Z-95 Headhunter

 Another deep dive into my stash brings out JPG Models Z-95 Headhunter. Produced in 1:72 scale in almost 2 dozen parts of white resin and a clear vac canopy. The date on the box is 2010 - - WOW!   Giving the parts a good look, this appears to be another quick build model.

 

The Z-95 from the website was: 

 An outdated series of starfighter, the Z-95's endurance, adaptability, and large numbers has led to its continued use long after its initial production run had ceased. A multi-purpose starfighter, the Z-95 has spawned countless variants, with individual forces, government, squadrons and owners adding and adapting componentry and systems.

Developed in a cooperative venture between Incom Industries (now the Incom Corporation) and the now-defunct Subpro Corporation, the Z-95 is largely recognized as the premiere starfighter of its era, and the forerunner of the incredibly successful X-wing starfighter.

Most of the kit is perfect, but I have on little ding in one engine, and a different engine part looks like it got gouged some how. No worries I filled the gouged area with Tamiya putty and then when dry, sanded away. 

I had to think a little bit about the guns. It seems I just had to butt joint glue the tips to the mid part and then into the rear. Having those ting butt joints seemed like I was asking for trouble. So in my stash of styrene was a wire rod coated in styrene. Stripping the styrene off part of it it was small enough on one end to fit into the tip and fit equallt well with the styrene part into the rear. 

The was a small hole in the very front of the fuselage(on the bottom). So that also got some putty. While that was drying I glued the dash in place as well as the generator housing behind the cockpit. Toward the end of the session I gave it all a shot of primer, and will give it a once over. But that's for next time. Thanks for looking.

 

Trade Federation Landing Ship

Having cleared my bench, I dug deep into the pile and brought out Two Fat Guys' 1:2256 Trade Federation ship as see in the Phantom Menace.

I don't remember how long Two Fat Guys lasted. but they seemed to morph into a one man show starring "The Jimi"  from star Ship Modeler forum fame. ;)   Items from his new operation, JPG Productions, can be easily found at the SSM Store, or from Jimmy on FB. 

The kit is an old (I'm guessing) OOP kit. But the parts are very well done, with only a tricky seamline here and there.

The kit went together so quickly that I didn't think to take pics until I got most of the kit together.  After the pic I added the bottom portion and it was time to prime already.
More next time, thanks for looking.

The Occupation of Jedha City

The Bandai Star Destroyer build was easy, and with it's small scale I left the painting minimal. I left it with a gray underside and a white and white gray topside. The details were highlighted with some V. Gray wash. 
Jedha City, from JPG Productions, was painted in browns and orange browns and then washed with sepia and brown. From there I highlighted some roof tops in Ivory, and Buff. Then I overemphasized the shadow of the Star Destroyer on the city with Citadels Nuln Oil. Thanks for looking.

Bandai's star Destroyer

This is a kit I felt I had to get after buying JPG's Jeddah City base a long while ago. I know, odd that I would buy a base first... ;)     
This is a pic from JPG page - 

The Ship doesn't have a scale, and I haven't taken the time to figure it out, but it ends up being about 4 or 5 inches long.  The big plus that's normal for Bandai kits is that the detail is tremendous - 

One "Duh" moment I had was that at first I thought I could build it w/o instructions (and prolly could), but don't see any. Then I see amidst all the Japanese writing to "Go to this site for English", which I do and then no directions. Then the box top gets turned over and there they are!  Should should have known it as other small Japanese models have the instructions there as well. LOL Oh well - here's an image in case someone else has a brain fart - 

I left off with the craft drying from a priming. I figure a coat of white and then some light wash to bring out the detail and I'll call this one done. Check back for the finished model. Thanks for looking. 

 

Finishing the Juggernaut

Having gotten the vehicle toggether, primed and painted the next step was together decals on. Looking through the instructions there's no real indications of where the decals go besides the obvious stipes on the sides and the designs on the front and rear. So okay I'll wing it. Cut get the first decal ready to go on and put on the front of the vehicle and ... whoa ... they are *very* transparent. This isn't going to work. So the decals go inb the garbage and  I get my red paint, and Tamiya tape and I'll just do it free hand. When the striping as done, I thought it looked pretty good - 

Coming to the close here I felt I needed some sort of base to indicate the fighting that was going on. I too some Celluclay onto one of the woodn plaques I got from Michaels and made some uneven terrain. I decided at this point that I would add a few bomb craters, and maybe I would find something to drop into a crater.  When the Celluclay was dry, I primed black as I wanted to go for a scorched earth look. Adding some sand with PVA glue added to the texture-

The middle of the dio was left blank. No point in detail the part that will never been see again... ;)  Now I had to look for something to drop into the largest bomb crater. The model is supposed to be 1:350 scale and it was pretty tough to find something of comparable scale. In the end I figured I just wing it and found a Spider Droid from a miniatures game on eBay -

The droid came in a week, and as I thought it was pretty toy like. But I figured it was going to be blown up in the crater so I could really do a number on it. First thing I cut the antenna from the top of his head, the two back legs  and then cut his nose gun off. I found a replacement gun in the form of a very thing brass tube. Time to get the drill out. I drill out the hole for the nose gun, the left eye, and a large jagged hole to the side of the left. eye. The right eye I shaved down with an Xacto blade. I think to some of my very thin lead wire and created exposed wires that hung out of the hole, and the eye, and from the separated legs. I also took a pliers and bent the nose gun. Yeah he's pretty messed up. I then painted him with various pigments to make it look like he really exploded. I glued the main body into the crater and the legs went nearby - 

All that was left to do was to add black and white pigments to simulate ash, and then some brown pigments for some bare soil and I was done.  Thanks for looking. 

 

JPG's Star Wars Juggernaut

This time around I moved back to the Star Wars  genre to build JPG's Juggernaut. The Juggernaut was seen in a number of the Battles in the prequels - -

The model comes in quite a few parts - many of them being the wheels - 

Each wheel has a few mm of extra resin from the pour, and this needs to come off. I do have a sanding wheel, but the kit wheels small, and I was afraid of sanding the tips of my fingers off, so I still used the sanding wheel, but sanded with the power off. Its a coarse grit and went pretty quickly, but doing all 20 halves made it into a "wax on, wax off" type of situation. I was glad when they were all done. 

But after that, the chassis and the body parts went together almost too easy. All extra parts almost fell in place. What a nicely designed kit.

One little snag was at the end of the main body there were a few series of tiny bubbles, but some Tamiya putty made short work of them - -

Putting the small details on is where I ran into trouble. The problem is the instruction sheet looks like it had been copied 100 times before being copied once more before being put in the kit box. It was too blurry and lacked contrast to where I couldn't see what went where, in which position.  
Now I'm not picking on JPG on this. I gotten quite a few kits from different producers, and many have that "10th generation" copy look.  I would like them to see them put an original in .jpg or .pdf and put it on their site so the modeler could go and print out a super crisp copy.   OK, I'm off my soapbox. 

Once I found a good image I was able to put all the details on - - 

 Then I went to my new way of priming every and painted it all black with the Stynylrez primer - 

Next, came out my Vallejo Silver Gray color. This is a good color to use when you want to paint white. If you use white straight away, then you have no where to go to highlight. I did add White to a few panels here and there - -

I also added Vallejo Jet Exhaust metallic paint to the wheels to give them a slightly different look.
Next up is to gloss, decal and weather the vehicle.
I also have to start thinking about basing it...
Thanks for looking.