MR_Hyde

Can anyone translate? I want to do the same thing but even if I get the mag I have no idea what is being said.

The above advice from mrsmithz is pretty much straight on. I usually wait until I am done with decaling to do the panel lines or else the decals sit over the 'dirty' lines. I like for the panel line wash to go over the decal, then it looks more 'to scale'. The Tamiya rattle-cans are superb and the spray settles down beautifully. It works perfectly in lieu of an airbrush. I airbrushed three good coats of Future on my Ozma before beginning to decal. If you use a paint brush, be sure to not stir the future and create airbubbles. You can easily get distracted trying to brush them out. The Future also lays down very good and levels very well. If you use the Tamiya gloss coat you will get the same results. Just remember to mist coat it and keep the can moving, or else you will get puddles of clear coat, and that sucks. Here's my progress so far. I'm almost done with decaling- a few left around the middle of the top fuselage and the intake area. I painted the area behind the head and the small intakes on the legs that appear just to the rear of the skull marking. The decals are thick and you can see the screen printing but they settle down beautifully with additional coats of Micro Sol. I painted the cockpit with a little grey and some Tamiya Gunmetal. Love the color. The only other area I painted were the thruster/vector nozzles on the end of each leg. I started with Gunmetal and then thinned some Chrome Silver and hit the highlights. Once that dried, I loaded some thinned Citadel Chaos Black and misted the edges of the thrusters. The Citadel black dries very, very flat and looked like soot. The effect was to try to replicate heated metal. Once all that had cured I used some of the Tamiya weathering powder (heated blue) and hit some of the high spots. I'm pretty pleased with the effect and wish the camera did it more justice. In the end, I am probably going to 'glue' it in the fighter mode. The decision will hinge on how well the decals stay after 3 coats of Dullcote.

Shot a couple of coats of Future on Ozma yesterday. Next step is decaling and panel lining with some Windsor-Newton Payne's Gray, followed by a couple of coats of DullCote- hopefully that will get done Monday or Tuesday. I'll post pics when I get the decals on. I will say this, Future shot out of an airbrush dries beautifully.

I'll echo what ggpike3 said- does anyone know of any other shops getting the Ranka Deculture decal sheets as well?

North Carolina, USA

you could also try giving it several dips in some Future. It has worked for me before, and I hope it will work for you.

I just got done putting Ozma together. I'm amazed at how well it all fits together given the load of sprues that are in the box. Granted, their are some large panel gaps, especially around where the cannons are just forward of the wings. Anyone have any ideas on how to make them fit better? I know wm_cheng has gone with the magnets but I'm not sure it is a direction I want to go. I still want to disassemble the pieces so that I can gloss coat/decal/panel line/flat coat the parts. Either way, I will say that these are amazing pieces of work. I love Bandai- they go together amazingly well, like my Star Trek Enterprise collection. Next up is to get the Super Parts for both of them as well as Michel and Luca.

Hi all, I'm a huge rookie here but I could use some help. I ordered the 1/72 Bandai VF-25S model kit from HLJ and the 1/60 Ozma. I have done lots of panel lines over the years but I'm not so sure about these transforming Valk's. I usually shoot a coat of Future, decal, wash, then shoot a coat of acrylic topcoat over the whole kit to seal it all up. I normally do this after the kit is assembled. Will this affect the transformation process on the model kit? Would this process work on the 1/60 scale too? I hear about scratching paint and I don't want to see any of those lovely markings go bye-bye. Satinblack, I hope this doesn't hijack your thread- just saw that you and I had the same questions. Thanks!