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B-Wing - Bandai 1/72


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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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Andy:cat:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cool Andy. Starting to look good. Did you splatter the Vallejo inks on or simply use a small brush to achieve the splotchy type effect on the motors ?

 

What sort of wash was that on the mounting plate ?

Edited by Portaler
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I like those light-guides - kind of reminds me of the "thing" from the 2nd season of Stranger Things (only in miniature, transparent, and not upside down, so nothing like it really :doh:)  nice paint job on the exhausts too ;)

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8 hours ago, Portaler said:

Cool Andy. Starting to look good. Did you splatter the Vallejo inks on or simply use a small brush to achieve the splotchy type effect on the motors ?

 

What sort of wash was that on the mounting plate ?

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.

 

7 hours ago, Mike said:

kind of reminds me of the "thing" from the 2nd season of Stranger Things

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Andy:cat:

 

 

 

Edited by AndyRM101
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15 hours ago, AndyRM101 said:

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.

Don't think so - maybe that was the whole idea though?  they didn't have to give it a backstory or flesh it out, and it's just a terrifying background that doesn't have to be developed any further.  Perhaps it's the puppet master for all these other things?  It does look good though, doesn't it? :offtopic:

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Excellent stuff Andy !! Thanks for the size comparison shots. That first pic with the Y-Wing blew me away. I always had in my mind that the B-Wing was significantly larger than the X&Y Wings. Must have been simply that little cockpit and all that wing that made me think that ! To my defence I guess there isn't that much footage of the B-Wing close to other fighters.

 

Also very interesting that there is a mounting point on the side. This changes everything for me, as I am planning a display of X-Wing, Y-Wing etc which would require the orientation you show in these last comparison pics. Up until now I was ruling the B-Wing out for that reason. Now no more !! Cool :yes:

 

 

 

Edited by Portaler
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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.

 

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Andy:cat:

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I heard the Britmodeller "beep" . The panel shading looks so good Andy. For that last coat did you use a Post-it or some sort of temporary mask to keep colours more or less to their panels ? Or did you simply make the spray very pinpoint so it doesn't spray wide over everything ?

 

I probably need to get a new airbrush. Not sure if I can get that sort of accuracy.

 

Really appreciate the colour details and mixing ratios. Excellent reference material for when I come to do mine 

Edited by Portaler
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This is looking so fabulous! It's exactly the shade i have in mind for the B-Wing.

I've used the same technique on my (still unfinished :() Snowspeeder after seeing it in your Snowspeeder build log. Guess i'll gonna use it on the B-Wing, too.

 

Why did you use Mr. Color paints instead of Aqueous and did you really mix Ammo with Gunze 😨?

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On 16/09/2018 at 15:12, Portaler said:

For that last coat did you use a Post-it or some sort of temporary mask to keep colours more or less to their panels ? Or did you simply make the spray very pinpoint so it doesn't spray wide over everything ?

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.

 

On 16/09/2018 at 15:22, Wulf said:

Why did you use Mr. Color paints instead of Aqueous and did you really mix Ammo with Gunze 😨?

 

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Again, a close up of the S-Foils to show the effect better.

 

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The next step will be to add the blue-grey areas and any other bits of detail painting.

 

Andy:cat:

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1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Andy,

Hugely impressive painting.

Worryingly close to witchcraft.

Certainly magic.

Yep, definitely a Kinda Magic ! :guitar:  (sorry no Freddie or Brian May emojis 😁)

Edited by Portaler
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On 11/09/2018 at 22:32, AndyRM101 said:

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:cat:

Try Hobbysearch https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10505499 

Edited by Mike
Editing out extraneous photos.
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Hey, Andy. Do you spray your Tamiya clear coat on quite heavy? I often watch vids of people using Super Clear and it goes on very wet, but I've never achieved that with my sprayed gloss coats. I have AMMO clear and Tamiya Clear, but always worried it'd pool etc if I tried to spray too hard or close.

 

Gaz

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