nicholassagan
sippin on gin + juice
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2011
- Messages
- 2,013
Finally got this bad boy in the mail after waiting a little over 2 months!! (shipped from Poland). It was totally worth the wait. This is a really well detailed and engineered kit. The parts fit pretty much perfectly and ALL the detail was nice and crisp. A few under surface bubbles appeared on the trailing edges of the ‘wings’ and ‘head’ but otherwise good casting.
A couple of construction notes, though:
1.The BIG task was rescribing all the panel lines. A few of them were OK but many were way too shallow and eligible. (post on left, pre on right)
2. The joint for the wings wasn’t completely square so I added a couple of steel bar supports
3. The left wing was a little warped, or flattened rather, so heat from a desk lamp was applied and the wing was bent upwards to shape
4. My kit came with 2 left engines (they are engineered to fit at an outward canted angle) so some trimming was needed to get the odd one in line
5. I replaced the main barrels with brass rod and carefully drilled out the rest of the length of the cannons so brass runs down the entire assembly
Before the black primer went down, I did scrub the parts really well. However, it must not have been enough because the primer still mottled slightly. Turns out that’s OK because the actual appearance of the Raider has a mottled look!
Moving on to the next steps, I have a 5.25″ circular mirror base that I will be placing laser cut green pentagrams onto, courtest of Matt from LaserFire Creations. I won’t be drilling into the mirror OR the kit for mounting. Instead I’ll place the mirror on a wooden base (maybe pentagram shaped?) and a clear acrylic support rod, bent to fit the underside.
PAINTING wise, I won’t really be using much paint, save for some detail work. The bulk of the metallic look will come from AK Interactive’s new True Metal rub-n-buff/wax material. I picked up four shades and this Raider is the perfect test bed for all of them. Stay tuned for more!
A couple of construction notes, though:
1.The BIG task was rescribing all the panel lines. A few of them were OK but many were way too shallow and eligible. (post on left, pre on right)
2. The joint for the wings wasn’t completely square so I added a couple of steel bar supports
3. The left wing was a little warped, or flattened rather, so heat from a desk lamp was applied and the wing was bent upwards to shape
4. My kit came with 2 left engines (they are engineered to fit at an outward canted angle) so some trimming was needed to get the odd one in line
5. I replaced the main barrels with brass rod and carefully drilled out the rest of the length of the cannons so brass runs down the entire assembly
Before the black primer went down, I did scrub the parts really well. However, it must not have been enough because the primer still mottled slightly. Turns out that’s OK because the actual appearance of the Raider has a mottled look!
Moving on to the next steps, I have a 5.25″ circular mirror base that I will be placing laser cut green pentagrams onto, courtest of Matt from LaserFire Creations. I won’t be drilling into the mirror OR the kit for mounting. Instead I’ll place the mirror on a wooden base (maybe pentagram shaped?) and a clear acrylic support rod, bent to fit the underside.
PAINTING wise, I won’t really be using much paint, save for some detail work. The bulk of the metallic look will come from AK Interactive’s new True Metal rub-n-buff/wax material. I picked up four shades and this Raider is the perfect test bed for all of them. Stay tuned for more!