definitely recommend it John. I did hear that Revell will be increasing their prices soon, so best get it ASAP if you can. Andy

Revell's new Razor Crest from the Star Wars TV show 'The Mandalorian'. The kit is definitely a step up from some of Revell's previous Star Wars releases, featuring some excellent detailing and a full interior. It's also nice that they've made it in a standard modelling scale rather than some random one as many of their earlier SW kits were. The only significant downside with the kit is the poor surface texturing across many of the parts, including some quite visible tooling marks in places. Much of that can be removed with a sanding stick and a little effort, but I'd have prefered it not to be there in the first place. Despite that, the kit builds up well and has excellent fit for the most part. A few areas can benefit from a little extra detailing and enhancement, but the end result is an accurate and fairy imposing replica of the Crest, especially if you can stand it next to it's natural stablemate - Slave 1. The full build can be found here Thanks for looking Andy

Thanks Johnny, Yes, ghost lines can be a nightmare. I won't pretend I always manage to avoid then, but what I normally do with joints where I think ghost seams may be an issue is to glue the parts together with styrene gloop (you know, bit's of sprue dissolved in Tam extra thin), letting it squelch out and fill any gaps in the seam line. Once it's dry, I'll take the excess down with a file (which I prefer for round parts over a sanding stick), and usually the gloop will have done the trick and there won't be a seam. If there are any traces of a seam left, I just brush on another layer of gloop and repeat the filing/sanding. For top coating metallics, sometimes I don't bother if I think the finish will be robust enough to take any weathing I'll be applying. In this case, the AK polished alu I used is quite fragile, and I had to re-apply it in a few spots where it had worn away from handling, and being enamel based, it tends to react badly to oil and enamel washes, so I definitely needed to seal it. I used to do that with Alcad aquaclear, but these days for clear coats (over metallics or regular finishes) I use Gunze GX UV Cut gloss and flat (they don't do a satin sadly). The Crest had a 50/50 mix of flat and gloss to seal the surface before the weathering started and a final mist coat of flat at the end as I felt the shine was a little too high in places. The GX UV cut clears don't seem to affect underlying metallic finishes much, and they're pretty much bullet proof as a sealing coat. I have noticed that they're starting to be hard to find though - hopefully that's just a temporary supply issue, and not a sign that they're being fazed out. Cheers Matt, Yes, it's good to be getting back to normal, but I'm so far behind on various builds it's going to take me quite a while to get everything back on track. Thanks Pete, Yes, I did consider that. To be honest, I didn't really realise how weak the joint was until the parts were assembled and ready for paint. I didn't really want to go back and re-work the legs at that point, so I just hoped for the best. They're holding the ships weight for now, but if they do break at some point I will have to drill and pin them. The strut wouldn't be a problem to drill, but the upright box section on the foot would be more of an issue as there isn't much meat there to drill into. It's essentially just on open-backed box that a tab on the end of the strut plugs into. This model would definitely be a candidate for some cast metal landing gear. I've finished the final bits of assembly now, so I can officially call the build done. The engines were glued into place, and the weathering tweaked a little to blend them in. These are an excellent fit, simply dropping into place on the ends of the stub wings. The joint is completely hidden, which makes it really easy to mount them after painting. I really wouldn't have wanted to paint and weather the whole model with the engines in place. The guns are a simple push fit, and stay in place without needing to be glued. They were painted the same as the rest of the ship, but the barrels got an overpaint with some thinned gunmetal to darked them, then a bit of heat staining around the muzzles with Tam clear blue. So that's the Crest wrapped up. I'm really happy that Revell have produced this kit, and done it in a proper scale. I do wish they'd payed more attention to finishing the moulds as there's far too much surface texture over the main parts, and also quite a few tooling marks which seems quite sloppy. I do wonder if the priduction of the kit was rushed towards the end to beat the AMT release to market. It does seem corners were cut in mould finishing. That being said, the model is packed with detail and does look great once finished, and it's a considerable step up from some of the other Star Wars kits Revell have released in the past. I'll get some shots up in RFI later. Thanks to everyone for sticking with the build through all the delays. Andy

Personally I think the white wash is looking great Matt. I particuarly like the runs and dribbles under the turret and transmission cover. I've also been slightly disheartened with white wash finishes I've applied in the past when looked at in their raw state, but once they've had additional weathering everything blends together in a more natural way. Andy

Thanks chaps, Starting to get back to a normal routine now, and I've managed to get the Crest just about finished. The landing gear was sprayed with Alclad Aluminium, then weathered with oils and acrylics. The cables on the main gear were done with fuse wire and they'll thread into holes drilled inside the gear bays. One point to note with the main gear - the connection between the end of the strut and the upright section on the foot is very thin and the soft styrene can easily bend. They're supporting the model's weight for now, but for long term display I think I'm going to fashion a support under the main fuselage to take some of the strain off the legs. The weathering on the main fuselage has been finished now. This was mainly done with oils and acrylics again, with a few enamel washes used here and there. All the panel lines had a pin wash with Abteilung Starship Filth oil, then some of the panels were given filters with Games Workshop washes to tint them. The rest of the weathering was mainly grungying up the surface with mottled applications of thinned oils and acrylics. I finished off with a few streaks here and there, and some speckling done with highly thinned oil paint. I was using screen shots as a general inspiration for the weathering, rather than trying to replicate every mark and stain seen on the original. Just the engines and landing gear to attach, and a bit of clean-up here and there, and I can call it done. Andy

Yes, sorry everyone for the huge delay in updates. I've had to re-wire about half of my house, which has led to a lot of disruption including having to completely empty my work room. I'm starting to get things straight now, and have managed to get a tiny bit more work done on the Crest. I've got the landing gear together and it's fairly well detailed, although the parts need a lot of clean-up as there are some pretty heavy mould lines. For the most part the gear is fairly accurate to the original, but the vertical wedge-shaped strut on the top of the main leg should actually be an open 'V' shape with a lattice structure on the inner strut (see second photo). That strut only holds the upper door, and doesn't support any of the ships weight, so it shouldn't be a problem to trim it down to better match the original. Doing the lattice cutouts won't really be possible, but the strut isn't going to be be all that visible on the finished model anyway, so not a big deal. If I'd got more time, I'd probably design and print a replacement, but modifying the kit part will do for now. The gear bay door that attaches to that strut has some very noticeable ejector pin marks on the upper face that need filling. I have no idea why Revell didn't place the parts on the sprues so the pin marks were on the hidden underside, but maybe it's something to do with the curved shape of the part that required the ejector pins to be on the upper side? The downward curve at the end of the door isn't quite as pronounced as it is on the original, and the part is quite thick as well, so again a printed replacement would work better, but I'll use the kit parts for now. I've also managed to finish painting the fuselage stripes, so all the main paintwork is now done, and I can move on to the weathering. Back when I painted the first section of stripes on the left-hand fuselage side, I used a combination of masking fluid and hairspray for the chipping, but the AK Gen 3 acrylic I used for the stripes didn't seem to react very well to the hairspray. For the remainder of the stripes I just used masking fluid, then went back in with a fine brush to refine the chips. The stripes on the right side are far more broken and worn than the ones on the left, so for this side I only masked and sprayed the forward area of the stripes ahead of the side hatch. The chips to the rear of the hatch were brush painted using screen shots as reference. One thing to note with the stripes is the area where they wrap around the chines. The forward stripe runs in line with the stripe running up the fuselage side, but the rear stripe is slightly off-set back from its corresponding fuselage stripe. The kit's decals don't reproduce this, but that's how the stripes are on the digital model used on the show, so I've copied it here. It's done this way on both sides of the fuselage. So, as I said above, that's the main painting finished. It's on to the weathering now which I'll start off with a pin wash to bring out the panels, then go from there. Andy

Thanks Iwik, Yes, the kit is really too heavy to do that. A clear acrylic rod was included with the kit to support it, but even that wasn't strong enough so I swapped it for an aluminium one. Andy

Beautiful colours Will. The pearl bow is lovely. I really like the way you've shaded the face to emphasise the empty eyes. Andy

Thanks for the comments chaps Andy

It's been a while since I joined in the fun on this thread, so I thought I'd follow Dennis' suggestion for an AT-DP profile. Not really a camo scheme on this one - more of a planetery security force machine. Now we just need Bandai to release a kit of one😄 Andy

Progress is fairly slow on this build at the moment due to various other commitments, but I've got a little more done over the last week. Firstly the two main guns needed some refinement. The basic mouldings are pretty good, although some of the details are quite messy and need cleaning up. Like the rest of the kit, there's some texturing in places along with some heavy mould lines. As the mould lines tend to cross a lot of the smaller details, these's a bit of re-shaping required. The muzzle is moulded with a simple horizontal slit, but this also needs drilling out. I guess this would have needed a slide mould to do properly, which would have cost more to tool, and it's easy enough to drill so not a big deal. Further back, where the barrel extends from the main gun casing, there are two half-round indentations above and below the barrel. These should be open, and need to be carved out. Towards the back, there's a tube that sits abover the gun housing, or at least there should be. Revell have moulded the front and rear ends of it, along with the two support brackets, but the centre section is an open void. This area is partly covered with an armoured panel, but you can still see the empty space from above, so it needs dealing with. The muzzle was easy enough to correct, and in fact the heavy mould line here was a benefit, as I could use it to mark a pilot hole so I didn't drill the barrel off-centre. The openings at the back of the barrel were a little harder to fix as the plastic there is solid, and the openings needed to be carved out with a micro chisel. The original moulding is quite messy, as you can see from the gun on the right, which didn't help. On the studio model these holes are a single opening that the barrel sits inside. It wasn't really practical to replicate that, so this is as good as I could get it. The main round casing that forms the back of the gun assembly should also be an open ended tube that has the main gun sitting inside it. Again, it wasn't really practical to do that, as I would have needed to rebuild almost the entire gun from scratch, but as the guns are only push fitted to the fuselage, I might look at designing and printing something better down the line. For the tube that sits above the barrel, I cut away the two ends and carved out the brackets to take a length of styrene tube, which in turn had a short length of a smaller diameter tube glued into the front end. Since the photo was taken, the rear end has also been capped off. With the guns sorted, I got back to painting. The fuselage was base coated in gloss black, then finished with the same polished aluminium as the engines. I felt that the straight polished alu on the engines had looked a little too dark, so the fuselage also had a patchy over-spray with some Vallejo aluminium, along with a coat of satin varnish to protect the slightly delicate AK polished alu. That's why is look a lot lighter, and less shiny that the engines. That won't matter in the long run, as the amount of weathering needed will darken everything anyway. I did briefly consider using the supplied decals for the yellow stripes, but they looked a bit thick, and the pattern of wear on them is a little simplified compared to what's seen on screen, so I've made a start on painting them instead. This needed a combination of tape and masking fluid to block off the main areas, followed by a coat of hairspray to allow me to do the finer chips after painting. I'm doing this section-by-section, as getting it all masked in one go would have been quite tricky, and made handling harder. I wanted to use a colour straight from the bottle for the yellow to avoid having to re-mix the same shade several times. The closest match I'd got was AK Dirty Yellow, which looked pretty good once the masking was removed, but wasn't the best choice for the hairspray chipping. AK gen3 paints don't seem to like that technique much, and the results weren't as good as I'd hoped. I may have to sharpen up the fine chipping with some brush painted silver. That's as far as I've got with the stripes so far, but I should get the rest done over the next week. In the meantime I've started weathering the engines, as I expect the weathering in general will be the longest aspect of the build. I started off with the exhaust nozzles, which I'd left separate for painting. The studio model has quite a lot of heat discolouration on the petals which I've recreated with some over-sprays of Tamiya clear shades. the nozzles were then finished off with some oil and enamel washes to dirty them up. The nozzles, together with the front cowls, were then glued in place on the engine nacelles, and the main weathering started. The engines on screen are very streaked and dirty, and I've been slowly building this up with layers of oils, enamels and acrylics. This is taking some time, as I have to let each layer dry, particularly the oils, before applying the next layer. At this point I'd say they'er about half finished. So, the rest of the week's going to be about painting yellow stripes and smearing oils. Hopefully I should get at least the stripes finished for the weekend, then the main painting will be done, and it'll be all about the weathering from then on. Andy

Well, you could try wet sanding it with the vodka? Nah, probably best to drink it. The probe droid sounds like an interesting project. If you want any reference/measurements for it, I've got the JPG resin kit. Andy

Yes, watched it all the way through twice now😀 Andy

Yes, Hasbro have done an excellent job with their RC. It's got a really nice paint job for something factory finished. Speaking of which, I've finally made a start on painting my RC, although just the engines for now. There were a few things I needed to finish before I fired up the airbrush though, starting with the fillet pieces that cover the undersides of the stub wings. These have a small lip running along their inner edge that needs to slip under the edge of the lower fuselage. The fillets are then aligned with pins that slot into holes in the upper wings. Trouble is the pins prevent the fillets from being angled enough to get the lip under the edge of the fuselage. These really should be fitted before the two fuselage sections are joined, but the instructions show them fitted afterwards. The only solution at this point is to cut the alignment pins off, as I've done on the bottom fillet in the photo below. If you leave a tiny stub when cutting the pins off there's enough to still secure the fillets in place. Once they're on, the fillets fit very well and don't need any filling, but if you're building the kit I'd advise ignoring the instructions and fitting the fillets to the upper fuselage before mounting that to the lower fuselage. Moving back to the engines, the two nozzles needed some modification to better match the studio model. On the digital model there are gaps between the petals at the base of the nozzle, but these have been moulded solid on the kit. Revell have at least added small recesses where the gaps should be, so it's a fairly simple job to cut down between the petals with a razor saw. The edges and ends of the slots were cleaned up with a sharp blade. Most of the undercuts and angled edges have been dealt with on the engine nacelles. There are still a few panels with sloping edges, but all the significant ones have been done. I've also added a few extra details here and there with styrene sheet. I've sanded down the rough texture on the plastic as much as is possible, but most areas have raised details that would be damaged or removed entirely by sanding, so I'll have to hope that the remaining texture will be lost under the weathering. This is how it looks with the engines dry fitted. Definitely starting to look Razor Cresty now. I've also added a few random greebles to the upper hull, partly to fill in some empty areas around the escape pod dock, and partly to sharpen up the detail where the mouldings are a bit soft. Everything's essentially ready for paint now, so I've made a start with the engines. These got a base coat of Gunze gloss black to act as a foundation for the metallic coat. I was a little unsure what paint to go with for the main finish, or at least the initial finish. The RC has quite a burnished sheen in places, but also has a heavy patina over the surface. A full chrome would be far too shiny, so in the end I used AK's xtreme metal polished aluminium, which is bright enough to give that burnished look without being a mirror-like finish. This will have more metallic shades added to accentuate the panels, but before that I'll leave the polished aluminium to fully cure for a few days then give it a clear coat to protect it. The rest of the ship will get the same treatment, but I'm quite low on both the gloss black and the aluminium, so I'll need to get an order in before getting anything else done. Andy

Bad luck Johnny, but at the same time one of the joys of printing - everything's replaceable. One of the things I've taken to doing on 3D designs recently is to add keyed mounting points to different components, like a circular mounting post for a part that goes on the left side, and a square post for the right hand part. That way it's idiot proofed (or me proofed) when it comes to assembly. The paint mule is looking great, love the rust streaking. I think you're right that silver would look better though. Andy

Great looking build Matt. That Adlers Nest antenna looks amazing - should be a fantastic addition to the turret. Andy

Don't worry Andrés, this one will be in the regular Mando colours. The alternate scheme will just be for the little Bandai kit. That's a pretty good idea, it would look good in a similar finish. I might knock up some colour roughs to test different schemes. Thanks for the confirmation Adam, that's good to know. It would have been strange for Bandai to lower their usual high moulding standards. They are indeed fantastic designs - very Joe Johnston-y. A little more work has happened on the Crest, and I've finally got the fuselage closed up. It's taken a while due to the rough finish, especially on the upper fuselage which I needed to clean up, as far as is possible, and that's taken quite a while to do. I don't want to be too harsh on the kit as, for the most part, it's made to a very high standard, but the surface finish on the two main fuselage parts is quite poor. Most of the upper fuselage has a distinct pebbly texture which left unaltered would marr the natural metal finish. The photos below are close ups, and the lighting exaggerates the texture, but even under normal viewing conditions the effect is still noticeable. Fortunately the plastic sands very easily, but doing so is tricky due to all the raised details on the surface. In other places the texture and general soft moulding has almost obliterated some details. The angled line in the centre of the pic below should be a distinct edge of a raised panel, but instead it just blurs away. The little rectangular greeble below that panel edge has also lost a lot of definition. Other details, especially ones sunk into the surface, have jagged burrs on their edges that all need to be cleaned up. I've managed to get most of these issues dealt with now. The parts aren't prefect by any stretch, but they're a lot better than they were. With that done, I finally got some paint on the exterior of the model. Only around the windows for now, as I needed to get the insides of the frames painted before I could add the glazing. I could have left the glazing out until the whole ship was ready for paint, but putting it in now will at least keep any dust out of the cockpit in case I need to do any filling and sanding later. The frames were painted with Alclad Dark Aluminium over a dark grey base. The front three glazing parts all dropped into place without problems, and were secured with a few drops of Gator Grip acrylic glue. The large centre panel and the four smaller panels were all a little too wide for the frames and needed around 0.5 mm sanding from their sides. After that they fitted fine. With the glazing sorted, I installed the cockpit in the lower fuselage and glued the upper fuselage in place. I mentioned earlier that I was going to add the two little red lights on the nose, and the two running lights under the engine nacelles, but in the end I decided not to bother. The lights are barely noticeable, and aren't on when the ship's on the ground anyway. Also, if I'd fitted the running lights to the nacelles I'd have needed to run the fiber optics from the engines into the fueslage, which would have meant fitting the engines at this stage. That would have made the ship rather cumbersome to hold, and I'd rather leave the engines separate for painting. I was a little concerned that the fit between the two large fuselage parts wouldn't be all that good. As it turned out though, it's just about perfect. There's just a tiny bit of filling needed on the stepped join just above the mounting points for the guns and just above the lower glazing panel, but otherwise it's all fine. The join line around the nose falls on a panel line and doesn't need any filling. At the rear, the join line also forms a panel line, and doesn't need any further attention. Given the size of these parts, I was quite surprised just how well they went together. So, with the fueslage buttoned up I moved onto the engines. Deciding to not add the running lights has removed one job, but there's still some work that needs doing on the parts before they can be assembled. Most of the work is related to the parts being round mouldings created with a two-part mould. As a result, Revell have had to square off any raised details that would otherwise have had an undercut. The most obvious ones are a ring of triangular fillets running around the centre of the nacelles. The ones near the top of the nacelle mouldings are fine, but the ones further down have been given vertical edges to allow the mould to retract. Luckily, the fillets are solid mouldings with no cavity on the inside, so it's a relatively easy job to slice away the excess plastic and give them the correct undercut (the left hand engine half in the photo below has already had the work done). There are also a few sink marks on all the engine sections that will need filling. At the rear of the nacelles, there's a grooved ring that's also suffered from the same issue at the lower edges. That's also an easy fix by re-engraving the grooves with a scribing tool. The re-worked area isn't a perfect match for the grooved further around the ring, but it's close enough (altered example on the right this time). I expect the likes of Green Strawberry will create an etched replacement for this ring in time. You'll also see a few other panels that will all need their lower edges cutting away for the reasons mentioned above. Lastly, there's a missing panel line that runs either side of the grooved ring on the outer side of the nacelle. Again, an easy fix with a scriber. Once all the work's done on the engines, they'll be a very easy fit to the fuselage. They drop down into a shallow recess on the upper wing stubs, and are held in place with two large posts. Even dry fitted, the join is seamless so they'll be very easy to fit after they're painted and weathered. Still lots of work to do, but the ship is finally starting to look like the Crest. Andy

He looks great WIll. I like the little gold accents in particular. Andy

Fantastic looking Snow Speeder Pat. Weathering looks great - it's impossible to overdo wethering on a Star Wars model 😀 Andy