Hammer3246
Sr Member
Beautiful job! Did your kit come with the plug for the bottom mounting hole?
Hi swmodelfan1977
Just a quick note vectorzero. Thanks for posting this, I just cant get the time on 2.5meg
The rear extension for the armature wasn't included in the kit. I made one up from some metal tube (I think 1 inch diameter) with an inserted 1/2 inch bolt welded in place for connecting to the main ally tube with a locking nut to secure it into position, and a 1/2 inch nut welded into the rear end. I could adjust the position of the tube/ bolt assembly to fit the body before welding it up. This took up any discrepancy and fitted without applying pressure to the cast resin.
You can just see it in the top right of this image, showing the bolt with locking nut against the main crossmember. Sorry for the lack of images on this issue.View attachment 848045
Cheers folks
Although the specific shot was probably staged for the documentary, in The Making of Star Wars they show Vader's TIE being mounted on stage using the rear mount. FWIW.
I wonder what the dodecagon (12 sided) shape could be. I see part D12 from the 8 Rad on the top of it. Maybe the gun base from the 88mm reduced in height?
The kit is very well made and reflects the (sparse) reference photos well. The finish is a sandy texture unlike a very smooth model from Mike Salzo (my only other reference point in this type of kit.)
The first step is to remove all pour stubs, and then sand all the body and wing panels with progressively finer grit up to 800 grade.
Many of the separately supplied surface details and the various detailed pits also exhibit this texture. A fair amount of time has to go to cleaning these up before the any assembly starts.
There is some work to do to ensure the top and bottom halves fully align. There are big keys to ensure alignment of the hull halves. However, most of the keys are actually too large for their corresponding holes, so a lot of trimming is needed to get the halves to fit perfectly. Some alignment tabs had to be removed completely to allow for manual alignment during final glueing.
The top and bottom cockpit holes also need to be opened up gradually to ensure a good interference fit with proper alignment.
These three shots show the model with the bottom mount in place.There was no cap with the model. All the reference images seem to have used the bottom mounting point, so it’s not clear if there ever was a bottom cap.
This one was put together from some tank parts, and an engine part from a Euro Fighter. I think it matches the spirit well.