Millenniumf
Sr Member
So I have had this one completed for a while, but I completely forgot to post about it since it's actually a gift for a friend and I was in a hurry to wrap it up and drive it to her before she left for France! But luckily, I got the model cast, built, and painted in time to make her send-off that much more special. 
To start with, this is a heavily modified Revell 1:72 kit, and I'd never built one of these before. By the time I'd gotten any interest in Babylon 5, the kit was long out of production and I could not find it for a reasonable price on eBay, at least if I wanted to build it and not stick it on a shelf for it to collect dust. However, a friend of mine was getting rid of a bunch of models to raise money for a move, and in the lot he was offering he had a pristine Starfury with not only the original version decals, but the special edition ones! And multiple sheets of them to boot! And the best part is it was all for less than $100, which included about a dozen Bandai Star Wars kits. Talk about lucky!
When I got the thing, it was no longer in the original box, which wasn't a dealbreaker, but holding it in my hands made it clear what everyone had been talking about for years: this kit is a pig of a kit.
I mean, all caps PIG!
Pretty much none of the parts want to go together right, there are massive gaps in the wing parts that you could float a battleship through, and the raised panel lines make it look toylike. I was not going to make a gift for my friend unless it was my best work, so I had a lot of work to do. Luckily I bought it months before she would be back in the states from Paris, so I had plenty of time to get the mods done and the model completed.
But...
I had an opportunity here. I was going to be making this look as awesome as I could, and I had a pile of markings from all these different ships.
Why not turn them into a set of masters, make some molds, and have as many Furies as I want? :badgrin:
So I got to work. First things first, I needed to glue some of the parts together and leave others off the model. I decided to start with the wings, as getting rid of those seams was going to be a chore and I wanted everything to be all downhill from there. So I glued the inner wing halves on, and then I separated the inner engine halves from the secondary wings and glued those on to make the engines watertight.
I also really hated the big gaps between the areas on the rear of the fuselage where it's supposed to be a continuation of the main wings. So I decided to glue the fuselage parts together, then use a razor saw to separate the greebled parts of the rear end from the wing segment, then glue the segments to the upper and lower wing assemblies. This allowed me to fill the gaps without having to risk getting putty on the greebles, plus I could then cast the fuselage and reduce the number of undercuts. I also plugged up the top and bottom of the fuselage with sheet styrene and added registration pins.
Then came the task of scribing. Boy, this took a while... lots of curves and undercuts I had to scribe around.
I also really hated the lack of a face on the pilot. I know they have a fully enclosed helmet, but I would not be satisfied with merely putting a decal on that to show the pilot's face. So I carved out the inside of the helmet, cut the head off a 1:72 fighter pilot, then glued that into the cavity and test-fit it in the cockpit:
After doing a few more mods here and there to make the details match the CGI model a little better, it was finally time to make the molds. I bought some rubber, built some mold boxes, and then set the parts into them. But of course, I got in a hurry and forgot to make sure to seal the boxes to prevent leaks... I also had to run an errand for my roommate at the time, and when I got back the wings had floated to the top of the rubber and it was too solidified to push them back down. Lessons learned, I'll do better next time.
At least the open-faced molds turned out alright:
Anyway, I cast up a copy of the model, and then tried to vacuform the canopy. Well, that didn't turn out very well. I tried pulling it several times and each time the clear parts of the canopy were bumpy and not clear. I was running out of time and knew I could scratchbuild it faster than figuring out how to do better at vacuforming, so I just cut some .010 styrene using the kit canopy as a guide, being sure to layer the pieces so I could slide sections of clear styrene between them after painting.
When that was completed, it was time to assemble and paint the model. And of course, I added lights to it, even in the cockpit. Because why not, right? The base was something I wasn't sure about, till I realized my banana hook in the kitchen had a base on it that was perfectly sized to fit a AA battery holder under it! I then secured the brass tube the model was sitting on and began painting the rest of the model. I wasn't sure which Fury's markings to use, but I settled on Ivanova, because that Russian eagle and star is pretty iconic. The decal itself was pretty hard to work with, though. It was very thick, so I trimmed off all the excess decal film and practically bathed it in Walthers Solv-A-Set to get it to settle down. It did *not* want to conform to anything, but I made it work. I completed all the painting, decals, and weathering, then moved on to the base. I included a resin casting of the Earth Alliance badge, as well as a plate that informed the viewer of who was flying this thing. After a final test to ensure everything still worked, I hopped in the car (yes, it was literally the last minute, lol), drove from Wichita to Denver, and handed it off to her. She was quite happy, needless to say!
Anyway, on to the finished pics!
To start with, this is a heavily modified Revell 1:72 kit, and I'd never built one of these before. By the time I'd gotten any interest in Babylon 5, the kit was long out of production and I could not find it for a reasonable price on eBay, at least if I wanted to build it and not stick it on a shelf for it to collect dust. However, a friend of mine was getting rid of a bunch of models to raise money for a move, and in the lot he was offering he had a pristine Starfury with not only the original version decals, but the special edition ones! And multiple sheets of them to boot! And the best part is it was all for less than $100, which included about a dozen Bandai Star Wars kits.
Talk about lucky!When I got the thing, it was no longer in the original box, which wasn't a dealbreaker, but holding it in my hands made it clear what everyone had been talking about for years: this kit is a pig of a kit.
I mean, all caps PIG!
Pretty much none of the parts want to go together right, there are massive gaps in the wing parts that you could float a battleship through, and the raised panel lines make it look toylike. I was not going to make a gift for my friend unless it was my best work, so I had a lot of work to do. Luckily I bought it months before she would be back in the states from Paris, so I had plenty of time to get the mods done and the model completed.
But...
I had an opportunity here. I was going to be making this look as awesome as I could, and I had a pile of markings from all these different ships.
Why not turn them into a set of masters, make some molds, and have as many Furies as I want? :badgrin:
So I got to work. First things first, I needed to glue some of the parts together and leave others off the model. I decided to start with the wings, as getting rid of those seams was going to be a chore and I wanted everything to be all downhill from there. So I glued the inner wing halves on, and then I separated the inner engine halves from the secondary wings and glued those on to make the engines watertight.
I also really hated the big gaps between the areas on the rear of the fuselage where it's supposed to be a continuation of the main wings. So I decided to glue the fuselage parts together, then use a razor saw to separate the greebled parts of the rear end from the wing segment, then glue the segments to the upper and lower wing assemblies. This allowed me to fill the gaps without having to risk getting putty on the greebles, plus I could then cast the fuselage and reduce the number of undercuts. I also plugged up the top and bottom of the fuselage with sheet styrene and added registration pins.
Then came the task of scribing. Boy, this took a while... lots of curves and undercuts I had to scribe around.
I also really hated the lack of a face on the pilot. I know they have a fully enclosed helmet, but I would not be satisfied with merely putting a decal on that to show the pilot's face. So I carved out the inside of the helmet, cut the head off a 1:72 fighter pilot, then glued that into the cavity and test-fit it in the cockpit:
After doing a few more mods here and there to make the details match the CGI model a little better, it was finally time to make the molds. I bought some rubber, built some mold boxes, and then set the parts into them. But of course, I got in a hurry and forgot to make sure to seal the boxes to prevent leaks... I also had to run an errand for my roommate at the time, and when I got back the wings had floated to the top of the rubber and it was too solidified to push them back down. Lessons learned, I'll do better next time.
At least the open-faced molds turned out alright:
Anyway, I cast up a copy of the model, and then tried to vacuform the canopy. Well, that didn't turn out very well. I tried pulling it several times and each time the clear parts of the canopy were bumpy and not clear. I was running out of time and knew I could scratchbuild it faster than figuring out how to do better at vacuforming, so I just cut some .010 styrene using the kit canopy as a guide, being sure to layer the pieces so I could slide sections of clear styrene between them after painting.
When that was completed, it was time to assemble and paint the model. And of course, I added lights to it, even in the cockpit. Because why not, right? The base was something I wasn't sure about, till I realized my banana hook in the kitchen had a base on it that was perfectly sized to fit a AA battery holder under it! I then secured the brass tube the model was sitting on and began painting the rest of the model. I wasn't sure which Fury's markings to use, but I settled on Ivanova, because that Russian eagle and star is pretty iconic. The decal itself was pretty hard to work with, though. It was very thick, so I trimmed off all the excess decal film and practically bathed it in Walthers Solv-A-Set to get it to settle down. It did *not* want to conform to anything, but I made it work. I completed all the painting, decals, and weathering, then moved on to the base. I included a resin casting of the Earth Alliance badge, as well as a plate that informed the viewer of who was flying this thing. After a final test to ensure everything still worked, I hopped in the car (yes, it was literally the last minute, lol), drove from Wichita to Denver, and handed it off to her. She was quite happy, needless to say!
Anyway, on to the finished pics!
