Mandalorian Razor Crest

[Screech]

Incredible build diary Andy!  Really enjoying this one!

[Mike]

Looks great so far I think you've got the amount of shine just right for the base.  I just finished watching Boba Fett too, and apart from the slightly dull speeder "race", I really enjoyed it.  I think the road-roller scene from Austin Powers looked faster!

[Andy Moore]

Progress is fairly slow on this build at the moment due to various other commitments, but I've got a little more done over the last week. Firstly the two main guns needed some refinement. The basic mouldings are pretty good, although some of the details are quite messy and need cleaning up. Like the rest of the kit, there's some texturing in places along with some heavy mould lines. As the mould lines tend to cross a lot of the smaller details, these's a bit of re-shaping required. The muzzle is moulded with a simple horizontal slit, but this also needs drilling out. I guess this would have needed a slide mould to do properly, which would have cost more to tool, and it's easy enough to drill so not a big deal. Further back, where the barrel extends from the main gun casing, there are two half-round indentations above and below the barrel. These should be open, and need to be carved out. Towards the back, there's a tube that sits abover the gun housing, or at least there should be. Revell have moulded the front and rear ends of it, along with the two support brackets, but the centre section is an open void. This area is partly covered with an armoured panel, but you can still see the empty space from above, so it needs dealing with.

 

 

The muzzle was easy enough to correct, and in fact the heavy mould line here was a benefit, as I could use it to mark a pilot hole so I didn't drill the barrel off-centre.

 

 

The openings at the back of the barrel were a little harder to fix as the plastic there is solid, and the openings needed to be carved out with a micro chisel. The original moulding is quite messy, as you can see from the gun on the right, which didn't help. On the studio model these holes are a single opening that the barrel sits inside. It wasn't really practical to replicate that, so this is as good as I could get it. The main round casing that forms the back of the gun assembly should also be an open ended tube that has the main gun sitting inside it. Again, it wasn't really practical to do that, as I would have needed to rebuild almost the entire gun from scratch, but as the guns are only push fitted to the fuselage, I might look at designing and printing something better down the line.

 

 

For the tube that sits above the barrel, I cut away the two ends and carved out the brackets to take a length of styrene tube, which in turn had a short length of a smaller diameter tube glued into the front end. Since the photo was taken, the rear end has also been capped off.

 

 

With the guns sorted, I got back to painting. The fuselage was base coated in gloss black, then finished with the same polished aluminium as the engines. I felt that the straight polished alu on the engines had looked a little too dark, so the fuselage also had a patchy over-spray with some Vallejo aluminium, along with a coat of satin varnish to protect the slightly delicate AK polished alu. That's why is look a lot lighter, and less shiny that the engines. That won't matter in the long run, as the amount of weathering needed will darken everything anyway.

 

 

I did briefly consider using the supplied decals for the yellow stripes, but they looked a bit thick, and the pattern of wear on them is a little simplified compared to what's seen on screen, so I've made a start on painting them instead. This needed a combination of tape and masking fluid to block off the main areas, followed by a coat of hairspray to allow me to do the finer chips after painting. I'm doing this section-by-section, as getting it all masked in one go would have been quite tricky, and made handling harder.

 

 

I wanted to use a colour straight from the bottle for the yellow to avoid having to re-mix the same shade several times. The closest match I'd got was AK Dirty Yellow, which looked pretty good once the masking was removed, but wasn't the best choice for the hairspray chipping. AK gen3 paints don't seem to like that technique much, and the results weren't as good as I'd hoped. I may have to sharpen up the fine chipping with some brush painted silver.

 

 

That's as far as I've got with the stripes so far, but I should get the rest done over the next week. In the meantime I've started weathering the engines, as I expect the weathering in general will be the longest aspect of the build. I started off with the exhaust nozzles, which I'd left separate for painting. The studio model has quite a lot of heat discolouration on the petals which I've recreated with some over-sprays of Tamiya clear shades. the nozzles were then finished off with some oil and enamel washes to dirty them up.

 

 

The nozzles, together with the front cowls, were then glued in place on the engine nacelles, and the main weathering started. The engines on screen are very streaked and dirty, and I've been slowly building this up with layers of oils, enamels and acrylics. This is taking some time, as I have to let each layer dry, particularly the oils, before applying the next layer. At this point I'd say they'er about half finished.

 

 

So, the rest of the week's going to be about painting yellow stripes and smearing oils. Hopefully I should get at least the stripes finished for the weekend, then the main painting will be done, and it'll be all about the weathering from then on.

 

Andy

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Looking real good now, I cant wait to see the final product. 

[Portaler]

Orange paintwork and weathering on those engines are looking damn fine to me !!! 

 

Looking magnificent Andy !!

[Galligraphics]

This is shaping up beautifully. The engines in particular look fantastic! 

[JamesP]

The engines look stunning

[modelerdave]

Holy crap, that looks incredible. Mine is arriving tomorrow (and I ordered a bunch of 3D printed upgrades from Shapeways) but I won't have time to start until after I move back to Pennsylvania in late May. I will definitely use this thread as an inspiration and reference! 

[M_Sinclair]

Even though I knew you'd do an incredible job, I can't get over how awesome those engines are looking! 

 

-Matt

 

 

 

 

[MarkSH]

A real masterclass in....well everything really.  You know that just about everyone will be trying to copy all the mods, tips and finishes you have applied to this kit!?  I know I will....Fantastic work.

 

Mark.

[Bozothenutter]

Oooohhhhh......following this!

[voozet]

I agree with the previous commentators, this is a real masterpiece.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks for the comments chaps

 

Andy

[Gekko_1]

For those of you who like Adam Savage and Norm of "Tested" on YouTube, here they do their thing on the HasLab Razor Crest playset. Some may find how Adam tackles a subject like this interesting.
 

 

[Portaler]

Yeah I saw that as well. He's a bit slap dash with the weathering, but I guess that's how they did it back in the day. Some good ideas though, like that random gloss panelling to get different light effects as you look over it.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Portaler

[Rob G]

Savage has a background in SFX for films. As a consequence, he'll have a different approach to weathering than your average modeller. Weathering for motion pictures needs to be 'in your face', so as to not be washed out by the studio lights and to be noticeable in the short time that the prop is on screen - there's no need, or indeed place, for the subtlety of the  competition table.

 

Also, models made by props departments are generally not built over weeks, they're often done in days, and sometimes redone (or done, in some cases) overnight, to be ready for filming first thing in the morning, so there's no time to spare for arty farty messing about. 'Get it done, get it on set' is the mantra. 

[Portaler]

Andy's MIA !!

[M_Sinclair]

1 hour ago, Portaler said:

Andy's MIA !!

I wrote to him recently. He's fine but is busy and he is trying to get back to posting as soon as he can. 

 

-Matt

[Portaler]

8 hours ago, M_Sinclair said:

I wrote to him recently. He's fine but is busy and he is trying to get back to posting as soon as he can. 

 

-Matt

Cool thanks Matt. Figured as much, Spring is typically his busy time I believe.

[Andy Moore]

Yes, sorry everyone for the huge delay in updates. I've had to re-wire about half of my house, which has led to a lot of disruption including having to completely empty my work room. I'm starting to get things straight now, and have managed to get a tiny bit more work done on the Crest.

 

I've got the landing gear together and it's fairly well detailed, although the parts need a lot of clean-up as there are some pretty heavy mould lines. For the most part the gear is fairly accurate to the original, but the vertical wedge-shaped strut on the top of the main leg should actually be an open 'V' shape with a lattice structure on the inner strut (see second photo). That strut only holds the upper door, and doesn't support any of the ships weight, so it shouldn't be a problem to trim it down to better match the original. Doing the lattice cutouts won't really be possible, but the strut isn't going to be be all that visible on the finished model anyway, so not a big deal. If I'd got more time, I'd probably design and print a replacement, but modifying the kit part will do for now.

 

 

 

The gear bay door that attaches to that strut has some very noticeable ejector pin marks on the upper face that need filling. I have no idea why Revell didn't place the parts on the sprues so the pin marks were on the hidden underside, but maybe it's something to do with the curved shape of the part that required the ejector pins to be on the upper side?

 

The downward curve at the end of the door isn't quite as pronounced as it is on the original, and the part is quite thick as well, so again a printed replacement would work better, but I'll use the kit parts for now.

 

 

 

I've also managed to finish painting the fuselage stripes, so all the main paintwork is now done, and I can move on to the weathering. Back when I painted the first section of stripes on the left-hand fuselage side, I used a combination of masking fluid and hairspray for the chipping, but the AK Gen 3 acrylic I used for the stripes didn't seem to react very well to the hairspray. For the remainder of the stripes I just used masking fluid, then went back in with a fine brush to refine the chips.

 

 

The stripes on the right side are far more broken and worn than the ones on the left, so for this side I only masked and sprayed the forward area of the stripes ahead of the side hatch. The chips to the rear of the hatch were brush painted using screen shots as reference.

 

 

One thing to note with the stripes is the area where they wrap around the chines. The forward stripe runs in line with the stripe running up the fuselage side, but the rear stripe is slightly off-set back from its corresponding fuselage stripe. The kit's decals don't reproduce this, but that's how the stripes are on the digital model used on the show, so I've copied it here. It's done this way on both sides of the fuselage.

 

 

So, as I said above, that's the main painting finished. It's on to the weathering now which I'll start off with a pin wash to bring out the panels, then go from there.

 

Andy

[M_Sinclair]

Great to see you managing to squeeze in some model work during the chaos. The Crest's signature stripes look spot on.

 

-Matt 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Portaler]

Yes, sounds like the re-wiring and cleaning out the work room would be a HUGE job !

 

Paint is looking excellent, especially the stripes as Matt also pointed out. Really looking forward to the weathering, but get that house done. Don't want you having to work by kerosine lamp for months on end !  😛

[Galligraphics]

4 hours ago, Andy Moore said:

Yes, sorry everyone for the huge delay in updates.

Never apologise for actually having a life... 😉. That said, it's good to see you back on this 

[MDCragg]

On 4/4/2022 at 6:05 AM, Andy Moore said:

Yes, sorry everyone for the huge delay in updates. I've had to re-wire about half of my house, which has led to a lot of disruption including having to completely empty my work room.

 

Did you weather the wiring and drop a few greebles in here and there throughout your house to make it look more authentic?

[Andy Moore]

Thanks chaps,

 

Starting to get back to a normal routine now, and I've managed to get the Crest just about finished.

 

The landing gear was sprayed with Alclad Aluminium, then weathered with oils and acrylics. The cables on the main gear were done with fuse wire and they'll thread into holes drilled inside the gear bays.

 

 

One point to note with the main gear - the connection between the end of the strut and the upright section on the foot is very thin and the soft styrene can easily bend. They're supporting the model's weight for now, but for long term display I think I'm going to fashion a support under the main fuselage to take some of the strain off the legs.

 

 

The weathering on the main fuselage has been finished now. This was mainly done with oils and acrylics again, with a few enamel washes used here and there. All the panel lines had a pin wash with Abteilung Starship Filth oil, then some of the panels were given filters with Games Workshop washes to tint them. The rest of the weathering was mainly grungying up the surface with mottled applications of thinned oils and acrylics.

 

 

 

I finished off with a few streaks here and there, and some speckling done with highly thinned oil paint. I was using screen shots as a general inspiration for the weathering, rather than trying to replicate every mark and stain seen on the original.

 

 

 

Just the engines and landing gear to attach, and a bit of clean-up here and there, and I can call it done.

 

Andy