Mad, San & Cosmo: 3 New Gallery Pics

More pixels for your eyespheres...Enjoy!

Mad

San

Cosmo

Top is a scratch build of a Mad Max era vehicle called "Mach Fury". Middle is a vintage Hawk model of a San Francisco Streetcar. Built out of the box, I added the figures. Lastly, we have a 1/72 Bandai (GO BANDAI!) Cosmo Zero as piloted by Akira Yamamoto in Space Battleship Yamato 2199. Dig that cool aotake deck color!

Bandai Perfect Grade 1/72 Millennium Falcon Review

I found myself at NYCC last week. I've been to a lot of events, and yes these things are amazing, but I'm getting old and after a while the noise starts to sound like a thousand invisible air horns. After Gen Con last year, I said no more. BUT, I had to go for "work"...

So here we are. I made myself enjoy it.

This is me ENJOYING it. Look closely, I am almost smiling.

I planned on not buying anything. Not pictured above are the PO-ZU shoes I bought. I justified this by saying they were shoes. I got Finn's, they are all white. My wife has some issues with this.

In the box is the Falcon. The excitement broke my spirit to the tune of $400 bucks. I waited in two lines for 45 minutes just to get in the tiny Bandai store. There is no "shopping". You move through like an animal in an abattoir. Before your hit by a friendly electrified baton you point at your purchase and the nice girl at the register scans your credit card before your body hits the carpet. I LOVE BANDAI!!

I have this thing now, so let's review it:

This is a big kit. A box in a box in a box. Just so you know, I am already a "Bandait", meaning that I buy their kits sight unseen, because they are better than Tamiya. DO NOT SEND ME HATE MAIL.

Here is all 36 sprues. $400 divided by 36 equals $11.11 per sprue. Given that Disney/Lucas charges Bandai 20% for the licence, this is probably about right. Some of the parts are large, this doesn't include the frills such as the lights and PE.

Unlike Laura P., this thing is staying in plastic. What if I want to resell? Bandai always gets the detail.

More sprueage. 

All of the piping is separate and secured in a box to keep it all fresh during shipping.

Here is the PE and masking. Decals of all the "red wine" panels on sheet (reversed).

Here is the light module. Engines, landing, ramp and cockpit.

This is the frosted light piping for the engines. These are pretty thick.

Another gratuitous sprue shot.

So, this is an expensive kit, but probably the best Falcon period. I have not test fitted this, but I am sure it will slide together like clockwork. When I bought it I wasn't sure if I was completely happy. After a few days, my happiness is complete.

Here are my nit pics: There are lights, but no sound. The new Andromeda has sound. The painting guide is a bit skimpy. Should be more call outs, like those Wingnut kits.

Hey, I know how to make my nit pics go away. SEND ME A REVIEW SAMPLE and poof they are gone.

Keep up the good work Bandai!

Hobby Plug!

Link to full res version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4SbN-rtbAlgdWNfSGRDcFV1RDA

Oscar Goldman Builds The DMB-87: PART 9

OMG, ready for more punishment?

Here's that main landing gear swing arm from last time, part 8. One end has been cut off.

This is the side with the tire. A 1/4 styrene rod section is glued on using Weld-on.

The outside is sanded flat.

The inner section is cut away.

The inside of the arm is sanded flush.

Ready for casting. I'll need to do a lot more to get all this to fit together, by making a casting I have free licence to hack away on cloned parts.

I try to bundle up my casting. This means more parts. This is a tool I made to emboss a diamond tread detail onto the tire.

The tire is pressed on. Equal distant tick marks are Sharpied on. The tire is turned on tick at a time and gently whacked with the hammer. 

Like so.

On the lathe I slice off the ends so the pattern is in the middle.

Two sidewalls will be cut and added.

The Snuka has a large under chin blister for the front landing gear. Right now it's important to get all the gear sorted out to get it's stance. Then back to the rest.

Basic shape is cut out in thick ABS plastic.

The pattern is smaller because I'll be pulling .100 thick styrene over the top. Here is the pull cut out. I wanted a shell (there is guttiworks in there) and the thickness will allow me to shape more easily.

To match the fuselage contour, sanding paper is attached to the nose and the blister is sanded to fit.

OK, so here is where things get a little weird. What you are looking at is a mold to cast the swing arms. The part has lots of fragile parts and in order to keep these intact during de-molding I chose to create five inserts. What you are looking at is two walls of the mold before completion.

This is a pretty tricky mold, but most of the fun is figuring these things out and stretching my mold making skills. Here you can see the funnel and sprue. I build molds upside down, so you are looking at the bottom.

The cured silicone mold with all the inserts pulled out. This mold will get sliced open on one end so cast parts can be removed (I don't have a pic, I'll take one so you can see).

I made another mold at the same time, this is to cast the landing spat, gear doors and tire.

It gets cut open like so. The slit goes down to the bottom, but not all the way through.

Like so. The uncut bottom acts as a hinge.

Here is the first resin castings. Rubber bands are used to hold it together.

The parts.

Here you can see the spat and landing gear doors. Being clones I can slice and dice at will.

The first casting from the swing arm mold. Later casts were complete.

One of the spat clones is cut, then a second...

All the bits are carefully sanded and it looks like everything will even fit...

That's it for now, this Oscar is tired. See you in part 10!

How can you lift your head if you have no #$@%! neck?

Good question!

More on this.

"...The new phone books are here!...The new phone books are here!"

I remember the older publication well. In fact it was a good reference back in the day.

On the left is my fresh copy of the newest iteration of this concept, "Out of this World Modeling". In truth, the older publication is laser focused on "Spaceships", the newer cuts a wider swath, Super Heroes, Anime and even Gundam.

It includes a nice range of subjects and definitely geared towards introducing the non sci-fi modeler into the fold of that other cooler side of the hobby.

Take a break from dissecting the exact hue of Dunkelgelb and hypothesize on blue squadron and it's role during battle of Yavin.

The nice folks at Kalmbach included my build of a BTL-A4, a prototypical Y-wing as painted by R. McQuarrie.  Enjoy!

Don't worry, Oscar G will be back in part 9 of his build of the DMB-87 in a few short days!