Takara 1:100 Crusher Joe Fighter 1 plamo build

stevethefish

My name's actually not Steve
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Jun 12, 2015
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For those of you who are on the Starship Modeler Forum, you may have seen this. It was on the Crusher Joe thread that has since fallen into oblivion because... darnit, KILOBYTES of data don't grow on trees, son! Here I have reproduced the posts I made to my Tumblr feed (link's in my sig file below).

So in September 2018, With news that Hasegawa would be releasing this subject in 1:72 scale in December, it really motivated me to begin building the ones I have. I own two of these kits, and my intention was to do the blue Fighter 1 and the red Fighter 2. These 1:100 scale kits by Takara are from the early 80s, when the movie first came out.

For an old model kit, the proportions are pretty good. I really like the detail on this model, however the rear engines lack detail. There is a thruster can directly behind the cockpit, two large ones in the middle of the back of the plane, but the four thrusters (two on each side) have zero detail at all. Comparing to the Hasegawa kit, these thrusters are set inside of the rear of the plane and do not protrude much. I needed to come up with some replacements.

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Kotobokiya makes these supplemental parts in their Modeling Support Goods series. I found ones that were perfect size. This is the Vernier Nozzle set III. Unfortunately, each of these sets only had three in the size I wanted, so I had to buy two more of these sets in order to get a total of eight, four per ship. Since I live in Japan, these do not cost much for me, so it’s all good.

So I set about drilling these out. Once I got a good hole drilled out, I used my rotary tool to get all the rest out and make it look good.

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Here is a before and after shot. On the left you will see how the kit comes, and on the right you will see the Kotobukiya verniers in place.They look cool! Fitting into the hole they look set into the engines instead of protruding outside far.

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The problem with adding these new thrusters is that the joint where the wing fits into the fuselage will interfere with these thrusters since they are set into the back. In this picture I’m pointing with a skewer to the part I needed to cut out.

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I left those alone at this point, however, since they provided something for my alligator clips grab onto.
 
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Here I have painted both fighters.

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In December 2018, Gaia Notes released a set of Crusher Joe paints in correlation with the Hasegawa kit. They are gloss lacquer paints and went down nicely. I thought that they looked a bit too light, but after they dried they looked nice. Still, the blue is not dark enough. From left to right, they are Dark Gray, Sea Blue, and Medium Red. Dark Gray is for the canopy and engine areas.

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Speaking of the engines, I painted all of the engines Mr. Color 28 Steel. I dropped the Kotobukiya M.S.G. vernier thruster parts into the holes I’d drilled and here they are. They look nice. The additional Kotobukiya parts really help make the kit look lots better than before.

The white was regular Mr. Color 1 Gloss White. The back engines and the canopies were painted with the Crusher Joe Dark Gray color.

Once I painted the Gaia Notes red, blue, and gray colors and removed the masking, I had to do some touch-up brush painting with some retarder added to the paints. Now came time for the decals. These decals are very old, from the early ‘80s. I had already taped them to my window glass to remove the yellowing as best I could. I also sprayed them with Testors Decal Bonder to try to help them survive the application process. I had to soak them in hot water for quite a while to get them to cooperate.

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The blue 1 decal worked out fine.

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The red 2 didn’t fare so well. So I have two of these kits, and each kit comes with the decals for both the 1 and the 2. The problem is that one set of decals was worse than the other. This is the best I could do, and there were some rips as you can see. I later had to do some touch-up painting with some red paint. Since this red color does not match Gaia Notes’ Crusher Joe Medium Red, I used Mr. Color 327 Red instead to more closely match that deeper red color.

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As you can see, some decals are better than others. The J logo on the blue fighter isn’t a bright white, but it looks nicer than the red one’s. Just look at how the white part is misaligned with the black outline. Plus the triangular caution sign is a bit dark on the blue one. At least it isn’t too bad.

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Here is a back view.

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Here they are, pending a clear coat.


After doing the panel lining with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Black as well as Gundam markers, I applied a clear flat coat and the models were done.

One more thing I did was to spruce up the bases.

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I painted each base to match the fighters and then applied the decals I had made. I scanned the old decal, used Gimp to remove the yellow parts and sharpened it up, and printed them on Fine Molds clear decal paper. I printed them on the laser printer at work and they slid off the paper backing easily after a quick soak in warm water. I then did another clear coat to seal them in and I was finished.

Aside from the lack of this engine detail that I had to add, the overall proportions are good and this was a pretty faithful model for its time. And I’m always a fan of Shoji Kawamori’s designs.
 
Looking very good there.
I saw the 1/72 version in my LHS yesterday and almost grabbed it
 

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