Palantirion

04-27-22 Ahhhh, the seat rails...Such a simple shape, that was so hard to correctly angle a tool on! Both rail sets had multiple chips. Most of the sanding was diamond files, various angled ones. There is no way to remove any parts, so reaching between the outside rails' sides and the cockpit walls was really tricky. Here is one set, puttied. And the port side. Making more progress on the lower center console damage. And beginning the filling of the upper details.

04-26-22 Sanding the collar repairs to hide seams and thin the profile of the new sections. Primed. Filed the front cockpit "thingy" putty. Filed this rear detail. Filed this chip repair. And sanded/diamond filed this hard to reach area, made more difficult because it needs to be flat and straight in 4 different planes. Thankfully the grate area was undamaged! More sanding of this detail. Overall shape is good, inner recess needs more work.

-Thanks man, appreciate it! Prior to doing any work like this (this being my second restoration project, and the first without any small detail) it would have blown my mind too. Now having tackled it I can honestly say it's not all that hard. It's mostly just being willing to try and fail and then try more until you get to your goal. It's a lot more about determination than talent, and it gets easier as you gain experience.

04-24-22 (part 2) I now turned my attention to the cockpit itself. Which started with flagging all the repair areas with blue tape. Although often one flag represented several points of damage. Like the pic below, this flag is for the center console's broken upper edge and also for both broken foot pedals... ...which in this picture had been glued back on. Thankfully they fractured cleanly and I did not need to fill any gaps in material. They were repainted though, to ensure uniform color. One of the few easy fixes on this project. This corner detail had a chunk of resin missing. As did the bottom left of the center console. This was, as I would learn, the most difficult area to file/sand. Puttying the center console. Gluing the center console's upper edge back on. Note the metal wire, which strengthens it internally. Or, apparently, didn't. I would have to fill and sculpt the missing detail, something I wasn't sure I knew how to do at the time. Also puttied this corner that had had a chunk chipped off. Putty on this front detail. Fairly messy application, I over filled it intentionally because I figured I would have to carve out (rather than sculpt in) the recessed shape. This detailed projection is behind the seat, under the rear console that lights up. It had been broken completely off and lost. So I had to sculpt a new one to match the one opposite it. Initial application is heavy, assuming it would be best to file it down after curing. One of the joysticks was broken, so I pinned it. This was the 2-part one that you can put in Roy's hand. But it was the tab that broke, and jammed in the female side, so this pin will be the replacement for that function. And I also glued the throttle controls back onto this side console.

04-24-22 (part 1) Roy's helmet reassembled after the black and purple repainting. Careful attention was paid to clearcoating them with a matching sheen to the existing paint. Fairly straightforward, Tamiya Flat over the purple, and the black was simply Tamiya Gloss Black. There was also a small scratch on the blue that needed touchup. I cut replacement rivets from a styrene rod and glued them in place. More work to come. Ditto for the various missing rivets on both side consoles. Maybe 10-15 of those. These are Roy's new collar points, cut from a sheet of styrene. Pretty much just eyeballed these, which was easy because I just followed the lines of the existing collar. Here they are glued in place. This is one of the few areas where perfect "hiding of crimes" is not reasonably achievable. Because the collar is so thin there is not enough surface area to make a strong glue bond. And it is too thin to pin (with my limited skills). So I made an inner support that will underlap both the new and existing collar areas. You can see one in the pic below., where the collar appears thicker. The idea was to first make a strong bond, then file the support thinner and smoother so that it was far less visible. Much more work to come. Using putty to repair a busted edge on this side console. Pencil for scale. Filling the collar gaps with epoxy putty. Which will also strengthen the bonds. The central LCD panel and frame had been hit hard enough that they were both detached from the base. Luckily, however, neither were broken. A few tiny chips in the frame's silver paint (not fixed as of this pic) but otherwise it was a simple matter of gluing the LCD and board back in place and then the frame over those. You can see the broken base of one of the side joysticks in this pic (opposite the hole for the other in the left-side black area). I used a file to round over the new rivets on the chair (on both sides). Without a ridiculous amount of time these would not reach perfect. But I realized early on that perfect was not existent on this cockpit anyway - there was a lot of fidelity variation from KidsLogic. Thus my goal became to fix things to within the tolerance range so that they would appear to have been unmodified.

04-23-22 The thumb, painted. I used both Liquitex heavy body acrylics (thinned considerably with airbrush thinner) and Tamiya model acrylics. The former for custom blends (like Roy's purple), the latter when I could find a match with what I had on hand. For consistency it is better to use a color, straight from a bottle, but often that's not possible. All paint on this project was applied by brush, partly because I wasn't confident in my airbrush skills at that time, but mostly because the KidsLogic paint was so thick that a brush application gave the right visual depth. To avoid brush marks I would use multiple thin coats. Repairs were sealed with Tamiya clears, also brushed on. These marks are from loose pieces bouncing and rubbing during shipping. I found that gentle wet sanding with a worn-out Godhand 400 grit sanding sponge was sufficient to remove the marks without cutting through the original paint. This is the same principle as Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (which is just a block of melamine foam), but more aggressive. And while we are on the topic of sanding, BE AWARE that there are THREE different grit standards! In the USA companies usually use the SAE standard of measurement, European companies usually use their scale which is (usually) denoted with a "P" next to the grit, and the Japanese scale is not denoted as such but pretty much every Japanese or Chinese sandpaper grit will use that standard. This matters because the grits do NOT correspond directly, AND as they get finer the differences become more pronounced (it's not a linear scale). You can Google or Wiki for more info, but in practice you just have to keep it in mind so that you can understand the cause and effect as it pertains to your project. The other aspect of sanding no one seems to talk about, and companies do not reference as far as I know, is the "tooth" or depth of the sanding medium. This became apparent to me when removing these marks. The same Godhand 400 sponge (roughly equivlent to SAE 320 grit), if new, would have cut through the paint very quickly while leaving a very smooth surface. But the worn sponge I used allowed for much finer control because it cut much less - but the grit had obvisouly not become finer with use! So what happened? The grit wore down, it lost some of its depth. So it cut with the same degree of fidelity but removed less material. I thought this was an important detail to remember, as it would not have been possible to gently remove these marks if I only had fresh sanding sponges - as even a finer grit would still have too aggressive a tooth. I stopped counting the marks on the leg when I got to 25. All but one (a deeper one) were removed by gentle sanding. The deeper one was sanded and then colored with a couple thin layers of the purple, essentially glazing. Sanding down the primer, the thick KidsLogic paint created noticeable steps along the chips' perimeters. The primer helped fill those, but it also required a lot more sanding. Refining the leg textures. Some of the many side console chips, sanded smooth. And painted. Not exactly perfect, this would be improved later. Gluing the seat pods back on. CA glue (Bob Smith, to be exact). In hindsight it would have been better to pin these, but I knew the seat was going to stay in place pretty much forever once this was completed so the risk from handling was minimal. Painting the black on Roy's suit. Starting to paint the gloss black on the helmet panels. Sorry for the crap photos. I had an older phone at the beginning of this project. Painting the replacement end of the side console.

04-20-22 The corner of this side console was broken off. Epoxy putty to build up the area. Btw, the lime green mat is a silicone mat. They are cheap on Amazon, and stuff like epoxy won't stick to them. Sanding to make it smooth. And by sanding I actually mean filing. Fine steel or diamond files are rigid, and thus better for sanding when you want a really straight, flat surface. Most often I use Godhand sanding sponges, of varying thickness which changes their flexibility. The canopy after polishing with Novus. Looks really good... ...except it casts shadows because the deep scratches are all still there. Which means that even if you don't see the scratches easily, you would see their shadows on the interior. Unacceptable! So will have to come up with a better technique. Scratches much more obvious when held up to a light. I got out various sanding pads, ranging from 1800-15,000 grit. At the time I thought wet sanding with these would be the right choice, following with Novus. Close, but not close enough. Better tools/technique to come later. Repairing and sanding a chip on the back of the seat. Had to match not just the angle but also the degree-of-round of the crease. Through almost all of this restoration I kept having to tell myself NO, don't make it better, make it match! When you get up really close a lot of KidsLogic sculpt is...to be nice: "crunchy". Far from the precision of a model kit or diecast. Which is fine, but those are my mind's references so I had to constantly adjust my goal. The thumb, primed. Priming repairs on the helmet. I was using Mr. Color gray surfacer, applied by brush. Still refining Roy's leg. More sanding on that first side console. Starting to get the shape right. Tricky to get a tool in there at the right angle. This was mostly shaped with a couple of diamond files. Priming this repair area.

04-17-22 Used Apoxie Sculpt to fill areas on this side console. I used this putty for all the filling during repairs. I've also used Magic Sculpt and find them to be very similar and essentially interchangeable. Use water on your tools to prevent them from sticking to the clay, smooth and shape it as best as you can and assume that you will need to sand later to achieve the final shape. Except in some areas it is very hard to get a sanding tool into the area, so in those cases you need to sculpt with much more precision. Drilled and inserted a pin (cut from a paper clip) to support the putty that will become Roy's new thumb. Putty to fill in the missing material on Roy's leg. The sculpt is rough, will be refined with sanding. Filled and seat chips. Thumb sculpted. And sanded. Prepping collar via sanding. KidsLogic's paint was VERY thick on this product. So any place the paint was chipped required significant sanding and/or filling. My thought to repair the collar was to make new pieces from styrene and blend those to into the resin collar. Hence why it was important to completely remove the paint from the transition area. Side console, after initial sanding. Seat fillings sanded.

04-16-22 This is your canopy after bad packing: This is your canopy after a single pass of Novus 3: Most of the damage was paint transfer, and the polish quickly dissolves the binder, removing the paint. Unfortunately removing the scratches took much much longer, but more on that later. Canopy had separated from the frame here, glued it back in place. Another pic of the side console, had cleaned it up a little prior to putty. Both sides of the seat had been chipped across a rivet area.

04-14-22 I decided to start by repairing Roy. I'm not sure why. In some ways (mixing the exact purple) he was much harder to fix than other cockpit damage. In other ways, namely accessibility of the damage, he was much easier. Both collar tips were broken off, as was his left leg. I decided there was enough surface area through the hip break that pinning wasn't necessary. So this was a simple CA glue bond. Also, it will be reinforced later through the addition of epoxy clay to replace the missing material. Two black panels on the helmet were detached, and there were many chips. I glued the top of his helmet back on prior to the other repairs. Hard to fly without a thumb. Also glued the canopy frame back together. There will be touchup later. All 4 of these...things, had broken off the back of the seat. A really big chip out of one of the side consoles. This caught my attention at the time, and I didn't notice until later that there were 20+ smaller areas of damage on each of the side consoles. Lastly, I flagged all the (ones I noticed at the time) damaged areas within the cockpit. To be returned to later.

Hello again all. To cut to the chase: Last year I inspected and volunteered to restore jenius' secondhand 1/6 KidsLogic VF-1S cockpit, as a thank-you for all he's done for the Macross community with his AWESOME website. The cockpit had been trashed during shipping because the previous owner had simply tossed all the detachable parts into the cockpit, rather than repacking them in the protective foam. And hard resin makes for bad ping pong balls! The shield was cracked. Pretty much every component was damaged in some way. And the canopy (which became the bane of my existence) was scratched and marked from all the bouncing of parts within it. And it's frame was broken. But after examination I concluded that apart from one particular small stretched spot on the canopy it was all potentially fixable. So I worked on it over the course of 2 1/2 months and completed the restoration in about 80 hours. My purpose in posting is to document the process, in the hopes that it might inspire others as to what is possible with very little skill and a lot of determination. If at any point I neglect to specify as aspect of a technique, post your question. I will share as much as I know. As I condensed the photo log to "only" 219 essential pics I will have to nibble away at updating the thread with one or two days' work at a time. Please be patient as I'm not sure how long it will take to update the story to its conclusion. Here are the parts on my table, separated as a sort of triage to mentally prepare an order of operations for the upcoming procedures.

- Thanks! Your take on it is pretty much as I intended it to feel.

As an attempt to reduce the introduction of this painting to the bare essentials I will say that it started as a blind amalgam of three things I love: Vintage pin ups, kimonos, and anime. It is acrylic on canvas and 24"x36". It is the first of 4 pieces, representing summer. I thought that Minmay has an appropriate personality for that season so I chose her as the subject. I am currently working on Winter, represented by Lucy from Elfen Lied, and plan to use Fujiko for fall and Chidori from FMP for spring. But back to Minmay...I tried to adhere to her representational style from the original series, but with my own original pose. The kimono patterns took the most time, mainly because of the research involved to keep them respectfully plausible. The background uses geometric patterns for fireworks, streams, mountains and waves. Her kimono is painted as if hung behind her and we are seeing it through her body. The kamon is the SDF logo, and there are various plants and butterflies from early summer. Her kanzashi is pampas grass and morning glory. Her obi is embroidered with roses. And of course all the colors are season-specific. I would encourage a wide range of discussion, as I am quite interested in all your respective feedback. Including criticism. Please know two things: 1) This picture is not a great photograph of the piece, and I will update it if I can take a better one. 2) There are metallic colors used for all the linework, and the obi, obi jime and obi-age. Their effect doesn't really show up in a still shot,

A most excellent project!

What are the rules for posting what would technically be a NSFW painting? In this case it's roughly on par the shower scene in Macross - naked, not sexual.

-Rex runs a great channel, I've watched him a lot but must have missed that vid. It wouldn't surprise me if his fingernail test scratched it off if he sprayed it without a primer (which is his usual spoon test process). I'll see how things go with a test on my end, I'm curious as well.

-Interesting, and good to know. I didn't notice it being fragile at all, and I touched the cured black base edge a lot. Your suggestion makes me think I should do a durability swatch with and without clearcoat and also layered with clearcoat between.

Outstanding upcycling! Have you considered brush seal to keep dust out? I use this size most often on my aluminum cases, but there are other sizes that might be more appropriate for the smaller gaps in your white ones. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084TZWFQV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Hello again, it's been a while since I last posted. Been getting more into toy repair and model building. Just finished this little guy and while it's not Macross, I've always conflated Dougram and Macross because of the Robotech and Battletech appropriation that I grew up with. So I hope that's understandable. The kit is by Max Factory, PLAMAX MF-57, depicting Dougram after its (spoiler alert) heroic scuttling the end of the series. Most often this scene is portrayed years later with Dougram completely oxidized and sand colored. I wanted to put Dougram in a more immediate context, shortly after the fires would have died. As you can tell from the kit (and the series), Dougram was not actually "blown up" but self-destructed more internally and remained visually intact. To that end my primary focus would be on the effects of flames on his paint and the terrain. Test fitting, with an old die cast 1/144 Dougram to compare scale. The kit was beautifully molded, but for some reason the backpack cannon had a flat tip! So I drilled that out. I also (not pictured) cleaned up and scribed lines to properly separate the right forearm from the right leg where they cross. Then my first attempt at zenithal priming. It was tricking to get the model assembled without fully gluing it, as would need access to inner details later. Not the best zenithal, but it was useful as a road map for shading later. Then thin washes to lay out the colors. Note most of Dougram's signature purple paint was painted in a dark silver. Washes will come later to add some purple over these areas as I wanted to show how the heat from the fire had burned most of it away. The base painting more-or-less complete, really more of a block-in. I would go one to refine the highlights and shadows to exaggerate contrast because of the small size of the model. I was not happy with the slightly sculpted but smooth base. Sure, at this tiny scale we shouldn't see grains of sand because in scale they would by big rocks. And where Dougram was scuttled it was open desert, no rocks or distinctive terrain. But the base needed some sense of texture. So I experimented a little and ended up going with a mix of PVA and baking soda (with a little water) and that gave me a nice faint read of texture that I then enhanced with a couple different tan washes. The blast and fire soot was drybrushed using Muso Black. I haven't heard of people using Muso as an alternative to typical flat blacks, but I find its extra darkness reads really well as soot. You can also thin it to do washes. I used water soluble oils to add oil staining and hydraulic fluid runoff. Then more refining of the paint tones, chipping, subtle heat-staining around the right side of the torso (exit of the self-destruct fire) with red and yellow inks followed by Muso drybrushing. Then weathering with Tamiya powders and more refining and touchup. A pic with Dougram finished, posing with the paints used: Finished pics:

So good news...I fixed it! After some careful measuring and testing with my 3mm jack extension cable I concluded that the male end was appropriately fixed but the female inside the SDF-1's body was either recessed slightly too far and/or not secure enough to make a positive connection. So I took a large flat file to the indexing stud the male jack sticks out of, shaving off around a mm. In doing so I noticed that the deck of that stud was far from level. The attached pic is at about the halfway point of the filing, when I was done there was still a small bit of the original paint visible. After shaving it the male jack was able to go into the female far enough that the lights turned on!

Thanks for the replies guys. My thought about adding solder to the male end stemmed from noticing that it's only a 2-part jack and that the barrel is very long compared to the tip. So if I added a mm or so of solder to the tip, the rear barrel portion could still make contact anywhere along its (appx.) 4mm length.

Hello all, it's been a while since I've posted. Over a year ago I got KidsLogic's 1/6 scale VF-1 cockpit, and aside from the enormous weight it was easy to put together and everything worked...for a little while. This year I received my 1/1200 SDF-1 statue/speaker system (do note that the speaker base was radically reduced after the preorder phase ended). I have technical issues with both products and I have exhausted every avenue of communication with Kidslogic that I could think of: Direct email, FB messenger, FB posting (which was deleted), I even contacted BigBadToyStore to see if they, as a vendor, had a way to contact them unavailable to the general public. There was not, and their request was ghosted too. So it appears that I must fix these problems myself, and thus I thought it might be useful to brainstorm solutions with this fine forum. Issue 1: The VF-1 cockpit's primary LCD panel no longer activates when I power on the unit. All the other LEDs illuminate and cycle as they have before. The LCD panel did work when I got it, and worked after I moved it to the unit's current location on my desk. I do not know how to test to see if the display is bad or if it is simple a bad connection. I cannot tell how to access the internals of that part of the statue. Issue 2: The SDF-1's right side giant shoulder cannon barrel does not light up. From my tested I know that the barrel's male 3mm jack does receive power correctly and the LEDs do light up when I use an extension wire. And I know that the main body's female 3mm jack is outputting power correctly. So it would seem that there was an issue with the fitment or molding such that it is not possible to push the cannon far enough into the main body so that the tip of the 3mm male jack properly contacts its target on the female end. I was wondering if there was a way to simply extend the tip slightly - maybe simply by adding a dot of solder? These issues, and the poor fitment quality of my 1/2 scale Mospeada Ride Armor from them, and the complete lack of support for their products make me seriously question if I would ever buy a Kidslogic product again.

That is possibly the least aerodynamic subject I could think of to make glide. Very impressive project so far!

*subscribed* for purchasing. Great work!

-Yeah, I think you are right. Good find, thanks!