Bandi 1/12 Scout Trooper with speeder bike and Captain Phasma

A couple of gifts from my girlfriend that came in about two months ago that are next up on the workbench.



These are the first figures I'm going to build and really my first Bandai kits.. I'm more of a aircraft, boat, tank, spaceship kinda guy. They're both absolutely beautiful kits. They look like they'll be a joy to build.

For the Scout trooper, the plan is to figure out the pose on the bike and fill in and sculpt the joints. Paint and weather it and give it a proper base. I'm probably going to give it an action pose with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding the blaster.

The Phasma figure is just gorgeous! I COULD leave it alone, but there are a couple of things that bug me. One of which is a separation line on the jaw of the helmet. I'm going to give this the same filling in of joints and better base, but will also play with silver leafing the shiny bits instead of leaving them alone.

I'll update as I build them.

The silver leafing is a great idea. It will look so cool if you do that. Can’t want to see the end product. How do you do the leafingf? I saw on tested were Adam savage put on gold leafing on his Excalibar stunt sword. He used spray on glue and then went to town with a paint brush and it turned it awesome.


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Silver leafing is an interesting idea and I really hope it works and does not differ that much from the plating of the kit. So far I was not very successful in using gold leafing on my models. I tried it on a Revell 1:96 Apollo module and it all dulled down after a few days. Really no idea what went wrong but it looks worse than it would have if I had used golden paint instead.

Dulling of the gold leaf happened to me as well on another project. At the time I was using a fake gold leaf since it's all I had on hand. After kicking it around a bit with a couple of people who worked gold leaf on an almost regular basis (religious Icon painters) I was instructed to try again with real gold leaf (I went with 22k). I thought it would be similar to the other leaf I was using, that felt kinda like thin tin foil, but no. Real gold leaf is insanely delicate and can be blown apart to itty bitty pieces if you sneeze on it. There's also a chance the adhesive has some part to play in it dulling down.

After applying the real gold leaf and polishing it up, it kept it's luster quite well and hasn't tarnished. No clear coat was applied to it since the rest of the project called for a matt finish and I wanted the gold to pop. Had it called for a gloss finish, I would have cleared the gold too.

Best adhesive for gold leaf is clear gloss varnish. Apply the gold leaf while its still tacky.
That's how we guilded letters on gravestones when I was an apprentice mason.

Teddz said:

I was instructed to try again with real gold leaf

Click to expand...

I guess not using real gold leaf caused the issue. Not 100% sure but I'll try again.