I am dedicating this thread to the late, great, actor Michael Sheard who passed away 15 years ago and played Admiral Ozzel in "The Empire Strikes Back". He's the poor guy Vader force chokes for bringing the fleet out of Hyperspace too early - meaning the fleet has a longer trip in realspace and the rebels have longer to set up defenses and evacuate.

I recently saw some of the "Tested" crew build the Bandai 1:5000 scale Star Destroyer with lighting kit, and it looked an awesome model, so I bought one. It arrived the other day, just as I finished my cheap Revell 1:12500 scale.

I plan on getting some work done on it every day from now until it's finished, but a lot of that will be paintwork.

Just to set the thread off, here is a picture of the revell kit, only cost about £10 from Hobbycraft. It's a nice enough kit for the scale, plenty of detail for the size, and really easy to make.



and painted, she looks even better.



However, that was just the starter, enough to whet my appetite for the main course.



An extremely large box, which is possibly too big. It gives the impression that the model will be much larger than it actually is. Having said that, however, the contents are extremely well packed and protected inside the box. Each sprue is individually bagged, and the two main hull pieces are then taped to card to help prevent damage or warping during shipping or storage.



The instructions are in a pair of well illustrated booklets, one with the assembly instructions and a few good pictures of the filming miniature in the centre, the other being almost exclusively pictorial in nature, including some of the inside structure of the filming model, and a section on converting the supplied LED unit and outfitting the model with fibre optics.

There is a sprue of transparent hull pieces to replace the opaque ones should you wish to make the bridge and upper hull from these. I decided not to use these as I believe the masking would be more of a pain than working with the standard sections.



I am also probably going to deviate somewhat from the printed instructions in so far as the order in which I do things is concerned. The first thing they want you to do is set up the lighting system, and I will not do that until it is time to install it, preferring to paint certain parts first.

So, leaving the LED unit aside for now, the second stage is the building of the stand. This is a variation on the standard Bandai stand system using two of their standard square bases clipped together.



One of the bases, with the clip glued into place with a small drop of "Plastic Weld", a solvent glue from EMA that I find very easy to work with.



With both bases now glued together, it's time for the stands. There are two, one for the back and one for the front. These go in the rectangular indents in the bases, larger one in the back hole, smaller in the front.



It was at this point I realised I had not paid enough attention and the rear stand was backwards. As I had not used a lot of glue, this was easily changed, but if I'd used more glue, or left it longer, I may have had a lot of trouble.



The post sticks into a hole in the front stand with the holes pointing upwards. This is to hold the two smaller craft included with this kit.



The first is an in-scale Millennium Falcon. It's tiny, but as far as I can tell quite detailed. This shot shows the unpainted model, but I will be painting mine as a final touch once the rest is taken care of.



The two part Blockade Runner. Again, not painted yet, but it will be before I call this project finished.



And that finishes the stand off nicely.

Great start, will be following with interest.

Mark

The side trenching, and masking for the external colour.



Each side trench is made up of two parts, and each of the four parts total has a slightly different connection configuration. You can't get them mixed up on accident. Another example of the thought that the designers at Bandai have put into this model.





Which is then repeated on the other side with the final two lengths. Again, the detail on these parts is amazing, and my poor photographs don't do it justice. The paint will certainly bring hose details to life a whole lot more than the bare plastic shown here.







The first of the light blocking panels supplied with the lit version of this kit. A great touch that should ensure that this kit is accessible even to people with no experience of lighting kits like this.



In addition, there is a set of stickers supplied to help light block certain areas. The missing one goes on the previous panel.



So you end up with a part like this. The silver goes towards the inside of the craft, increasing the apparent light in the nose of the model.



The light blocking parts then go up the side, again helping the light to where it should be visible and keeping it out of things like joints.







It was at this point that I realised I had forgotten to add the supplied sticker to the front hanger. Not a huge problem as I had not glued the light block parts in place.



Having levered the front piece out again, I revealed the front hanger, ready to add the sticker.



These stickers are pretty sticky, giving me no doubt that they'll last a long time without moving or failing. There are a couple in the build I had trouble with having not quite put them on in the right place, and a couple I don't understand the point of, but that will become apparent later.



Having replaced the nose panel I removed to put the sticker in place, I then masked the entire inside of the hull plates. I can now spray a slightly darker primer, mask off some small areas to remain that colour, then go with the main hull colour of a lighter grey. Once that has been done, a very light wash - maybe several washes to get the definition I want to pick out the shadows.

However, at this point I will go on with the other construction so I can paint the entire thing at once, removing any differences due to having made more than one batch of paint.

Looking very nice, these kits are always very detailed. I’m still in my teens and I’m older than you.😂

Mark

OK, I'm on the top decks today after a day doing Terminator build work yesterday.



The front of this section is moulded as a single piece, just requiring the side walls to be installed. As with all joints on this build so far, they seem to be excellent and would probably work as a push-fit. I am using some solvent glue just to be sure, and as another method of enhancing the light block - a;though there are places where Bandai have this more than covered.



The sides have been glued on, and as I am finding usual for this kit [my first Bandai model for many years] the fit is excellent.



This is the first step up as we work to the rear. A simple joint that goes over the two posts in the front section. Once again, I found the fit a good, if tight, one. The tightest so far, in fact. This also means it's the most difficult to get into the correct place, but worth the effort.



But looking seriously good once it was on.



Turned round, we have another sticker to place. This one covers an ejector pin mark, presumably this one is closer to the surface detail in this area, as none of the others have the same treatment according to the instructions.



We now have the side plates to install. The one on the right,actually for the right hand side looking towards the bow, has noticeably less detail than the one on the right. This is a match for the filming miniature, which presumably was slated to have more close-up shots of the left side and more distant shots of the right side of the vessel.





I can certainly understand the model shop for the original production not wanting to waste time detailing both sides the same if they knew that it would not be required, as it allowed them to take more time over the parts that would receive greater scrutiny by the camera.



The sides are pushed into the front, and glued into place.



At the rear of each side there is a little detail piece which once again just slides into place and a drop of glue secures each of them.



At this point I miss-read the instructions and skipped a couple of steps. This made getting the rear of this section in place somewhat harder, but by no means impossible.

I installed the roof before the rear. The roof just pushes on from abore, the rear then needed a little pressure to get it to fit correctly, but I did so without damage. It did cause a little confusion, and a few times as I tried to get the second side properly seated the first side came out. All of which was my fault for not following the instructions.



The slot at the back is where the neck sits, but I'm not sure how I want to proceed with that at the moment. I have an idea that the garbage disposal in the back of the neck is a much darker colour, and will need to take a look and get the colour right before I can work on the neck as this is a small piece, again with a hole in the top to let light down into it so people can see the detail inside. I will have to find the base colour, shade, and highlight before I can build the neck around this piece.



The back of the deck section is made from these two pieces. Again, the moulding process would not have allowed this level of detail in a single part, and I applaud their decision to not compromise the quality.





Thanks for reading.

Thanks Robin.

Forgot to add to my previous post that there are two more stickers to act as light blocks at the rear of that piece.



I then started work on the bridge.



The inside of the top face of the bridge gets a couple of the round stickers to block light over two of the ejector pin locations.



This plate is then added to one of the light blocking pieces, so I'm confused as to the need for the stickers.





The underside, complete with the bridge sides, is then attached.



Another set of stickers are attached at the rear join. Although they are shaped and should fit well, I ham-fisted installing them and ended up cutting the rear edges of each sticker down to ensure that the rear plate will eventually join without problems.

I unfortunately seem to have missed taking a picture of installing the front plate, but the next step is a detail piece for the top of the bridge.



This is the centre piece.



Next are the two shield generators. The base is there, moulded into the top, but there are two sections to each generator.



The bottom section, with the strut connections to the top plate,



and the top section completing the dome. Both these have 'D' pins so alignment is not a problem.



With both domes completed, there is a detail for the front of the bridge to install.



And that's the main section of the bridge completed. The back of the bridge is actually built onto the neck, before the neck and bridge are combined. I am now concentrating on the paint for what I have built so far. whilst doing this, I can work on the paint for the neck, and get the neck assembled.

But just to give you an idea, here is where I am now.





The colour difference comes across better in the second picture. The hull has been sprayed the darker of two colours. This will then have lots of small areas masked up on all the main hull plate areas. These will remain this colour. Once all the masking is complete fop both top and bottom hull plates, the whole lot will then get a coat of the same colour as the plate for the rear of the bridge. This does not have any of the 'aztec' patterning visible on the main hull, so this has already been painted the main colour. This piece is a duplicate supplied with the kit, so I am using it to test a couple of ways of doing the panel lines - black or dark grey. The bridge itself has not yet been painted and is the white that the kit is supplied in.

Unfortunately weather, a duff internet connection, and not feeling up to much has stalled this build recently.

But the weather has cooled, I can't do anything about the internet, but I am feeling better again thanks to feeling cooler.

I haven't done much, and much of what I had done but not shown has been scrapped, but I'm taking up the bit again.



I started masking off the top section, but then thought that the colour was wrong. I ended up removing the masking I had already done on this section, and both hull plates.

I wasn't particularly happy with the colour, as this was supposed to be the darker shade I was using, the lighter one would have had to be pure white to show a difference.

So, with the masking removed, I re-mixed a darker colour and airbrushed that all over both hull plates and this piece. I still haven't touched the bridge/neck yet but hope to get that moving over the weekend.



This is with the new, darker colour. It looks darker than that in person, but the flash seems to bleach it somewhat. I have used lots of little strips of masking tape, about 2 by 5mm, to build up the shapes you see here. This is a particularly difficult process, as you want to end up with a random series of individual shapes, in random locations, but giving an overall even look to the finished model. Some of the shapes go across panel lines, some with them, some fit up to raised details, others go over them.



This is a top down shot of where I am at the moment. I may add one or two more pieces before I'm completely satisfied, but once I'm finished I'll take another shot like this so that once the paint is down, I'll know where the tape is and will be able to remove the tape without sticking a knife into a place where there isn't any masking.

Could it simply be the difference between the darker shade in its wet state and dried? I know most paints dry a shade or two lighter than they were when applied, the lighter the shade, the less it alters and vice versa. I think you might have to go down the darkening path (or would that be the Dark Side?)
It might also be the eye finds it more difficult to distinguish the shades apart with a very small darker panel surrounded by a larger expanse of lighter colour rather than judging the bottles with equal amounts of both.

Very frustrating though!

Robin.

And so, here we are again.

I finished the masking on the upper hull and superstructure, and have started on the lower hull plate. Once I had enough masked sections on there so that I had the rough spacing worked out, I was able to get the top sections painted with the lighter colour. The entire top section now looks much more like the colour seen in the film. The dark sections are, as planned, slightly too dark at the moment. Once I have done the inking which will give the ship its panel lines, I will be unifying the colours with a very light overpass of the light colour. This should tone down the inking and unify the dark colour and the light. It is also worth noting, however, that without the zoom on my camera, and from more than a foot or so away, the difference in colours is not so pronounced as it appears in the second picture.

Coming together very nicely.

Mark