Mandalorian Razor Crest

[Hewy]

 Looking Superb andy 👍 , it makes me really want to start mine

[Carts]

Absolutely Brilliant, going to pull up a chair for this one👍 

[Rwa66]

Looks to be a nice model from Revell and you're doing it justice as usual Andy.

Cheers,

Richard.

[Gekko_1]

I hope you don't mind Andy? But seeing as this is most probably going to be Britmodeller's go-to reference page for the Revell Razor Crest, I thought I might drop in some reference images sourced from one of the attached YouTube videos. Let's face it, the weathering of this kit is going to be the main focus of most modeller's interests and images like this are not all that readily available atm.

My all time Star Wars hero and inspiration, Doug Chiang, hard at work doing his thing! Note the Pantone swatch colour for the striping. Pantone 7409C. So for those few of you who have a Pantone swatch book, you can accurately match the colour if not using the supplied decals.



















 

 

Cheers

Richard.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks everyone,

 

On 31/12/2021 at 22:29, Gekko_1 said:

I hope you don't mind Andy?

 

Not at all Richard. Great ref shots - they'll come in very handy when I get to the painting and weathering.

 

So, after taking a small break from the Crest over xmas, I've got a little more done over the last few days. Not a lot of build progress has happened, as most of the work has gone into prepping the upper and lower hull pieces before I can close them up.

 

Before that though, there are a couple of additional points I wanted to make regarding the cockpit. Firstly, Revell seem to have put some thought into the design of the internal spaces, particularly in regard to adding lighting. I've gone a very basic route with lighting, just adding that single LED to the rear cockpit bulkhead wall, but if you want to take it further and add fibre optics to the instrument panel and sidewall panels, there's ample space between the cockpit sides and the fuselage to run the fibres and wiring through, all of which will be completely hidden. There's also plenty of space in the upper fuselage behind the cockpit compartments to hold the LEDs for the fibres.

 

 

The other point is the dimensions of the cockpit. Revell have clearly had to compress everything slightly to fit the cockpit in the available space. You can see in the shot below that the back of the passenger seat on the filming set is roughly level with the back edge of the side instrument panel, and that there's a good couple of feet of wall behind the seat where you can see some pipes and pouches hanging up. On the model, the passenger seat is again level with the back of the instrument panel, but in this case it sits right up to the rear bulkhead with no additional space behind it. I think this is simply a case of Revell having to deal with the reality of fitting the cockpit into the fuselage space, whereas the filming set is a stand-alone area that's been designed to give the maximum space for filming, and probably doesn't accurately follow the real dimensions of the Razor Crest.

 

 

Before I can finish installing the cockpit though, I've had to do some prep work and  clean-up on both the upper and lower fuselage mouldings. The main thing that needed doing on the large lower fuselage piece was to clean up the off-set mould lines running vertically down the nose section. They're not overly pronounced, but they do run across a lot of panel lines and other details, and need to be dealt with.

 

 

The left-hand window cutout on mine also needed some remedial work, as there was a large ridge of plastic that looked like it had been smeared out when the mould elements separated. This shot also shows the texture difference between the mould sections. The front area is quite smooth, while the texture left by the side mould element is quite rough. There's also a marked difference in the panel lines - those from the front section of the mould have clean, square edges, while those from the side section are more of a soft, rounded 'V' profile. It would have been nice to see a little more continuity in surface detail on these slide moulded parts.

 

 

While cleaning up the mould off-set, the panel line that runs around the lower edge of the fuselage pretty much disappeared through sanding. That required some re-scribing, which was a little tricky due to the panel line being both on a curve and sitting at the edge of an angle. A length of insulation tape on the vertical side of the panel line, and a few light passes with a scriber got the job done.

 

 

With the off-set cleaned up, the nose section looks a lot better. It's not perfect as those variations in the panel line width and profile are still there, but that's not obvious unless you look really close. I've lessened the plastic texture too with a light sand, and the styrene does seem to smooth down quite well without much effort - you just need to be carefull around the raised details.

 

 

Just to point out too, there's also a mould off-set that runs along the bottom edge of the fuselage on each side, from the small conical reccess to where the rear landing gear bay attaches. I'd already sanded it down in the photo below, but you can just see a small remnant of it just aft of the bottom of the side hatch cutout, and small kinks in the panel lines where the off-set ran across them.

 

 

That brings us to the side hatches themselves, which also need some work if you want to make the model look a little more accurate. I'll leave that for the next post though, to avoid this one running too long.

 

P.S. if you've not caught the first two episodes of Book of Boba Fett yet, go and watch them immediately as it's as good, if not better, than The Mandalorian.

 

Andy

[Galligraphics]

On 1/6/2022 at 2:38 PM, Andy Moore said:

P.S. if you've not caught the first two episodes of Book of Boba Fett yet, go and watch them immediately as it's as good, if not better, than The Mandalorian.

Yep - what he said... 

[Alan R]

I watched episodes 2 & 3 this Sunday evening. Well worth the time spent. Looking forward to the next episode.

[SMD70]

Ruined Boba fett IM0... Fearless bounty hunter... not anymore and thank you for the Cyberpunk Vespa's Disney. 

[daront]

1 hour ago, SMD70 said:

Ruined Boba fett IM0... Fearless bounty hunter... not anymore and thank you for the Cyberpunk Vespa's Disney. 

Have to agree with this, the vespa chase scene prob worst ive seen in starwars period. 

 

Back OP fantastic work really really good and following

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

2 hours ago, SMD70 said:

Ruined Boba fett IM0... Fearless bounty hunter... not anymore and thank you for the Cyberpunk Vespa's Disney. 

True not their best decision, though I keep tabs on stuff and I have a feeling now that he’s planning a fight with the Pyke’s. We will start to see a bit of the old Boba emerging. 

[StevenBills]

I'm curious to see what you do with the doors, Andy. I'm having a bugger of a time trying to figure out what to do to make them look less toy-like.

 

SB

[Andy Moore]

5 hours ago, Alan R said:

I watched episodes 2 & 3 this Sunday evening. Well worth the time spent. Looking forward to the next episode.

 

4 hours ago, SMD70 said:

Ruined Boba fett IM0... Fearless bounty hunter... not anymore and thank you for the Cyberpunk Vespa's Disney. 

 

2 hours ago, daront said:

Have to agree with this, the vespa chase scene prob worst ive seen in starwars period. 

 

2 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

True not their best decision, though I keep tabs on stuff and I have a feeling now that he’s planning a fight with the Pyke’s. We will start to see a bit of the old Boba emerging. 

 

I thought the first two episodes were great, the second one in particular. I'm particularly enjoying how they're deepening the lore of the Tuskens, something they began in Mandalorian. I loved the lizard-guided spirit journey Fett went on to find his Gaffi stick.

 

The third episode was indeed a disappointment though. The chase sequence looked like something from Phantom Menace, and was made worse by the use of that horrible, juddery speeded-up effect. The quadrophenia speeders were a bizzare choice for Star Wars, and looked even more out of place on Tatooine. And, of course, adding a bunch of teenagers to any show always makes it better, right? 🙄

 

Hopefully, this was a passing blip, and episode 4 will be better. Presumably Slave 1 will make an appearance at some point too.

 

2 hours ago, StevenBills said:

I'm curious to see what you do with the doors, Andy. I'm having a bugger of a time trying to figure out what to do to make them look less toy-like.

 

I've tweaked them a bit, just to bring them more in line with the show, and to remove those toy-like hinges. I do have the advantage that I'll be having them closed, so I don't need to make the hinges work.

 

Apologies for the lack of updates. I just seem to have been very busy for the last week or so, and haven't found the time to post. Some further work has been done though, so I'll hopefully post an update later this week.

 

Andy

[gamblor916]

14 hours ago, SMD70 said:

Ruined Boba fett IM0... Fearless bounty hunter... not anymore and thank you for the Cyberpunk Vespa's Disney. 

 

Temueras been eating too many pies and Ming Na Wen is no Michelle Yeoh.

[malpaso]

19 hours ago, daront said:

Have to agree with this, the vespa chase scene prob worst ive seen in starwars period. 

 

Back OP fantastic work really really good and following

OMG my daughters were in stitches at the hilarious efforts with these terrible non-speeders!  They were like the least scary pack of Mods.

Jury out in our household whether Book of Boba better than Mando; at present I think it’ll be a return to the Sarlac pit for Fett!

 

PS some good info on this thread, and build coming on well.  My pre-order arrived just in time to be repurposed as Christmas present.  I am on the interior at the moment, but not convinced that much will be visible even with the ramps down.

For all the internet moaning about mismatched moulds (mine is the same as described above) it’s not that bad and probably something invisible to casual modelers.  I also have Tamiya’s latest and greatest 1/24 240ZG and that needs some attention where the moulds came together too!

[Will Vale]

Some nice precise clean-up work there Andy. The mouldings look like a mix of stunning and pretty good, some of the close-up detail is approaching Bandai levels.

My other half finished with what she wanted from Disney+ and hasn't renewed so Boba Fett ran out for us after episode 3. It's been a bit patchy so far. My daughter and I *loved* the lizard, that was so unexpected and cool. Whereas the speeders and really everything about the Famous Four was jarringly out of place. I enjoyed the chase itself though, just for the overplayed mugging of the majordomo and his rather cool speeder that seemed like a perfect hybrid of Star Wars and Big American Barge-car.

I think we've laughed at as much as with it though so far, so maybe no great loss. Still unsure how I feel about the Mandalorian, but very happy to be able to joke about Part Man, Part Delorean, and how his armour is made of Best-Car (stainless) Steel 😛

W

[Andy Moore]

They... they blew up a quad. I'm mean, they actually blew up a quad. I can't believe they blew up a quad.

 

What the frell...

 

They. Blew. Up. A. Quad.

 

There can be no greater crime, no infamy so... infamous.

 

They blew up a quad!!!

 

 

Apart from that, episode 4 was excellent🙂

 

Andy

[Screech]

Better the Quad, then the Firespray!

[Portaler]

9 hours ago, Andy Moore said:

They... they blew up a quad. I'm mean, they actually blew up a quad. I can't believe they blew up a quad.

 

What the frell...

 

They. Blew. Up. A. Quad.

 

There can be no greater crime, no infamy so... infamous.

 

They blew up a quad!!!

 

 

Apart from that, episode 4 was excellent🙂

 

Andy

Haha yeah i noticed that and thought of you Andy. But I guess he went out with twice as big of a bang, killed twice as many goons too !!

 

Spoiler

Gotta say though, that Slave 1 scene coming up behind the bikers and mowing them down was epic !

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Portaler

[Gekko_1]

For those unaware, over on Shapeways, there is a store owned by Antonio Regidor otherwise known as "308 bits". He is currently working on several new 3D printed additions to the Revell Razor Crest. His Mando and child looks very nice indeed!

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/308bits?section=Razor+Mando+Rebell&s=0

Cheers

Richard.

[Andy Moore]

On 20/01/2022 at 01:58, Screech said:

Better the Quad, then the Firespray!

 

It'd be a pretty close call between Slave 1 and a Gonk for me 😉

 

3 hours ago, Gekko_1 said:

For those unaware, over on Shapeways, there is a store owned by Antonio Regidor otherwise known as "308 bits". He is currently working on several new 3D printed additions to the Revell Razor Crest. His Mando and child looks very nice indeed!

 

Thanks for the link Richard. They look like some pretty nice parts. If it wasn't winter, and freezing cold in my modelling room, I'd probably print up some parts myself for the RC.

 

This is a bit of a slow build for me but, as mentioned above, I've done some work on the side and rear doors, which needed doing before I could button up the hull. Out of the box, the doors are hinged to allow them to be opened to show off the interior, but the hinges are very toy-like. I'll be having the side doors closed, which side-steps the need to keep them workable, and meant I could just concentrate on making them look better. The rear door will need to be openable though, so I can access the battery box for the LED I put in the cockpit. Fortunately though, the hinge on that door is almost hidden from the outside, so that one required less work.

 

There were two main issues to fix with the side doors, the first being the over-sized hinges on the bottom, and the second is the little notch and tab at the top which is there to give you something to pull the door open with.

 

 

In the closed position, the fit along the bottom of the door is quite gappy, and the slots for the hinge are far too clunky looking to be left as is.

 

 

It doesn't look much better in the open position, although if you want to keep the door workable, there's probably not much you can do to improve it. The detail on the inside of the door is very nice though.

 

 

The first job with the doors was to cut away the hinge from the bottom and slice off the small tab at the top.

 

 

With that done, and the edges of the door cleaned up a little, the fit in the fuselage opening is actually very good. The door sits slightly recessed, which is screen accurate.

 

 

That just left the notch at the top to be filled. After spending some time staring at slightly blurry screen grabs I, at first, thought that the horizontal top panel on the door (the one with the notch) was slightly recessed. As such, I was initially going to cut out, and replace that whole panel, rather than just fill in the notch. After some further blurry studying though, I came to the conclusion that, in fact, the two vertical panels that sit below it are actually slightly raised. That was simple enough to replicate with a couple of strips of thin styrene sheet, and an off-cut from one of the sprues was used to fill the notch at the top. You can also see here that I've filled in the hinge slots on the fuselage. That was done with a couple of fillets taken from a styrene tube that had a diameter that roughly matched the curvature of the hull. The fillets were then blended in with a little Mr Surfacer.

 

 

If you look at the screen shot below, you can just about see that those two vertical panels have a slight highlight and shadow at the sides that certainly makes them look like they sit proud of the rest of the door surface. I won't catagorically state that the way I've done it is accurate, but if nothing else, it adds a little more surface texture. You can also see two little black squares on the curved fuselage below the door, right where the hinge slots were on the kit. They look like small holes, but I don't know if I want to try cutting them out now, so I'll probably replicate them with some squares of black decal after painting.

 

 

That photo also shows what's going on in the gap directly below the door. There's a horizontal panel that appears to curve inward at each end, then rectangular openings at the ends either side of the panel. The horizontal panel also seems to have a little recess on the left side, but that might just be a weathering mark.

 

On the kit, the first thing to do was cut off the lip that runs along the bottom of the door opening.

 

 

The horizontal panel was cut form thick styrene sheet and sanded to round off each end. That was then glued to the bottom of the door. The length of the panel was just guesstimated from the screen shot.

 

 

Before gluing the door in place, I did cut a little recess into the end of the panel. Again, I'm not sure if this is actually what I can see on the photo, or if it is just a smear of dirt. I don't really mind either way, as it adds an extra detail, accurate or not. The openings at either end of the panel were blanked off with styrene from the inside.

 

 

 

The mods to the rear door will be coming up next.

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lee Chambers]

Great work Andy.👍

[Portaler]

Good to see you back Andy......I was starting to get worried the Trandoshans had got you !

[StarWarsCreation]

Looking great!

[Portaler]

Looks like you might have another Mando ship to do at some point Andy ! Hopefully Bandai are on it !!

Edited January 27, 2022 by Portaler

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

8 minutes ago, Portaler said:

Looks like you might have another Mando ship to do at some point Andy ! Hopefully Bandai are on it !!

I do like the N-1 That Din Djarin is flying now, I hope they make a model of it.