Success at last!

[El Gato]

As you know, earlier this month I took the build-in-a-day challenge and failed miserably with Delta Quadrant’s 1/2500 Galor.

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/vie ... p?t=100965

This Friday (yesterday 6/29) I decided to take up the challenge again and this time I did it! Where’s my balloon drop??

For this round, I decided to take on Gizmotron’s 1/2500 Klingon Bird of Prey. What made this a good candidate is that it was small and a manageable number of pieces. What made this a bad candidate was that it was small and a manageable number of pieces. Holy cow they were small and fragile!

I started at 7:20 am

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0001.jpg

9:17 am. It took me a while to finish sanding the pieces because they were thin and/or small. My hands were too big to hold them. The worst one was the KBoP’s “visor,” hard to cut out, hard to sand, hard to handle (cue the Black Crows). So here are the sanded parts. You don’t see the visor and the engine because I kept them in the water vat I used to scrub off the sanded dust.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0002.jpg

9:23 am. Here the head is being glued in and the bottom piece after I drilled a hole for my magnet stand trick.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... 0003-1.jpg

10:36 am. Assembled sans wings. At this stage I managed to break off one of the guns and had to glue it back in.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0005.jpg

10:47 am. With the wings.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0006.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... 0007-1.jpg

11:29 am. With the visor and putty. I have to say, I was very happy with my puttying on this one. First, there was a significant gap between the engine and the main body. Worse, the details on top of the engine would be difficult to blend it all in. Second, the visor on the KBoP filming model wraps around to meet the jaw. The visor part had a bend at the ends, but no wraparound. It was also pretty long, so if you wanted to cheat by gluing the ends close to the back of jaw it meant having a visor that stuck out quite a ways from the front of the head. I managed to pull off both.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... 0008-1.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... 0009-1.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0010.jpg

12:09 pm. Primed

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0011.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0012.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0013.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0014.jpg

12:18 pm. Primed & sanded. I managed to drop the model and it fell onto the concrete floor, though miraculously the whole thing survived intact, including the reattached gun.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0015.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0016.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0017.jpg

1:14 pm. For the base coat I used metallic green, even though the instructions said olive drab. I wanted something “sparkly” because it was antithetical to the Klingons. And it would provide a good contrast to the greens I was going to use for the accent colors. Plus I knew the black primer and the black wash would tone down some of the sparkliness.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0018.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0019.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0020.jpg

5:14 pm. Painting took a while, since I used 5 different greens to make some details “pop,” not that you can tell from the pics. While painting the red underneath the wings the model it slipped and fell two millimeters onto the table. The gun broke before broke again and I had to clear the table in order to find it. Lost some time there.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0021.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0022.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0023.jpg

7:01 pm. Gloss coat

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0024.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0025.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0026.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0028.jpg

8:10 pm. Decals (not that you can tell…)

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0029.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0030.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0031.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0032.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0034.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0035.jpg

9:53 pm. Finished, 14.5 hours later! Woo-hoo!

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0036.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0037.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0038.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0039.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0040.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0041.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j25/m ... C_0042.jpg

[Lonewolf]

Congrats! You are the first person to actually pull it off and build a kit within the 24-hour timeline!

Way to go!

[nicholassagan]

What a lovely little bird!!! Way to go on the challenge!!!