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Hi Everyone, This one I've worked at on and off for months (with huge gaps!). I've overdone the weathering (particularly the exhausts), which meant I parked it for a while. I'm happier with the end result now though, even though it's not perfect! Good fun though. And for those not familiar with the size, it's pretty small:

After just completing two Tamiya motorbike kits, here is something completely different. I was lucky enough to have been given two old Bandai kits by a friend. They are both 1/16 scale, one is a Mercer Raceabout car and the other is this Traction Engine. There are excellent builds of both of these kits elsewhere on the forum which I encourage you to have a look at. After quite of bit of research on the internet, I have found that the Pendle Princess kit has been released by other companies apart from Bandai, but I think the original was by Bandai. To the best of my knowledge my kit is a Bandai version. Before I go any further I want to apologise to any Traction Engine enthusiasts for the naming mistakes that I know I will make. I know nothing about Traction Engines so if this is a “Showman’s Engine” rather than a Traction Engine, that is my ignorance. After the Tamiya kits where everything fits well and detailed down to very minute information, this kit could be a nightmare. I’ve spent some time inspecting everything and there is a lack of locating lugs/pins and a wealth of flash, ejector pin marks and general sink holes. Also the colour is going to be a problem, similar to many males, I am partially colour blind, and although I can see as many colours as a normal sighted person, they don’t always register correctly in my brain. So with little help in the instructions, lots of pictures on the internet (often conflicting with each other) and my colour blindness, it could all be very interesting. So, no build so far, but I have washed everything and ready to go!! How regular I get to this build is uncertain as I have resurrected a wooden, plank on frame ship (HMB Endeavour) that I commenced a while back. So I’ll be swapping between the two as I can get bits done. Just to start with, here are two pictures, one of the box lid and one of the instructions front sheet, which has a brief history. Any help, particularly with the correct colours, comments and general conversation, will be gratefully received. Wish me luck ....

Ok, so yesterday I was at a toy collectors fayre at the Nec. I usually go for a look around, don't often buy anything but occasionally you can pick up a model or two. As it turns out I was two isles down and I saw this for £10: Not only was it a bargain and saved me three weeks wait while it made it's way from Japan it was also the next kit on my list so very happy days. I already have a project on the go and I fully intended to put this on a shelf until I had cleared the backlog but I got home from work today and opened the box to take a look and the next thing I knew; Damn you Bandai😡😡 I didn't get too deep in but I already had an idea to create a diorama of an X-Wing in a hangar looking like it's under maintenance so was dry fitting a few bits and seeing how that would work. I have never really tried anything like this before (opening panels that aren't supposed to be opened) but have always wanted to. I have followed many of @AndyRM101's builds and loved the x wing he did with the panels open. So, inspired by this I hope to show this X-Wing with maybe an engine off and some panels open with wires and internals showing. Maybe with a few droids and ground crew knocking about, as if it's booked in for it's MOT. Not sure how long this will take but hoping to get started soon. Will be in need of lots of advice as scratch building is something I really want to get into but have not really done in the past! Cheers Chris!

My last build... Bandai Patlabor Hope you like it

Hi all, I've been away from the forum for a while(18 months I think) and I haven't really started a model in that time either, family stuff,work etc... But over the summer I talked the wifey into letting me get a shed as a work shop in the garden. And I'm really getting the bug again. It's so much easier not having to get all of my materials out of the kitchen cupboard. Here's the shed for anyone who is interested: So first off was something I have wanted to do since I saw the Rogue one promo shots. I think this image is amazing and shows off the iconic storm troopers perfectly: I think it's the colours that work for me. So I just wanted to try my hand at a diorama and hope it looks something like this. I am quite a way through this and haven't taken too many photos as I've gone on but as I got to thinking about using resin I turned to the site for advice and got some great ideas, it was this that made me realise how great Britmodeller really is and I haven't been off it for the past two weeks. I thought it was best to document the build up to now and going forward. I haven't really done a WIP before so be nice and bear with! So, I started off with two Bandai Troopers, built out of the box. I airbrushed the black parts using a mix of Vallejo light grey and NATO black, just to dull it down a bit and not make it look so shiny. Everything has been said about these kits already, awesome detail and easy to put together. I haven't yet decided on weathering or which blasters they will be holding. On the pic they have E-11's but there is a nice Dlt-19 that comes in the kit so might swap this out nearer the end. I really dont mind if it isnt accurate, im building this so it probably wont be 😂😂If I do weather the troopers it will be minimal. It was good to find I could get a good pose as the articulation is good on the kits. Next was the base. I cut a 15x15cm square of MDF. Which was big enough for the two figures. Its a bit bigger in the pic, i changed my mind and made it square before i cut it out. This shows the thickness though of the board used. Next was the tree trunks/twigs sticking out of the water. I intended to go out searching for the right twigs to use but as it happened my wife had done some gardening and left a root off something on the path which when cut down was perfect. I drilled holes in the MDF and sprayed them light grey and a darker grey towards the bottom where the water line will be. Happy with it so far so onto the gravel and Sandy base. The stones were just pea gravel from the garden and the sand was filler from wilko's which was smoothed and then I used a wooden stirer to pull it up into ripples as it dried. I then sprinkled silver sand on. I wanted the sand to look whiterthan it did like on a tropical beach which Scarrif was, so I painted it with Vallejo white and interior yellow which did the trick. The gravel was hand painted with all sorts of colours to get the right effect, basically making it look the same as when I started 😂😂 The small kit base which holds the feet were incorporated into the base to hold the troopers steady and I also found a snail shell from my aquarium which I painted red to add a bit of detail under the sea. So that's where I am at right now. I have some water clear resin on order which is something I have never used before. So this could all go great and look just how I imagined or I could screw the Resin step up completely and two models will be forever trapped in a badly made diorama 😂😂. Thanks for looking, will keep updating and will show the rest of the steps as I do them. Cheers! Chris.

This is another one that has been through the wars a bit. This is when Bandai were making some very cool large scale cars and things (A Steam roller and a Showmans engine) all in 1/16th scale, long before they got into Gundam and the like. Now, don't get me wrong, those Gundam and Star Wars model kits are really impressive, and I do see myself indulging an a Star Wars kit some time in my future, but giant robots are not my thing. They look amazing when built, but they leave me a bit cool. My adult son, on the other hand, thinks that they are really great. I suppose it's a bit like Rap music or Drum 'n' Base,: Technically really impressive, and I can appreciate te artistry, but I just don't like it. Anyway, middle-aged moan over, on to this kit. The obligatory box top. This has to be one of Colin Chapman's prettier cars, not as beautiful as the original Elan, but pretty none-he-less. Now this kit has had a chequered history. Early on, I decided that I wanted a dark blue Esprit, and sprayed it with Car aerosol paint. However, that stuff was very different from the modern acrylic based car paints. It was the old fashioned Cellulose paints. There are two main problems that I have encountered The paint is very unkind to polystyrene. It will eat into the plastic and do some real damage. The cured paint is very brittle and doesn't flex as well as the underlying Polystyrene. The first can be mitigated a bit by carefully priming the plastic with a Cellulose primer. It seems a bit less 'hot' than the colour coat. Anyway, the inevitable happened and the paint started cracking and peeling off before I had even started assembling the body! Tis left me a bit depressed, and I vowed never to use car paints again... It ended up in the loft, to probably be ignored forever... Many years (and house moves) later, I decided to give it another go. This probably was about 5 or 6 years ago. I stripped the really disastrous blue paint on it, and decided I would paint it Red. The ideal Lotus colour... So, at this point, we had: The body, stripped. (You can see a bit of the sub-frame to the left) The sub-frame. This was assembled a very long time before, and just forgotten. It was one of my better efforts from way back when, but had suffered the ravages of time. When I took it out of the box, the front end looked rather tatty, and the whole rear end fell apart. So, after much cementing, filling and touching up, it was back together again. This is how it looks at present. The floor pan, with release marks suitable filled and sanded. Most likely, none of them would be visible when assembled, but hey ! The engine, almost complete. Then I noticed that avital ancillary part had gone missing during the 30+ years in storage... I'm not sure what it is, but the instructions were good enough for me to re-create the thingummy, thus: I was so proud of it, I took many pictures of it. The last gives ma sense of scale, I think. The engine again... Finally all the other body parts, stripped. This poor car has suffered the Lotus curse: "Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious" So, this was where it was about two or three years agio. It has been in suspended animation since then. Thanks for looking, Alan.

After a long break i started a new kit. Actually i'm not a big fan of patlabor anime's but i love this one. The kit has got a lot of details, very soft plastic ( careful for sanding), but especially arm joints looks weak, and i dont like the cover material for leg&arm sections

Started on my first Bandai Star Wars kit yesterday, that I plan on making into a small diorama with a resin figure I have ordered from China. R5 DP is still WIP but the all the painting is done apart from the foot cables and weathering. The silver parts from the kit got painted gun metal then a light chrome dry brush and the purple is an Alclad candy. A quick and enjoyable build so far.

Wow as i say a real time Bandit. I think this is the longest build of a Falcon i have had. I was watching the TT pre race shows on tv when i started this. I have been building it every evening since. Wow what a model though. Its just amazing and really lives up to the hype. It fits together flawlessly. This is the Perfect grade standard version. This means it comes with stickers instead of decals and no light system. Dont be fooled by the fact they are stickers and not decals , they are made of a very thin vinyl and settle down as good as decals , and were easier and quicker to use. The lights were no problem to replace as i had some 3mm leds laying around. There are 3 seperate switches to control them. One for the ramp/landing gear , one for the engine and one for the cockpit. Now when i say its finished , a Falcon is never really finished! There will be more weathering added in the form of rust washes on the sidewalls later on and im sure i will tinker with it over time Thanks Bandai , this is a dream model for us SW fans!

Hi Folks, I started another Bandai Star Wars Vehicle Model a few weeks ago. I built the model during lunchtimes at work, so no WIP photos of the build I'm afraid. It went together like a dream. The kit is designed to be snap fit, so I didn't need to use glue, but I did anyway, just as I felt it helped fill any tiny gaps between the parts - even though I doubt there would be anyway, the fit is so good. Started painting by airbrushing a Vallejo Model Air USAAF Light Gray (spelling is correct according to the bottle!), and I used multiple layers of citadel Nuln Oil for the canopy windows. Using a wash this way made it easy to fill in right the the recesses without having to worry about accidentally painting over the canopy trim. The big mistake I've made, which you can't see from the photograph (as I've intentionally not taken any to show it!) is the engines, where I tried to apply a blue wash. As I'd already built the kit, I just couldn't get a brush in the gap to paint it without also catching the edges of the plating around the engine. I've got a second version of this model along with a number of other vehicle model series kits, so I'm going to make sure that I always check before gluing together. Vents and engine pits were painted with a wash mix of Nuln Oil and one of the citadel brown washes (can't remember which!). I then applied an overall wash of the citadel brown wash (watered down with some airbrush thinner or water - can't remember which!). This had the effect of weathering the grey. The kit comes with stickers rather than decals, so I'm going to brush paint the individual panels next. This shouldn't be too taxing, I think the trick is just to make sure I take my time and I'm neat - certainly not going to try faffing around with masking and an airbrush on this one!

Hi all, I finally managed to finish my Bandai TIE Fighter that I started many months ago. I wanted to do something a little different, so I tried to create one that has a replacement port-side 'wing'. The base was entirely scratch-built out of a large bottle top, an old PEZ dispenser, two pens and some parts from a Tamiya 1/35 King Tiger. Thanks for looking!

Evening One and All, I've had this kit sitting on my shelf for a while and now, it's bugging me. So I decided to build it, please see below. This is the Team Try Fighters version and as far as I am aware the only version in HG? The "cloth" bit always reminds me of Deathsythe Hell which is also a cool mech. You can see the episode it's from below - this is uploaded by Gundam Info (Sunrise I believe) so it's all legal. I'm going to try an make it more the "original" version, I just need to find some decent source material for this. I did purchase loads of the re-released Bandai Decals a while back, so I can use the warning decals on that. I need to find somewhere that does the Skullheart ones tho or even a decent sized skull decal (not The Skull and Crossbones). This will be a long term project at the end of this I have a spaceship to build. All the sprues... yay Stuff I can't read... Pretty pictures and more stuff I can't read.... Cool pictures and the Core Fighter, but more writing I can't read. This is where I was up to the other day. Not sure I like the armor plates/thrusters being attached as they are. More to follow... Kind Regards, Dazz

Hullo all. Thought I'd finally post up some pics of my X-Wing build. I received this Christmas before last, but only in the past few months did I really crack it open with intent to complete it So here she be in progress Still need to finalise a surround for the base, probably out of balsa wood. Pilot is painted up (in blue), just needs a wash and a bit of highlighting Gaz

Snowspeeder & Millennium Falcon Masks (for Bandai & Revell/FineMolds) 1:48 & 1:144 GreenStrawberry The superb Star Wars Bandai kits are click together and don't need painting, but for extra realism and to achieve that beaten up Rebel/Resistance look, it's almost mandatory if you're going for accuracy. The Revell/Finemolds kits are designed for painting, however. The Falcon and the Snowspeeder are pretty liberal with their number of panes of glazing (I hesitate to use the term "glass", as it's Sci-Fi), with parallels able to be drawn between the Bf.109 and He.111 respectively for their canopy styles. Masks aren't provided in the kit, and with the number of panes to mask it can be a bit of a chore, especially if masking isn't your favourite modelling task. Those nice folks have GreenStrawberry have got you covered! Each set arrives in their familiar re-sealable packaging, with a printed black(ish) backing card, instructions folded up within the card, and the masks at the front on view through the transparent packet. The masks are a soft green matt vinyl-like material, and all the panes are pre-cut for your convenience, with a diagram in the instructions showing the associated number for each one. Rebel Snowspeeder (AM014-1/48) This is the larger of the sets, including glazing masks for the big canopy, but also supplying masks for the squadron markings, which adorn the nose, engine pods, and are repeated on the underside of the ship. This will mean spraying the squadron colours first, but it makes for a huge convenience to the modeller. Millennium Falcon (AM015-1/144) Patterned for the Revell/FineMolds kits, the former of which were released some years back and have more recebtly been reissued by Revell, this set provides a complete set of glazing masks for the iconic Flying Hamburger, including both the cockpit canopy and both of the cannon windows from which Luke and Han battle the TIE Fighters in the 1977 original that sparked a revolution in Sci-Fi. Review sample courtesy of

This came in the post today, after I paid a £25 import VAT to Parcelforce to receive it. I'd been waiting for these kits to come back into stock on HobbyLinkJapan (I also got another larger kit). Overall, I'm impressed. Some parts of the instructions will be translated using Google Translate, but generally these Bandai kits are a pleasure to build, so I might not even need the extra information. A nice instruction book, with drawings. A very comprehensive painting guide. In my opinion, a good instruction booklet can really make a kit. I miss the older Tamiya-style instructions, where they'd have drawings of uniforms, and diagrams of the vehicle. The car parts... ...and a very blurry photo of the figures. Included is a digital camouflage decal, which can be cut on provided templates and used on the uniform of one of the soldiers. As with most Bandai kits, there are multiple plastic colours on the sprue. I will of course be painting them. The faces are nicely moulded, and should paint up well. The equipment sprue impressed me. I love the Wehrmacht style. Also, all of the weapons have slide-moulded barrels, even the pistols. Considering some modern kits don't even do this, this is pretty good. here is the other kit- I couldn't be bothered to take photos of the sprues, because the box is seriously packed with them. This kit is similarly high-quality, and the vehicle itself is huge. I'm excited to get started on these kits. I'll start with the smaller one, though.

This came in the post today, after I paid a £25 import VAT to Parcelforce to receive it. I'd been waiting for these kits to come back into stock on HobbyLinkJapan (I also got another larger kit). Overall, I'm impressed. Some parts of the instructions will be translated using Google Translate, but generally these Bandai kits are a pleasure to build, so I might not even need the extra information. A nice instruction book, with drawings. A very comprehensive painting guide. In my opinion, a good instruction booklet can really make a kit. I miss the older Tamiya-style instructions, where they'd have drawings of uniforms, and diagrams of the vehicle. The car parts... ...and a very blurry photo of the figures. Included is a digital camouflage decal, which can be cut on provided templates and used on the uniform of one of the soldiers. As with most Bandai kits, there are multiple plastic colours on the sprue. I will of course be painting them. The faces are nicely moulded, and should paint up well. The equipment sprue impressed me. I love the Wehrmacht style. Also, all of the weapons have slide-moulded barrels, even the pistols. Considering some modern kits don't even do this, this is pretty good. here is the other kit- I couldn't be bothered to take photos of the sprues, because the box is seriously packed with them. This kit is similarly high-quality, and the vehicle itself is huge. I'm excited to get started on these kits. I'll start with the smaller one, though.

Hi everbody, here is my last build, hope you like it

And its done i've been awarded second place with this build @ Scale Models World competition in Turkey Here is the wip topic and final pictures

I started very quick build for a competition this kit has reaaaaly good details, i love it

Hi folks, I've been running around like a mad thing organising Scale Models Expo and haven't really had the mental energy to finish any of my ongoing projects, but I did want to build something new for the show. So I started these on Wednesday night and finished them before midnight on Friday. For me that's unspeakably quick I would have waited to take proper pictures but that didn't seem to be in the spirit of the adventure so here in all their awful glory are my mobile 'phone shots of the models on the table at Expo. (Kelkavia class High Speed Astro Battle Cruiser) (Destoria class Heavy Astro Battle Cruiser) No, they didn't win anything and nor did they deserve to! But they're big and green and they give my Cosmo Fleet something to shoot at. I will produce some studio pictures on Monday hopefully. Here are the promised pics of the Kelkapia (or is it Kelkavia?) class, unfortunately I broke something on the bigger one while trying to get the guns on the side better aligned. I've mended it but need to touch up the paint, and I'll fix a couple of other haste-induced mistakes at the same time. (click for more/bigger) There's a lot of dust on the surfaces, I think the varnish probably hadn't had time to cure before being introduced to the busy atmosphere of the show - I don't usually have quite this many problems. I cleaned them up as best I could and removed the rest in Lightroom like the dirty cheat I am Cheers, Will

Hi guys, well it's been a while since I posted anything, but I've finally got round to finishing my Zaku kit. I put it together before Christmas and I've attached a picture of what the Gundam looked like before I started with the Slave 1 paint scheme. The plan was to use it as practice for trying out the paints for my Finemolds 1/72 Slave 1 kit. I hope you like how it turned out.

Hi everyone, My first post here and I just wanted to post my favourite build from last year (and it took pretty much all of last year to do!). This is the 1/144 Bandai Millennium Falcon that I have modified to be (my favourite) version, the one from Empire Strikes Back. Mostly an out of the box build, it uses a lot of 3D printed parts (the radar dish, cockpit interior and exterior, maintenance pits, sidewalls on the mandibles), some photoetch (the rear circular grills) and is lit (although you can't really see this in the photos). The engines have a blue flickering glow, the headlights are SMDs, there is an interior light for the upper gun well (the lower one is where the support pole is) and the cockpit rear wall is a mix of fibre optic and back lighting. I have some videos of this knocking around online (on Instagram mainly). Painted with DOA paints (hand brush) as well as Citadel ones and various washes, etc until I was happy with it. Feel free to ask any questions.

TIE Fighter, TIE Fighter Advanced X1 & TIE Interceptor Updates (02016, 02116 & 02216) 1:72 GreenStrawberry It's Star Wars – nuff said. Bandai's new(ish) range of 1:72 kits have been wreaking havoc with the resale value of FineMolds kits for ages now, and despite the fact that we can't officially get them outside of the Far East due to licensing arrangements with the new owners Disney, there seem to be plenty finding their way into the hands of avid Star Wars modellers like myself. GreenStrawberry are similarly minded, and have made a number of excellent sets to improve on even the high levels of detail that Bandai cram into their snap-together kits. They also do Star Trek and many other brands too, so even if you're not a Star Wars fan, you're sure to find something they can help you with. The Evil Empire have Seinar Systems creating the iconic TIE Fighter series for them, with more than a few variants hitting our screens over the years. The original H-shaped TIE and Vader's TIE Advanced from the Titular film, and later in the trilogy the TIE Interceptor for a change of pace. All of these share a very similar central section, especially in their cockpit area, which is why I'm reviewing them all together. All three sets arrive in a resealable clear film package, with a central cardboard stiffener protecting the sheet of Photo-Etch, the header card, and the small resin parts at the back, which are bagged separately inside to save losing the parts. The final layer is a small but concise instruction booklet with sci-fi themed design and simple diagrams showing the way. All sets have a common core of components that are arranged differently on the sheets, but essentially the same up until step 6 on the instructions, and as you can imagine those parts are the cockpits. The initial stages have you building up the multi-layer coaming and controls that are seen in the hands of the pilot for the interior shots, with three layers joined to give them a degree of thickness, before they are attached to the back of the coaming. The kit seat pads are removed and replaced by new parts, and side details are added to the chair before the coaming is fitted into the open front of the floor. Inside the front of the cockpit a detail skin is added to the lower half, and a pair of faceted panels are glued to the "corners", to which the two resin clusters of round-ended tubes are fitted. The "visor" at the top front is removed from its mounting lug and given a new more detailed attachment point to the edge of the windscreen. Underneath the hull is a panel that has a hole in it for the stand, but in this instance if you are planning on using the next set of parts, you'll want to glue in the plug B4 to cover this up. The inner face of the panel is sanded flat, a skin with Star Wars gylphs etched into it, and a ring with extended legs is added. This then clipped inside the lip of the aperture so that the "luggage compartment" is depicted dropped to the floor, which although it might not appeal in all cases, it is a useful option to have on hand. The top hatch receives a partial lip in PE, and the hinge for the hatch is replaced by a new two-part boxed arrangement, with the Ion engine exhaust at the rear being fitted with a hexagonal grille. From here on in the sets diverge from each other slightly, as described below. TIE Fighter (02016-1/72) This seems to be the base set, so refer to the description above for what's included. TIE Advanced x1 (02116-1/72) As well as all the common parts listed in the top section of the review, the x1 also has a set of dual layered skins for the top/bottom of each of the "arms" that connect the ball to the panels. On the inside of each panel there are two small rectangular panels that are filed off and replaced by new PE parts. Two small parts are also inserted into the inner edges of the front cut-outs on the arms, and at the rear of the ball there are two small cranked panels which are skinned with a new detail part each. TIE Interceptor (02216-1/72) As well as the core components, there are three panels on the wing panels that are filed flat and replaced by new PE parts. Conclusion Three super little detail sets that are based around the common core that is the knot of the bow-tie, with subtle variations specific to the sub-type. If you'd like to see the details in situ, GreenStrawberry have helpfully included pictures of the bare parts built into the Bandai kits to show you how they should look, so have a click on the "available here" buttons to have a mooch. Very highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

I have been meaning to build a Z'gok, have a go at some water and build my own trees for ages, so i thought i might as well have a go at all three at once. I really enjoyed making the wire trees, the resin i usec for the water did cause a few small issues but all in all i enjoyed this one a lot. Well i hope you like it and your comments are all wellcome. Cheers Brian.

This squadron has been a long time in the making, although it only settled in to this configuration with a flurry of activity very recently. Here we have my converted F-Toys Y-Wing with scratch built hull plating additions, and a Bandai Vehicle Model A-Wing and X-Wing that I painted up to match as soon as I'd finished painting the Y-wing and fell in love with the deep red and cream color scheme (it's highly likely that I'll add a T-70 X-wing to this in the future, with extra shiny silver accents to go with the red & cream). The U-wing is still unmodified from when I finished it last year, but fit right in with these ships. The final ship is Nicholas Sagan's McQuarrie Concept A-Wing from Shapeways, painted in the colors from The Last Jedi. It also fit right in once I'd finished the other three. RZ-1 A-Wing Modified Y-Wing T-65 X-Wing McQuarrie TLJ A-Wing Lots and lots of WIP pics in my flickr albums.