Valkyrie

The revival of this thread got me thinking how much I want to build mine... And as I told Mike when I bought mine, if I could choose any variation to build it as (including super/strike, etc), I would choose a normal VF-1J in Max's colors. But the kit only has an S head. So that inspired me to start building this, out of laser-cut acrylic and Apoxie Sculpt putty It still has a long way to go, but I think it's taking shape pretty well

Sweet!!

Gah... not good. I do hope they were shipped with tracking and insurance. Can you just send us the resin, and ship the joints when they arrive? It's been 9 months since the last installment, and I need my fix!

Well, crap. But at least it isn't any cheaper than the one on SSM is. Sorry to keep you all waiting. It'd be done by now, if it wasn't for the base mold that came out weird. I'll be pouring a new one in the next couple days.

Yea, I did a quick, half-assed build to bring to the show. I'd post a pic myself, but I only brought my iPad with, and I can't post pics here with it :/

MechTech did an awesome job creating package art and instructions for the kit too!

They're resin cast model kits.And I'm really curious what they're going to cost...

Excelent! Glad to see they're 1/60, since we already have all of those in 1/72

Yea, the whole thing just looks really stretched out... They've done some great stuff in the past tho! I really want their Gunbuster ships!

VF-19A SVF-539 Lightnings with High Maneuver Missiles. Comes with 4 missiles and pylons. It's out in July. I want it, but only for the missiles. The 19 has much better paint schemes out there than this one. I still like the VF-X Ravens one best.

Re-molding has begun! For this run, I've made an additional part, too. Gundamhead's original kit had a guitar string running down the length of one of the arm segments, acting as a conduit (I guess). But that really didn't work for casting, so I eliminated it, and had Starship Modeler replace it with a spring. But that didn't work as well as I'd like either, so I decided to do something about it this time. So I took one of those springs, and found a piece of piano wire that fit inside it. Then I bent the wire to the needed shape, and ran he spring over it. A couple dabs of superglue on the ends, and it's ready for molding. And assuming it comes out well, it should make the kit that little bit better

Wow, very cool! I much prefer 1/72 kits, but I'd still love to have one of those!

Yea, the 15th anniversary Arii re-issue kits came with randomly packed vinyl figures. I found a scan of a flyer that has them all listed (bottom row, center) http://anymoon.com/b...5th-VF-1-12.jpg

Awesome news! Can't wait to get em!

It's tedious and difficult in places. I think it took me three days to build mine. But it's totally worth the effort.

Woo! Finally getting a 1/60 VF-11B! If this isn't the cheapest HLJ has had them, it's gotta be close to it!

I'm not quite dead yet! So that's as far as I've gotten so far. It's still tedious and slow going. I really don't know how Moscato does it! The bottom two panels are just about ready for assembly, except for a bit of repair work. They'll still need some detailing, but that can come later. The X's on the panels are placeholders for raised panels that'll be added later. I figured I'll just end up cutting those panels out of clear plastic, so I'll just be able to line up the corners of the panels with the endpoints on the X's, and that'll make proper placement a breeze. At this point, I'm really anxious to move on to other areas. Probably the underside of the main hull next. But I need to concentrate on one thing at a time...

Nope. It's a custom. Someone kitbashed the 1/100 fighter with a Frame Arms kit to make it. Very impressive job!

Things are coming along, but slowly... I got most of the doors done on the center panel, but I had a few breakage issues that slowed me down. And the whole process is way more tedious than I had anticipated. I'm using literally the only software possible with this laser, a piece of crap called NewlyDraw. As I think I mentioned earlier, if it didn't accept .DXF files from AutoCAD, the machine would be almost completely useless to me. All it does is take the lines I've drawn in CAD, and draw with the laser. In the process, it vaporizes about 0.01" of acrylic as it cuts. So I need to manually adjust the drawing of each individual door to get it to fit the opening. And I still usually need to tweak the size one way or another to get a good fit. Like I said... tedious.

Minor update. I got some of the finer V-groove paneling today and worked on cutting out and skinning a few doors. It's coming along well, but I'm thinking I need a couple more door designs to vary it up a bit. For the smaller ones, I'm trying to skin them with resin copies of one of Kaiyodo's mecha detail photo-etch sets. I'd use the real thing, but they're out of production now.

Regular plastic cement seems to work ok for gluing styrene to PETG. But I suspect I'd need to use my Weld-On acrylic cement to bond PETG to itself. It's really great stuff, but it was hard to find. And it's super runny, so it tends to get everywhere if you're not careful.

Thanks for the advice, Mech. I still need to do some experimenting with that tape trick. And styrene cutting, also. But I've been finding out that my laser cuts PETG plastic cuts way cleaner than it does acrylic. And it's not as dense as acrylic, so you can still cut it with an xacto. If I wasn't so far along, I'd be tempted to start over, switching materials. I haven't made too much progress the past few days. Most of the time put into it was spent fixing geometry mistakes that was preventing one of the side pod's panels from going on correctly. I glued on the bottom piece, and puttied the seam, giving it more rigidity. And I did some experimenting with the bay door paneling. I cut the doors out of .060" PETG, then skinned them with Evergreen's V-groove siding sheets. I tried them with both types I had, .040" and .050" spacing. I think the 040 looks good for the larger door, but too big for the smaller one. I need to pick up a sheet of the .030" stuff tomorrow

I'm afraid this is all my fault. I'm casting them for SSM, but I've been too busy with other stuff to make new molds and get it back in production. I'll do my best to get some of them cast in time for Wonderfest.

Great stuff! But actually, the launch arm was mastered by Gundamhead, if I remember correctly.

Of course, it'll be a kit when it's done