Bandai + F-Toys 144th Scale Fleet

monsterpartyhat

monsterpartyhat

Sr Member
This past Christmas my dad bought me the Bandai Red Squadron set, kicking me back into a hobby I haven't actively pursued since I was a teenager. Since I don't have a lot of room to display models (and love things small anyway - when I built model trains it was all N-scale; it would have been Z if that wasn't so damn expensive....) I started tracking down and acquiring everything I could in 1/144th scale. You can see part of the F-toys portion of the fleet in the F-toys thread.

So, I'm going to document building out the fleet here.

First off, I put together the tiny X-wing from the Red Squadron set.



SO.


MANY.


DECALS.

40 of them on that tiny X-wing. My eyes!

First off, I hit the parts with some Tamiya Fine Surface Primer - don't like the look of bare plastic.

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Then I started in on the insane decals, doing as many as I could on the sprue to keep the parts steady.
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Some very basic weathering with an acrylic wash.
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And after much Microsol (magic!) and some some flat lacquer, I'm pretty happy with it.
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My only big complain about the decal set is the cockpit - the grays are half-toned, so they're much more obviously decals than the reds and yellows. I may eventually remove the canopy, take the decal off, and painstakingly mask it for paint. Still some detail work to be done on the R2 unit and weathering), but I love it already.
 
I managed to acquire 4 of the F-toys A-wings, which are a really neat little model. They're available in the ROTJ red, and a McQuarrie-inspired blue and white paint scheme.
Here's the two stock models and a disassembly:

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They disassemble very easily, and if you're really, really good with tiny electronics, you might be able to fit tiny LEDs in the engines and a tiny battery in the body.

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So, since I've got one red A-Wing and three blue ones, we're gonna customize a blue one.

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Take it apart, and mask off the edges and get ready for primer!

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Uh.....that didn't go as planned. The Tamiya primer interacted with the blue paint and turned a light pink that just wouldn't cover up (that's three coats of primer).

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Fortunately, it all came off with a little lacquer thinner - pretty much down to the bare plastic. I think the factory paint bonded to the primer, and they all came off together. The red stripes appear to be a decal that stayed behind while the paint came off around it.

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Now that looks WAY better with some primer on it.

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Now I can get on with the process of masking. This took ages, but I find it oddly relaxing. I failed to take any pictures of the masking on the engine nacelle/rear fin parts, but they took a lot of finesse too.

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And hit it with a bit of flat black...can you guess where this is going?

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Yup, it's a partisan A-Wing!

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And next to the red one, which has had a bit of black wash applied for panel highlighting and a touch of grime.

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Credit for the Partisan A-wing design goes to psyfoolrulez_customz, who built a great 1:72nd rendition. I modified it slightly, with the white nose tip and having the rear fins be inverses of each other.

All ready for weathering and detailing. Got some Vallejo metal colors for some of the detail and engine bits, etc....After I declare this one done, the next up is a partisan X-wing to go with it.
 
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Always room for a bit more masking. I decided this fighter would have a couple of bare-metal replacement hull panels, and some detailing on the engine nacelles. Brush painted with Vallejo Metal Color duraluminum.

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Yeah, they are indeed. Last night I started on the X-wing, and fixed that wonky white panel on the A-wing (ELO + a q-tip did remarkably well to remove the paint within the panel lines).

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One last update for the A-wing - I finished painting the guns, adding the little red tip, which is a nice bit of color. Gave the whole thing a flat coat and then glued it together (otherwise the wing cannons just fall out).

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I also finished the basic wing painting this morning. It's funny - some of the paint flaws that look horrible in photos I *just can't see* with my eyes when the bird is sitting at arm's length away :). I've been painting these with Tamiya rattlecans - there should be less bleed-under when I get an airbrush and can control the paint with a lot more finesse.

The metallic bits are Vallejo Metal Color, brush painted again. I'm really impressed with the metal color lineup. It goes on soooo much nicer than I remember Testor's metallics being from my youth.

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Mostly finished the Partisan X-Wing yesterday, aside from maybe some pastel streaking and dirt around the engine intakes. I used an all over Nuln Oil wash to dirty up the white on the Partisan ship, with Nuln Oil over Duraluminum on the engine blocks and wing access panels. That's a really good combo, imo.

Here's the 2 x-wings together.

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And the fleet so far.

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A couple of shots of the 2 partisan ships together.

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And some more of the two x-wings.

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I made a late night masking error on the left side that I didn't notice until I'd put the two halves together. Oops! I'll fix it eventually.

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It also turns out that you can pop the F-Toys ball head onto the Bandai stand, which is nice because the F-toys stands are ugly as hell. Means I'm going to somehow need to find a lot of extra Bandai stands, though....
 
Some engine panel detailing on another A-Wing. First the factory unweathered finish (although there's a bit of wash in the panel behind the cockpit already, before I changed my mind on what I wanted to do with this one.

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Brush painted with Vallejo Duraluminum.

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And washed several times with Citadel Nuln Oil Gloss, which flows really beautifully into all the low spots, leaving that look of mechanical parts that have accumulated grease and oil in all the recesses. It's super easy to calibrate how much you put on as well - too much, and you can just wick some away with a dry brush.

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I find this pic hilarious - across the street from my office is a Daiso Japan store, a shop full of weird designed-in-Japan-made-in-China stuff that's all $1.50. One of those items is a tiny little bench vise. It's got a suction cup base, is almost entirely plastic, and is $1.50.

It's actually perfect for holding a plastic model. Here it's applying a bit of gentle pressure on an F-Toys B-Wing to glue together one of the (many) gaps it has out of the box. I'm filling the rest with Tamiya putty.

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A couple more things in progress. And TIE fighters, but the in progress photos of them are only on my "real" camera.

So. Much. Masking.


The TIE striker is a lot easier because it has half as many wing panels as the standard TIE fighter, and the ribs are flatter.
 
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Finished another one - a T-70 X-Wing build inspired by Andy Moore's McQuarrie Concept X-Wing. It's really nice having such excellent inexpensive little kits available to build my model-building skills back up on. At around $6 for an x-wing, the mistakes hurt less :)

The next one will be a lot cleaner, as I'll be able to upgrade to an airbrush soon.

The base color is just Tamiya white primer. I used Vallejo Metal Color aluminum, duraluminum, and pale burnt metal for the metallic bits (some of them are duraluminum darkened with vallejo black at a 2:1 ratio). The yellow is straight up Tamiya XF3, and the various shades of gray were mixed from vallejo white & black.

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And a few build steps. I did a lot of the detail painting on the sprues because my alligator clips hadn't arrived yet :)

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Two other observations about the T-70.

1 - Bandai included little tabs & slots on the inside of the wing surfaces, so the S-foils can stay perfectly closed, which is really nice. The T-65 doesn't do that - in closed position the wings tend to still be slightly apart - you can't get that really clean look.

2 - The T-65 will always be the true X-Wing for me, but the T-70 is fantastic for custom paint jobs, and less weathered looks. It's that hot rod thing. It reminds me more of a classic 50s American car.
 
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