AndyRM101

Tamiya, Gunze and AMMO are all good, and they're all inter-mixable. If you want to stick to a single brand, I'd go with Gunze Aqueous. There's an online paint conversion chart here , although it's not very up to date with more recent brands and colours. There's also an app (ios only I think) called iModelkit that has, amongst other features, paint charts for all the main brands with equivalent colours. Andy

Fantastic looking build, especially so given the tiny size. Very neat work with the details. It's things like the red intake triangles that really sell the finished model. Also masking between the yellow nose stripes. I know how hard that was in 72nd so I can only imagine how fiddly it must have been in 144th. Andy

Thanks guys No, I never really use wet coats for the same reason as you. In this case, the Tamiya clear was mixed in with the paint which I find to be the best way to apply it. It makes the paint finish a little harder and removes the need for a separate clear coat. The last bits of the main painting are now done. The blue grey was mixed up from Gunze and Tamiya and sprayed as a solid base coat, then a little AMMO Cremeweiss was added to the mix to spray some highlights and leave a slightly more faded look. I felt that the blue grey was a little too contrasty at this stage so I mixed up a pale grey, similar to the main base coat, and sprayed that over those areas to add more fading and a general worn look. It's a little hard to see the effect of the pale grey over-spray in the above shot as it's only subtle, but this close-up of the wings and rear cockpit show it better, particularly around the end of the cockpit stripes. The last bits to spray were the Hinomaru markings which were done with masks cut with a compass cutter. Before spraying the roundels I added some masking fluid with a sponge to create some ships. It's not my favourite method of chipping as the resulting chips tend to look over-scale and blobby which is the case here. I'll probably refine the effect with some brush applied chips, or maybe scrape some paint away with the tip of a blade. Andy

No, there's no masking at this stage. As long as the paint is fairly thin and you keep the brush pretty close to the surface (about an inch) it's fairly easy to keep the spray tight around the panels. There's always a bit of over-spray but, as the paint is thin, it doesn't show unless you let it build up in one spot. I used the Mr Color lacquer for the gull grey because I'd only got the colour in that range. The lacquer is also a bit more resilient for a base coat. I'm not keen on the Mr Color white though, as I find it to be quite grainy and it spits a lot unless it's very well thinned. Since I've got a far wider range of Aqueous, Tamiya and AMMO colours, I switched to them for the subsequent coats. The AMMO white is much nicer to spray with too. And yes, AMMO with happily mix with Gunze Aqueous and Tamiya and you can thin it with Gunze self leveling. Okay, for the next stage in the paint process I wanted to add more warmth to the grey as well as lighten it overall. I also wanted to define some of the panels more clearly (to show possible replacements or just cleaner areas), so those areas were masked. The other areas just had a general diffuse coat with some parts getting a heavier coat than others. All this is to bring more subtle variation to the panels. Although the panels had plenty of tonal variety, they were still lacking any definition at this stage. To introduce more sharpness, I switched to a brush and used a dark grey Vallejo acrylic mixed with a glaze medium to add some shading around the panels and other details. This isn't weathering as such. It's more like a slightly irregular pre-shade (or post-shade, technically) and it will be toned down afterwards as part of the layering process. It's a bit hard to see the effect in the above shot, so there's a close up here of the S-Foil wings. As mentioned above, the shade coat was then toned down by a mist coat of a very pale grey, in fact almost a white. The paint was cut with Tamiya clear and thinned quite heavily to keep it relatively transparent. It was then misted across all the parts to unify all the previous steps. Again, a close up of the S-Foils to show the effect better. The next step will be to add the blue-grey areas and any other bits of detail painting. Andy

I've started the initial painting stages. The suggested paint colour in the instructions is a 50/50 mix of light gull grey and white, but instead of a flat base coat, I'm using a dark-to-light layered approach similar to the one I used on the Snowspeeder. Rather than list each step and colour used, I've dug out the template from the aforesaid Snowspeeder build which shows the general progression. I'm only showing the main components here, but all the other bits have had the same finish. Andy

There's a bit of splatter but most of the mottling is done by brush, mainly with GW washes. I used Vallejo purple ink for the band behind the nozzle rim. It's meant to be heat staining but it looks more like a purple stripe so I may tone it down a bit. The wash on the mounting plate was, I think, AMMO streaking grime. Did we ever find out what that thing is meant to be? Hopefully we'll see more of it in season 3 rather than another army of demodogs. So, I've chopped off the bottom of the fuselage tab, and the built-up blade wing will now just slide on. The remaining part of the tab will make a convenient handle during painting. For some reason when the wing is in place there's a small gap between it and the fuselage which won't close up. Presumably it's meant to be like that. Incidentally, the hole on the side of the engine casing fits a standard Bandai stand peg, so you could use that to support the model (in a horizontal position) instead of the rather bulky supplied stand. The S-Foil wings attach via a hinge system, with a rod sliding through the holes to hold them on and allow them to move. I'll be leaving these off for painting as well. The cowling for the main guns attaches to the bottom of the wing in a similar manner to the wing-fuselage joint, and again I've modified it so I can attach it separately. I will add this before painting and the main reason for modding it was because if I built it up with the main wing, as per the instructions, it was trying to pull out of square and was opening up a small gap on the join line between the parts. Nothing major, but doing it this way results in a cleaner join. The main gun cluster that attaches to the bottom of the fairing has been built up. One of the barrels has a separate muzzle piece, but the others needed drilling. Rather than just drill out the plastic parts though, I've swapped them for micro tube. The small centre barrel was replaced entirely with tube, whereas the large main cannon just had the tip replaced. There was also a cable moulded on one of the parts and, rather than clean up the seam line on it, I swapped it for some copper wire. Rather than just having a single piece of tube for the muzzle on the main cannon, I wanted to make it a little more unique, so I used two different diameter tubes to make a double walled muzzle with a shorter length intermediate diameter tube used as a spacer. The fairing on the rear cockpit section has an opening at the back, and the inside of the fairing and the detail part behind it needed painting before the fairing could be attached. I'm at the point now where pretty much everything is built up, at least in sub-assembly form, so I'll be on to the painting next. I've got to say, this is a remarkably simple and straightforward kit. Don't get me wrong, it's a great model with excellent detailing, but in terms of build complexity and parts count it's not significantly different to the X-Wing and probably less involved than the Y-Wing, all of which makes the rather steep price a little hard to swallow. Having said that I bought this on pre-order for £45 and the same ebay store I got it from is now listing it at £35 so the price has definitely come down in a fairly short time. As far as I know though, the kit still has a higher retail price in Japan that the AT-AT, which was a significantly more involved build. If you're curious about the size, here it is with the Finemould Y-Wing, the Bandai X-Wing and Nige. Andy

It's looking great Will. The chipping looks excellent, particularly the longitudinal scratches on the crotch plate and upper leg, and I'm really liking the reflected glow from the little red and green lights. Andy

That's great, thanks Wulf. I've just ordered one red and one yellow. Andy

So, as I mentioned above, I wanted to assemble the fuselage without inserting the cockpit to make painting easier, and I've now done that. There was a little filling required on the leading and trailing edges of the fairing and on the seam at the top of the cockpit hoop but nothing too problematic. The two cockpit sections can then be inserted from either end of the hoop. This is going to make painting and weathering so much simpler. I'll be making another modification at the bottom of the fuselage, again to make painting easier. The main blade aerofoil attaches to the tab on the fuselage via the two semi-circular cutouts. The other half of the wing then clips over the first half, clamping the wing to the fuselage. To enable me to paint the wing separately and install it at the end, I'll cut the bottom of the fuselage tab off along the pencil line seen above. I can then slide the wing into place once it's painted. Before I get to that though, I've been working on the engine nozzles. These attach to a mounting plate which in turn attaches to a unit that holds the light guides for the optional LED kit. Once these bits are together, they form a self-contained assembly that plugs into the back of the fuselage but can be removed to swap the batteries of the LED unit. The LED unit itself fits into a recess in the back of the assembly. I've not seen the LED kits up for sale anywhere yet, but if they're not too expensive when they do turn up I might order one I painted all the nozzles and the mounting plate in a dark grey then gave the smaller inner nozzle parts an over-spray with Alclad burnt metal. The outer nozzles had some staining added with GW washes and Vallejo inks. Lastly, I rubbed some graphite powder around the rims. Andy

The tube I used here was 0.5mm and came from this Albion Alloys mixed pack. I generally use aluminium because it's easy to cut but brass would work fine too. Andy

Nah, I always look like that Mike I've added an oil wash to the cockpit parts and stuck them all together, and this is now ready to be installed in the outer cockpit shell. The next part of the build is the rear of the cockpit section. This is built up around a central tube to which three panel pieces are added. Most of the fuselage panels, including these, feature tiny indented rivet fasteners along the panel lines. Some of these are a bit indistinct especially on curved pars due to moulding limitations, so I'm drilling them all a little deeper with a 0.3mm bit. There's a weird thing with the rivets on these rear fuselage panels though. For some reason the line they follow is completely out with the actual panel lines and the edges of the panels, You can see better in the shot below. This is exactly how they were moulded. I've just drilled the rivets deeper. It would be very unusual for Bandai to make an error like this so I can only assume it replicates the rivets on the studio model. Either way, it looks a bit odd. Putting that aside, the front and rear cockpit sections can then be pushed together. Going by the instructions, the cockpit is then clamped between the two fuselage halves. Doing it that way will make painting a bit trickier though, at least for me as I want to paint the cockpit assembly separately. This shouldn't prove to be a problem though, as I think I'll be able to join the two fuselage haves first, then plug the front and back cockpit sections into the ring on top of the fuselage from either end, if that makes sense. There are also a couple of detail panels that sit behind the rectangular openings in the fuselage side, and I should also be able to add these after the fuselage is together, meaning I can paint them separately too. So the next step will be to stick the fuselage together and hope I will be able to fit the cockpit afterwards Andy

Err... yes, that, of course, was just a test. Well done Mr Vale. Obviously, I hadn't in any way missed the fact that it says ABS in huge letters on the sprue. No, not me. I never miss things like that Andy

It was the same Airfix four pack that I had. Sadly that canopy piece is the only remaining part I've got from it. Still not got the washes on the cockpit, but I'll post some shots of it as it is now, with most of the main painting done. We'll start with Mr Numb (fun fact for the day, it's Nien Nunb with an n and Ten Numb with an m) Andy

I got a little work done on this last night. The build starts off with the cockpit, the first step being to add the little collection of sensors and blasters that poke through the nose of the cockpit. The blaster barrels are moulded solid so I drilled out the end of the larger one and cut off the two smaller ones and replaced them with micro tube. I've also thinned down some parts such as the half-round opening that sits above the blasters. I think the cockpit on this kit is probably the best Badai have done so far. There's an amazing amount of moulded detail. That unit then plugs into the back wall of the cockpit. Then the whole assembly slides into the cockpit shell. I also thinned down the edges of the shell where the blasters/sensors poke through, although you can't really see it in this shot. The canopy can them be clipped into place. It holds in place very well without glue, so I'll probably paint it separately and add it at the end. Interestingly, while sorting through a box of spares, I found the canopy from the original MPC B-Wing that I had as a kid in the early '80's. I'd forgotten just how small it was. Most of these bits are painted now. Just waiting for it to dry a little longer before I add an oil wash. Andy

You've got the SDCC exclusive then. I was going to say he looked a lot like the pilot included with the A-Wing, but having just checked, he's different. Possibly a new sculpt, unless he's the one from the Y-Wing. Andy