TristanR

Thanks for the replies and info guys! I see what you are saying about the paint touch ups, and it stands to reason the gull grey aircraft would undergo the same process, it's just surprising how difficult it is to find them. Giogio, thanks for the description of VF-41, very encouraging, and led me to find this - look at the rudder there, looks like they patched up parts of that with a spray can?

Hello, I am keen on building one of these Tamiya Tomcats, but I am torn with the paint scheme. I like the weathering opportunities offered by the later, ghost grey f-14s, which get nice and dirty, probably on account of the matt paint. But I prefer the earlier high vis color schemes in gull grey with the white control surfaces. Since these were painted glossy, they likely wouldn't get as dirty, and despite looking a lot, I can't find a single example of an early, hi-viz f-14 with the heavy weathering found on the later planes, which is a bummer, because that's what I want to do. Does anyone have such an image? Or would these early tomcats simply not get that weathered? I would commit a weathering crime.

Looking forward to another one of you builds!

Hey folks. So, after lots of procrastination, and fears that I would screw up the weathering, I went and did some today. My plan was to do a pass in a rusty brown to offset all that green, and then go over that in some black, all whilst not getting too heavy. I did have some clumsy edges between parts, which I was looking to blend in a bit with some of this work. My plan wasn't that succesful as I think the results were too heavy, maybe the brown was a bit too hot, but I quite the like the contrast in the end. I did the underside first as practice for the topside. I think I should use less brown on the top, and be less heavy in general.

sweet baby grogu! That's a nice salve one hoof right there. Do you think it came out better than your previous model?

Hey pete I followed your lead on the dark sea grey domes, but then I thought I’d put some chipping so went with something a bit lighter on top. Im experiencing some decal lifting. I gave model a coat of tamiya clear, but I guess it wasn’t enough. I might have learnt that some decals don’t stick well to polished paintwork, or that I need to use a lot more cleat coat? I also have some overspray issues to clean up too. I added some some white circles to the winglets.

Loving that paint scheme. The green canopy with the sandy colour and the white is very nice.

I like this idea. Normally i’m Talking myself out of doing to much weathering, but A group build would be a license for something deeply weathered.

Hey Pete, That’s a very good point about the busiest hatches getting dirt round them, I might try and keep the top surface fairly clean, but the bottom could be dirtier, like this thing is close to the ground a lot. I’m also thinking doing some gun soot that’s been washed over the right side, perhaps like the exhaust stains on a Douglas skyraider. Rockpop, thanks, and go Yakult bottles! Although I did look for an aftermarket nozzle that was open, but even in 1/32 I couldn’t find one large enough to replace the kit parts. tzulscha, yes, I was sort going for that 60s racer look, in particular the Porsche 910. thanks Norman, good luck with your build, In in the meantime, i’m Adding some details to break up the mintiness, which includes some nose color. I was thinking of doing the entire front cowling a different color, but the paint came out particularly nice on these bit so I will just do the cones. Also trying out a bit of red on the winglet things. And started to treat the gun area. I didn’t get too many pictures as I went here, but this was mostly brush painted with lifecolor paints. I kind of wished I had done it with an airbrush, as it took a lot od thin washes to not look terrible. I gave ave the engine a once over with a mix of flat black and hull red, they went at it with some metal pigments. I might try some bare metal elements on the engine.

I didn’t know that! Great, it’d be nice to have a bit more detail in the police car. It’d be cool if fujimi did a model of the star car from the last starfighter. I loved that.

Thanks Hunter! Hey Pete, I think I know what you mean about the old mints, I just took a minty walk down memory lane to see if I can find a match... hard to believe polos use to be 2p. I'm glad to hear the paintwork is normally rough on these Falke's I like your idea of wearing the green down with some micromesh. I was also thinking of maybe fading it with some very gently misted light blue xf23, like it's bleached in the sun a bit. I started adding some decals. I don't normally do decals. I hate them. But since I'm doing glossy, I figured they should work out since everyone says decals work best on glossy surfaces. I have a some random decal sheets so I started popping some on here. You can see how rough my paint work is here, gaps in the masking, bad coverage, and it chipping off in places. I have to be careful they don't look too random This bit is working quite well. A lot of these decals came from a 1/32 F104 decal sheet. Can't resist a bit of panel line work. On with some tamiya clear (but I masked off some of parts I know i will want to be matt. Cheers!

Excellent work, It's going to be a great model when you are done, and from what I can tell build in a similar way to the studio model. I think you nailed the cockpit profile, that front shot looks about perfect.

Lovely job Andy, I love how much texture you get into the paintwork.

Didn't all arrive today, but some of them took a while to get here.

Hey Andy, Thanks, and yes I do like your suggestion of a contrasting color to the blue green. I was thinking of making those small winglets the Falke has in an red, and perhaps some small red decals, but I will consider a band or two, perhaps round the front of the nacelles. Yes those track links are great aren't they! Pete! I love your custom Falkes, I enjoyed you're latest build a lot, it was great to see it come together. Tzulscha, Thank you, I think the shiny, pure, glossy version here might be the best this ever looks as a systematically botch the further paint work. So after getting the white paint looking very shiny and nice, it was difficult to risk messing it up with further paint, but here goes. In the end, after thinking about it, and going back and forth, I just decided to paint whatever color I ended up with on the evening I decided to paint, which turned out to be this slightly washed out green, I was going for something slightly muted and vintage. The masking was pretty involved. The paint went on quite orange peely. I was worried that if I mixed the paint too thin it's bleed under the masking tape, so perhaps mixed it a little thick. Oh well it's on now. After the tape is removed, I think it was successful overall, however there are plenty of 'weathering opportunities' to hide some of the little gaps in tape or feathered masking edges. The challenge with this scheme was getting the chevrons to look, uniform across a very organic surface. My first instinct was to project the scheme through the model from the top, and then wrap the arms of the chevrons around the sides. Given the nature of the main body this doesn't really work, so instead I focused on maintaining the thickness of the chevrons across the surface of body, and do my best to carry the arms of the chevrons out to the sides and wrap underneath. It all falls apart when viewed from the side, it was and interesting trade off to make. I think the Falke looks best from this overhead 3/4 view, so I optimized the scheme to look best from the overhead 3/4 view. I have some unintentional chipping going on here and there, and I sanded this panel a bit much. I did a field repair with some deliberately mismatched green to cover it up. I also kind of which I had left off some of the exterior details parts to be added later, sanding and masking round them is tedious and error prone. Cheers!

Thanks Harry, I'll see if I can correct the title. I always have a problem with with 'ie' versus 'ei'

I hope it's ok to link to another forum, but there is a MASSIVE thread on the replica prop forum (RPF), it's worth a read. It's a goldmine, there are photos of the original prop, in depth discussion of all the minute details, which is fascinating in it sown right. Dozens of people post their various build pictures on there, the discussion of what color paints to use, all sorts of modifications that have been tried from replacement lighting, to 5 leg landing gear mods. The link I have pated below starts at page 151, as the first load of pages are before the model is even released. https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/bandai-1-72-pg-millennium-falcon-also-the-revell-germany-rebox.262348/page-151 I am in the middle of building this now, and I think I will probably paint it fully assembled, although being a bandai kit, it push fits together, but the fit is so snug that there is a danger of damaging the part when trying to prise them apart. You can modify parts to make this easier though. This build talk about it, and is a good resource. https://bandai-hobby.net/sw/jp/special/millenniumfalcon_building_guide.html?fbclid=IwAR3FzdTXI4UEUYcfD3IxbkDKoANu3Jf6DzSzXzBheXAZ6tspg6pbncpS-nA Good luck!

Hey thanks for the comments fellas! Whilst looking for paint, I was interested in this racing white that tamiya do TS-7 I bought a can of it. Sort of bone white, not normally a color I'd consider, but I think if I get a god color to contrast it, it should work out. I am sort of wishing I hadn't assembled the whole thing, I could have left the engine off for example. I don't like adding layers of paint if I don't have to. Trying out some colors here, I thought I'd go for a pale blue, I do like Royal Blue X-3, so I tried mixing it with white, as the royal blue is so darl I think it will look black next to the off -white (you can see the white band on the test piece here looses some of it's butteryness next to those blues) I also like the Park Green, but I think it's a bit vibrant for the off-white. Quite a bit of sanding to get rid of the orange peel. I ran some panel line wash in there because it's satisfying to do so. I started to think about the paint scheme, I thinking something with chevrons. I also threw some black on the rear end, so I could better judge how much surface area there is to design a scheme for. Sort of gummy looking finish on the engine, it's be better in matt, but - ugh. The engine being black really changes the graphic look of the rear end, I really like this off-white next to the black. I think I heard that the engine was kit-bashed from a yakult bottle. Further sanding resulted in to much of the white undercoat coming through. So I gave it another once over. Cheers!

Superb! You really captured the look of the scene.

Ok , next step GLoss white. I'm doing this from a Tamiya rattle can, not really done much with gloss before. Bit od an issue at the 'wing' root. Possible caused by greasy plastic. Pretty weird, if I can't get rid of it I guess it'll be a weathering opportunity later. The finish is inconsistent, some rougher orange peel here and there, but also some nice smoother parts. I need more practice. One thing I am wary of is putting down too much paint, I don't want to fill in all the scribing detail. So, just to be sure I will go over the scribed details again. This micro mesh stuff is extremely good at treating the finish. Cheers!

I started this a while ago, I can't find any images of the assembly before these pictures. For some reason I didn't bother with the interior. Perhaps the lack of windows. I was a bit of a clumsy fit, and I had a few bits and peices to add. The engine looked particularly plain. After a quick prime, I started thinking about a paint scheme, I might experiment with gloss paint, and I want something bold and Chris Foss-esque. I also dug out some scribing templates and added some rivet fasteners. Cheers!

Lovely Job Andy, I 'm looking at building one of these kits soon, this is great inspiration. Slave one doesn't have any landing gear does it? It just lands on its hoof I guess.

If you’re keen on 1/72, you could consider getting a jango fett version and converting it. The FM jango fett is usually a lot cheaper than the boba one on eBay. (I say cheaper but it’s still a lot). As far as I can tell there are differences with some of the hull details, but nothing too difficult. The cockpit is also completely different between the two versions of the model, neither of which match the new interior from the Mandalorian... Now I’m looked on eBay I am am seriously considering doing this now.

Hi Steven, I have tried a few cutters, the one I am using now is a Roland camm gs24. As far as I can tell it’s the one most able to do the finest details, which I think is expressed by ‘mechanical resolution’, but in comparisons between cutters, this is often not mentioned. there is a new cutter on the market callled a Prismcut P28, in demonstration it was also able to do very fine work, 2mm lettering. I’ve also used a cricut, which struggled with fine details. Often rounding corners on small lettering, but was able to cut styrene sheet which was useful. (I have it tied yet but I don’t think there would be any reason the Roland or prism cut wouldn’t be able to cut styrene also) The software is another issue. I use adobe illustrator, because it’s what I know, but getting the Roland exporter to work was extremely painful, now it is all set up it’s really quick to use and works well. The cricut and cameo type cutters all come with their own software that is trying to sell you stuff, but is usually able to be persuaded to import files from other software. So far I have only cut the Oracal, stencil vinyl. There is the grey stuff that is flexible and is likely the same stuff if you‘ve ever bought those precut masks. There is also a less flexible blue oracal, that is useful when you want less deformation, but this one isn’t supposed to be used with lacquer paint.

I painted this according to reference photos of the first x-wing model ILM made for starwars. This was blue leader. Apparently, they changed blue squadron to red squadron because of the use of blue screens. So blue leader was re-painted as red 3, you can tell because of the distinctive replacement panel on the port upper engine. Yes that is a slice of the tamiya logo. Painted Ed in tamiya acrylics, weathered with lifecolor washes. I try to avoid using clear oats whenever possible. Build thread here -