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This time: hardpoints! Next I began planning out how to install hardpoints into the underside of the wings. These connections will carry the missile pods and reaction warheads from the weapon set. On each wing, there are five hardpoints. The manual suggests opening a hole in each position through which a small plastic peg will be inserted. The peg inserts into a connecting port on the pylon carrying each armament. To accommodate the peg, the hole needs to be 1.5mm in diameter. I used the sharp tip of a scribing tool to create a guide point to use to drill each hole. To drill through the hardpoints, I used this Tamiya Electric Handy Drill. This is a small battery-operated drill which is an alternative to a pin vise or Dremel tool. I find it's more efficient and precise than either of these. Ironically, you assemble the drill yourself from parts cut from a plastic sprue! When drilling tiny precision holes like these, it's helpful to gradually build up to the diameter you need. I began by making 1mm holes. Because I worked my way up like this, the finished 1.5mm holes came out pretty clean. I test fit one of the plastic pegs through the hole and attempted to attach a pylon. It was immediately clear that the tiny peg would not bear the weight of the pylon, much less the full load of the missile pod. There is simply no friction between the peg and the connecting port on the pylon. I began looking for another solution. I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with rare earth magnets. These are small, strong magnets that often show up in modding projects. Here is a stack of 2 x 1mm magnets beside a US quarter. They're quite tiny. I widened the hardpoints to accommodate the diameter of the magnets and did the same in the connecting ports on the armament pylons. A perfect fit. I affixed the magnets with CA glue. It goes without saying to ensure that the polarities are correctly oriented before gluing. In the lower half of the second picture, the wing is shown with the interior side facing up. The magnets acted as plugs and no glue seeped through to the exposed side. I test loaded the wings. With only a single magnet per hardpoint, the connections were a little wobbly and the pylons tended to spin in place. Hoping to improve the strength of the connections, I added an additional magnet per hardpoint. You can see that their axes are not well-aligned, which causes the armaments to point in slightly different directions. In retrospect, it's clear I should have used a single larger magnet per hardpoint. The wings are thick enough to bear a thicker magnet, and I'd be able to freely orient the armaments with a single connection. Better luck next time.

Kinda incredible that that trick works. Strange that it isn't common knowledge among Gunpla builders. Gonna try that out on my next nub mark.

They have "eraser" type Gundam markers for this purpose. Not sure how well they woukd work for cleaning up panel lines. Failing that, if the marker is oil-based, you should be able to use a cotton swab dampened with Zippo lighter fluid to clean it up, even after it has dried. Enamel thinner would also be worth a try, but be careful because using too much on exposed polystyrene will cause the plastic to become brittle and crumble.

A Google search suggests that you may be correct that the pour type Gundam markers are oil-based. Unfortunately, I've never been able to use them properly and they've always seemed useless to me. Maybe it's just because I didn't know what to use to thin their paint :-)Anyway, try it out and let us know what happens!

This is a good point. I've never tried oil paints myself, but in the videos I've watched on Youtube, they appear to behave very similarly to enamels for washes, when thinned down enough.

Absolutely beautiful. The red is fantastic. What kind of paint was used?

I don't think acrylics work that well for the kind of wash I did in this thread. Certainly not over Future as a clear coat. This is because Future is itself an acrylic. When you went to clean up the acrylic wash, it would strip away the Future. For washes, you typically want to use a paint with a different solvent than the clear coat. Zippo doesn't interact with the Future, because the Future is a water-based acrylic and the Zippo fluid is petroleum-based. The Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color is a thin enamel paint -- that's why the Zippo fluid is able to clean it up. I believe that the Gundam Marker you mentioned is alcohol-based, and it would probably be too thick to use for panel lining. It cleans up with rubbing alcohol, and I'm afraid the rubbing alcohol would interact with the Future clear coat. You can certainly do panel lining with Gundam Markers, but you'd want the "Real Touch" kind -- these are ink-based markers with a soft tip. You can clean them up with saliva :-) They also make a Real Touch eraser marker that you can use for clean up. If you can't easily get ahold of Tamiya Panel Line Accent color, any thinned down enamel paint will work exactly as I showed here. Testors paint in the US would work fine if you thinned it down with the Testor thinner. You can use Zippo to clean it up as well.

What an awesome project. It looks great so far! I'll be really interested to see how feasible it will be to actually build the finished model. Do you have a link to the video you mentioned?

The last application of paint the parts will receive will be the metallic depressions which house the vernier rockets. I masked these off with Tamiya masking tape and airbrushed a coat of Alclad 2 gloss black base followed by Alclad 2 steel. The Alclad 2 steel produces a good dark metallic effect. Next is the fun process of detailing each and every panel line on the surface of these parts. The coat of Mr Super Clear gloss provides a good surface for panel lining with the enamel. This part is as easy as dipping a thin paint brush in the Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color and touching the tip of the brush to the panel line. Capillary action causes the enamel to flow through the channels, creating a sharp demarcation between the dark line and the blue "panel". On the right is a closeup of some parts after applying the accent. You can see that the enamel collects into tiny pools at the surface of the part touched by the brush. These will be cleaned away with cotton swabs dampened with Zippo lighter fluid. The Zippo fluid is a very weak solvent for the enamel and will not react with the lacquer clear coat. This process goes through cotton swabs quickly. After cleaning up the panel lines, I began applying decals. Some modelers might apply another gloss coat before beginning decal work, but I was impatient. You can see that the decal spans the gap created by the panel line instead of hugging the surface. Sometimes decal softening fluids like Mr Mark Softer can help, but it did not in this case. To restore the detail of the panel line, I carefully cut along the line with a sharp hobby knife and applied Mr Mark Softer to encourage the decal to sink into the line. If you look closely, you can see that the letters appear to be cut by the panel lines. On the right are the boosters with all decals applied. The decals supplied with this kit are really fantastic. A random shot of my work area taken while decaling. To finish up the FAST packs, I applied one more coat of gloss to protect the decals and surface followed by a flat coat to give the parts a more realistic looking finish. Because I want to retain the shiny finish of the metallic impressions, I masked these areas with sticky tack putty. The paints I used for the two clear coats were Mr Color GX 100 super clear III followed by Mr Color 182 flat clear. The super clear III is tough and seems very durable. The parts are finished, minus the small vernier rockets and various transparent pieces. I also included the UUM-7 missile pods included with the weapon set option parts because they are the same color. Here's a few shots of the results. Next time: magnets!

Next I painted the interior of the parts housing the rocket boosters. I masked off this area using a combination of Tamiya masking tape of varying width, and Micro Mask applied to the corners that were difficult to reach with tape. I used Mr Color 13 neutral gray to color the interior. The interior of these boosters has a lot of great detail which can be brought out with a wash and dry brushing. I applied Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color black liberally with a brush. Ordinarily, I'd apply a wash over a gloss coat, but the grey is fairly shiny and the enamel wash doesn't interact with the lacquer coat. I cleaned up the wash with Zippo lighter fluid dampened cotton swabs. On the left is a part after cleanup. In this closeup of the part, you can see that the black wash only remains in the crevices of the detail. To further highlight the detail, I'll apply a couple rounds of dry brushing. I chose a flat brush with stiff bristles for this. When dry brushing, I dip the bristles into the unthinned paint directly out of the bottle. Next, I wipe the brush against a paper towel until the brush no longer leaves streaks of paint on the paper. Though the brush may appear clean, there's still pigment which can be transferred to the part. To dry brush the part, I flicked the bristles over its surface, concentrating in areas where I wanted to lighten the detail. To avoid leaving brush strokes, it's important for the brush to be as dry and free of paint as possible. It may take several rounds to build up the detail, but the result is worth the effort. I did the process twice, using two shades of grey from the Citadel acrylic paint range. In the picture on the right: after and before dry brushing. The part on the left has been dry brushed. A closeup of the result. The effect is reminiscent of ambient occlusion techniques used in computer graphics and is based on the same principle. Note how the surfaces most exposed to light have been lightened by successively lighter shades of grey while the nooks and crannies, which received less light paint and more dark wash, are darker. To paint the black stripes which run down the sides of the boosters, I masked the surfaces with Tamiya masking tape. I airbrushed the stripes with Mr Color GX 2 black. Remember how I said that Mr Color paints are delicate? After peeling back the tape, some of the paint came right off! The stripes look great, though. I had to repair these locations with another round of airbrushing the base color. To ensure a color match in situations like this, always mix more paint than you intend to use initially.

Next I'll assemble the parts which comprise the booster rockets for the aircraft. Each part is composed of multiple pieces, many of them with seam lines. I'll demonstrate the techniques I used to eliminate the seams using the small sensor apparatus which sits atop the gun. I began by snipping the ends of the pegs on one half of the sensor to make test fitting easy. You can see that the parts don't align because the panel lines on either side do not meet in the middle. To align the two halves of the part, I snipped the ends of the pegs entirely so that the join of the two pieces could be adjusted freely. I applied plastic cement down the length of the seam's interior. I adjusted the seam so that the panel lines ran together. However, this meant that the ends of the parts were no longer aligned. I began by sanding down the ends of the part to make them meet evenly and also sanded down the cement which oozed out of the seam to create a smooth surface. I used a rough Squadron brand sanding stick for this. I applied Mr Surfacer 1000 down the end of the seam where there was a depression and sanded it down to make an even surface. Since the sanding process destroyed the panel line detail, I re-etched them using the techniques I've demonstrated earlier in the build. I used similar techniques to prepare the rest of the parts for painting, and then primed them with Mr Surfacer 1000 sprayed out of an airbrush. To add depth to the panel lines, I "preshaded" them with Mr Color GX 2 black. To achieve the thin bands of paint, I lowered the pressure of my air compressor to around 10 psi while airbrushing. This was my first experiment with preshading, and you can see that the lines aren't perfect. For preshading, accuracy is not essential because a base coat of paint will be blended on top. Next I applied the base coat, which is a greenish navy blue. The manual calls for a mix of 60:40 mix of Mr Color 14 navy blue and Mr Color 72 intermediate blue, respectively. To ensure I got the mix correct, I used the syringe in the picture. When transferring paint from bottle to airbrush cup, I use the Tamiya paint stirrer pictured. I find that this is essential to avoid making a mess. The parts after airbrushing the blue base coat. I made sure to avoid completely obscuring the black preshade. Despite being lacquers, I find that the regular Mr Color paints are quite delicate and easily scratched. They need as much protection we can provide. Gloss coats tend to be harder than semi-gloss coats and work well for this purpose. They also provide a good foundation for applying additional effects like weathering and panel lining. These parts have been sprayed with Mr Super Clear gloss, which comes in a rattle can. It's difficult to make out, but the preshaded panel lines subtly show through the blue base coat.

Found on Instagram (@huckgee). Details here. Apparently it's available today only for $475 plus shipping.

Hard to say. I've never worked with Tamiya or Vallejo paints. Others on the board with more experience can chime in with their advice. Judging by the popularity of Alclad in the modeling community, my impression is that it produces probably the best metallic finish one can reasonably achieve with an airbrush. I can't find it locally either -- I order mine from Amazon and eBay. The shininess on the thrusters was actually achieved with a gloss coat. The Alclad used on the thrusters was not that shiny on its own.

Which effect do you mean?

Thanks for the nice words everyone! Since the Strike Valkyrie is more a spaceship than an aircraft, I'm going to build it with the intakes closed with these covers. After priming the parts with Mr Surfacer, I'll use a coat of Alclad 2 magnesium. This is a dark metallic grey. To add a bit of detail, I post shaded the grooves in the covers with a very thin spray of Mr Color GX 2 black along the panel lines. I masked the edge of the overhanging panel to create a sharp divide between the shade and the steel color on one side. The shading effect is very subtle and can't really be seen in the photos. Next I painted the FAST pack thruster bells. These will be two tone -- the inside a burnt reddish metallic color, and the outside will be dark greyish metallic. I'm using colors from the Alclad 2 range. To create the color used on the inside of the bells, I mixed equal parts Alclad 2 copper with magnesium. The two colors didn't mix that well, but the result is good enough. I've found that it's difficult to achieve a smooth surface when airbrushing concavities such as the inside of the thruster bell. You can see the grainy texture on the surface of the interiors. I think the solution is to spray several very light coats at a lower pressure. To paint the outside of the bells, I masked the inside with a few pieces of tape. I used Alclad 2 steel for the outside of the thruster bells. The bells after painting and assembly. I wanted the thrusters to have a shinier look as depicted in the box art, so I airbrushed the exterior with a coat of Mr Color GX Super Clear III. This is similar to what comes in the Mr Super Clear rattle can -- it's a gloss clear coat. The paint comes out of the jar thick and needs to be thinned quite a bit, but the finish is very durable and protective. To finish up the thruster bells, I applied Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Black to the details and cleaned it up with cotton swabs dampened with Zippo lighter fluid. I think they look great! Next time I'll paint the FAST packs.

Thanks for the feedback! The camera is a Lumix LX7. It's a point and shoot, but on the higher end. I have some of the Alclad gloss black primer. If I can find a part that needs to be really shiny, I will try it!

After assembly and seam removal, the gun pod was air brushed with Mr Surfacer. You can still see the faint impression of the seam running down the length of the gun. I brushed on Mr Surfacer into the depressions and sanded it down once it cured. After another coat of Mr Surfacer, the gun pod is ready to paint. I also primed the arms at the same time. The manual calls for a matte grey color, but I thought I'd add some interest by painting the gun pod in a metallic color. I'll use Alclad 2 Magnesium. This is essentially their gunmetal color. There aren't any good places on the gun pod to attach an alligator clip, so to paint the gun pod, I taped it to a length of cardboard. I painted one side, and after it cured, the other. Since lacquers such as Alclad 2 cure very quickly, I didn't have to wait long. I was interested to try buffing Alclad with these micromesh abrasives I got with the paint. I used this 12000 grade cloth. It didn't seem to make much difference. I added some post shading with a very thin mix of Mr Color GX 2 air brushed down the length of the panel lines. Next I filled the panel lines with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color. I didn't bother with a gloss coat first. The Alclad has a rough texture, so the enamel tends to stain the paint, but the channels are deep enough for the enamel to flow through them. I cleaned up the panel lines with a Zippo lighter fluid-dampened cotton swab. The gun pod's finished, modulo adding decals and the transparent red light to the front.

In this post I'll finish up surfacing the legs. I'll fill the hairline gaps with Tamiya Putty Basic Type. This is essentially a very thick mix of Mr Surfacer and is also lacquer thinner soluble. To fill the gaps, I collected a bit of putty with the tip of a toothpick and smeared it over the gaps. To clean up the fills, I'll go over them with a cotton swab dampened with Tamiya Lacquer Thinner. The kind of swab I'm using is called Nail Tees, which is a brand used in nail salons. The cotton fibers are packed more tightly than in a typical swab such as Q-tips, which means that they last a bit longer and don't leave as many fibers on the surface of the part I'm working on. I made thin sausage-like links of the Tamiya Epoxy Putty, and pressed them against the gaps. I smoothed them against the surface of the part with the tip of a metal putty knife dampened with water to discourage the putty from sticking to the knife. Next I brushed on Mr Surfacer to fill in depressions around the lines. To smooth the entire surface of the parts, I started with 600-grade Tamiya sandpaper and worked my way up to 1500. After the first round of sanding, there were still imperfections and depressions, so I applied more Mr Surfacer. One more round. To check for imperfections masked by the glossy white plastic, I air brushed a coat of Mr Surfacer. With the matte coat, the remaining nicks and scratches are obvious, but the surface looks a lot better than it did. To rescribe the panel lines destroyed by the surfacing, I'll use this scribing tool from Sujibori Do which I got from Hobby Link Japan. You can find blades of different widths -- this one is 0.2mm -- which fit into the green handle. To guide the blade, I'll use Dymo tape, which is a thick, stiff tape typically used for label making. To scribe the lines, I affixed a length of Dymo tape parallel to the line I wanted to cut into the surface. I gently drug the blade across the surface using the tape as a guide. It takes several light passes to scribe a line without sliding skidding away from the guide. When this happens, the marred surface can be repaired with Tamiya or Squadron filler. The newly scribed lines. They have uneven width and are crumbly because the fillers I used were not hard enough. Also, you can see that the tape adhesive has pulled away the primer from the surface. After scribing panel lines, it's usually necessary to smooth down the surface with a round of sanding. The legs after one last coat of primer. The lines around the landing gear doors aren't great, but they're better than what I achieved with the forward door. I've got some better filler on order and may go back to try to fix these after it arrives. Very excited to move on from these legs. Next time I'll paint the gun pod.

Thanks for the advice. I have learned my lesson; the epoxy putty didn't turn out great. I ordered some Mori Mori (even harder to get ahold of than the Tamiya putty) off of eBay a while back and am still waiting for it to arrive.

Next I spent most of my time assembling the legs. These are the parts providing the turbine detailing which will be buried deep inside the legs of the aircraft. Since they will only be visible by looking directly into the thrusters, I won't add any additional detailing beyond giving them a coat of Alclad II steel over primer. These shots give some idea of the way light plays off of the metallic finish of the steel lacquer. I spent quite a bit of effort off camera finishing the main bodies of the FAST Packs. They are primarily four pieces -- two halves of the body and a cap piece for either side. A big seam runs directly down the half of body which was eliminated using the same techniques as demonstrated on the forward fuselage. These four parts form the legs housing the turbines and foot thrusters. They will wrap around thrusters and the interior walls will be visible if scrutinized. In advance of assembly, I air brushed the portion that would be exposed to the exterior of the aircraft with Mr Color GX 2 black paint. Since these are interior walls, it would be awkward to paint these once the legs were assembled. Since the Mr Color GX line of paints is glossy, I dulled it down with a coat of Mr Color 182 flat clear. I welded the legs together with plastic cement with the finished foot thrusters protected with masking tape. The parts were not a good fit at all and significant effort was required to eliminate the lines running down their length. In particular, the parts forming the seam closest to the thrusters did not want to meet at all. You can see how much filler was necessary in the closeup. After assembling the legs, I needed to close the landing gear bays similarly to the forward bay. I began by removing the door supports just like I did before. I did a test fit of the doors with masking tape. The fit isn't perfect, and there are significant gaps. These will need to be filled, and then rescribed. Since I wasn't thrilled with the way the lines in the forward bay doors came out, I wanted to try a different filler which would produce better results after scribing. I chose Tamiya Epoxy Putty Quick Type, which I hoped would scribe better than the combination of Squadron filler, plastic cement, super glue, and Mr Surfacer I used last time. Tamiya Epoxy Putty is a two-part putty which begins to cure after being mixed. I believe the white part is the putty and the tan part is the hardener. This stuff cannot be found at retail in the United States due some sort of labeling requirements which it does not meet, so I had to import it through eBay. When using a two-part putty, the idea is to cut equal sized strips of each part and then knead them together. One easy way to get started is to twist the strips together and repeat the process. Eventually the putty will be a uniform color and ready to apply. The consistency of this Tamiya Epoxy Putty seems really similar to Kneadatite aka "green stuff" and I worried that it would not scribe well. I began by simply smearing the putty across the entirety of the doors thinking I would smooth down and scribe the surface upon curing. It turned out this was a bad idea as the doors had no support underneath and simply sunk into the well. It was clear this wasn't going to work so I scraped away the putty and cleaned up the surface. It was easy because the putty hadn't cured yet. If it had cured, I could have simply sanded it away. Instead, I packed the interior of the bays with the putty to provide support for the doors. I allowed a sliver of putty to creep through the gaps as filler. I'll be able to sand this smooth later.

Next I'll finish the two rear foot thrusters. They are each a two-piece assembly, with a central pivot to allow them to open and close. They need to be finished before the rest of the build because these components are housed in structures which completely surrounds them. It would not be practical to paint them separately from the rest of the aircraft. These parts have photo etched details which have been applied to the inner walls of the thrusters as well as thin plastic fins which line the interior floor and ceiling. I painted the thrusters with lacquers chosen from the Alclad II line. This brand is known for reproducing a high quality metallic finish. I chose steel for the exterior and burnt iron for the interior, which I thought would be a close match for the Mr Color shades recommended by the manual. I air brushed these paints unthinned at around 12 psi over a coat of Mr Surfacer 1000 used as a primer. Next I gave the thruster interiors a coat of Future followed by a wash of the Tamiya panel line accent color. After a test fit with the rest of the aircraft, I realized that the surface of the thrusters gripped by the alligator clip during painting was visible! I would have to strip the paint and start over again. I undid all that work by bathing the parts in Mr Color Leveling Thinner and scrubbing the parts with an old toothbrush. This is completely safe for polystyrene parts, which Mr Color Leveling Thinner does not react with. The thrusters all painted up again. I decided to experiment with postshading, so I mixed up a very thin mixture of Mr Color GX 2 (black), and carefully airbrushed over the line going down the upper portion of the thruster. This adds just a hint of weathering and gives the structure a bit more scale and depth. Out of the bottle, the Alclad steel has a very dull sheen and is fairly rough to the touch. I gave it a coat of Future to shine it up and protect the paint. Since I wanted more of a semi-gloss look, I went over the gloss coat with Mr Color 181 semi-gloss super clear. I'm fairly satisfied with how these turned out. The metal looks nice, and there's only the faintest hint of weathering.

Now I'll continue applying photo etched metail details from the Hasegawa set made for this kit. Here's the second runner of parts with details for the main body of the aircraft. These details cover the intakes situated to either side of the cockpit. After cutting them from the runner, they must be bent to cover the corner at the rear of the intake. To do this, I gripped the piece along the edge of the bend with a pair of metal tweezers, and carefully bent the smaller half of the piece to make a right angle. Tamiya makes a special tool for doing this, but it seems unnecessary. I stuck both details into the intakes with super glue. These grills detail the parts which cover the gap made behind the wing pivots between the bottom and top of the main body toward the rear. They also bend around the parts. These parts form a vent in the structure which supports the strike FAST packs. The vent is composed of a wire mesh piece and several tiny panels which must be painstakingly attached to the mesh with super glue. The vent is assembled. It looks a little messy close up, but these flaws will be invisible in the finished kit. I inserted the vent into the housing. I was eager to see the assembled piece and probably should have painted these parts before assembly. It will require some tedious masking to paint the details separately from the housing. These details form the doors of the bays which house the hands while tucked away in fighter mode. I prepared some additional parts off camera. Here's a shot of the a test fit between the intakes and main body. Next time: painted foot thrusters.

Thanks for the feedback! I will have to look for Mori Mori in the future. I ended up using Tamiya Epoxy Putty to fill the gaps in the rear wells. I haven't done the scribing yet, but it's already looking a lot better.

When we last left, the cockpit was ready to be enclosed within the two-part forward fuselage. I used Mr. Cement Deluxe to "weld" the two parts together around the cockpit. The cap includes a handy brush which avoids a big mess when applying the cement to the parts of the fuselage which touch. The cement dissolves the surface of the plastic and creates a strong bond between the two pieces. The idea is to apply enough cement such that a little bit "oozes" out through the seam. Once the line of cement down the seam cures, I'll sand it such that no seam is visible once painted. After pressing the two parts together, I also brushed a thin coat of cement down the exterior of the seam to ensure that the seam's gap was covered completely. Since the plastic is white and translucent, the seam running down the center of the fuselage is hard to see, but it's still there. The eventual coat of grey primer will reveal any imperfections. Now I'll affix the canopy over the cockpit. I'll use this Model Master Clear Parts Cement & Window Maker which is special purpose glue for attaching transparent parts such as the canopy. It dries clear and seems very similar to Elmer's White Glue from grade school. It also stretches and forms a weak bond, so I'll be able to remove the canopy towards the end of the build in order to finish detailing it. I applied a thin line of the glue along the surfaces of the canopy which meet the fuselage and then attached the canopy to the fuselage. I used too much glue, and you can see that it oozed out onto the interior of the canopy. I think that's OK because I can clean up the canopy before finishing it. The canopy glue will dissolve with rubbing alcohol. Moreover, if there is any visible glue left over, the finished black canopy frame should hide it. To be sure I've really filled in the entire gap of the seam, I'll apply some Mr. Surfacer 1000. Mr. Surfacer is a very thin lacquer-based putty used to quickly fill small holes and gaps in a surface. It comes in a variety of grades -- 1000 is paint-like in consistency. I'll brush it on straight out of the bottle and use Tamiya laquer thinner to clean the brush. The line of surfacer runs down the front of the fuselage and curves back underneath. There's also the seam behind the canopy. To remove the seam I'll use Tamiya Finishing Abrasives. This is essentially very smooth sandpaper, similar to what you might find in an automotive supply store. It comes in a variety of grades -- this sheet is 600, which sort of middle of the road in smoothness. You'd use something rougher to sand down gate marks, but 600 is a good place to start for sanding down surfacer. After sanding, the dried cement and surfacer surrounding the seam is gone. However, sanding seam lines damages the surface by leaving fine scratches and removing detail such as panel lines. To eliminate scratches, I polished the surface smooth by using progressively finer Tamiya abrasives. After 600 grade, 1000, 1200, and then finally 1500. This leaves a very smooth surface without imperfections which a gloss coat would reveal. Removing the seam damaged the panel lines in two ways. First, the thin surfacer crept into the lines near the seam and filled them. Second, since the lines in this kit are so shallow, other parts of the lines were erased by sanding the surface. To repair the panel lines, I'll rescribe them using parts from this Hasegawa Trytool set. These are essentially photo etched saws with tiny teeth that can bite into the soft plastic. The thickness of these saws is comparable to the width of the original panel lines. Most of the saws in this set are curved to accommodate aircraft parts. I chose one with a comparable curvature and gently sawed it back and forth into a line. This was my first time trying this technique, but it turned out to be very easy. Since they are photo etched and seemingly delicate, I assumed that these saws would be one use only and essentially disposable. It turns out that they are more durable than they appear. After rescribing, the panel lines are restored. As supplied, the kit is meant to be built standing with the landing gear down and the bay doors open. I think a Strike Valkyrie looks a lot better with the gear up and posed as if in flight. Since Hasegawa supplies no option parts for this look, I'll have to modify the door parts and close up the bay. I'll begin by removing the door supports marked with red boxes. I'll need a way to attach the closed doors to the bay. To do this, I'll fashion some supports with pieces plastic strip from Plastruct. I used one strip of plastic to create a bond between the left and right doors and glued four supports on either side of the bay which the doors can attach to. These supports are all marked in green. When placed in the bay, the doors rest against the supports without falling inward. As expected, there are still some gaps created between the doors and fuselage because these doors were not actually engineered to close the bay. I was concerned that the gaps looked too untidy, so I wanted to fill and rescribe them myself. I used super glue and plastic cement. It turns out this was a mistake and the super glue would prove very difficult to sand smooth and scribe. When I close the rear landing bay doors I'll use a different material. At this point, I wanted to check how well the surface of the fuselage looked. Since the plastic is glossy white and translucent, the only way to do this is by priming it matte grey. I air brushed Mr. Surfacer 1000 thinned with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner. It's hard to tell in the photos, but there is still a faint impression running down the panel line. Since I'm concerned this will show up under scrutiny, I'll repeat the process of brushing with Mr. Surfacer 1000 and sanding it smooth. It's hard to tell in the photos, but there is still a faint impression running down the panel line. Since I'm concerned this will show up under scrutiny, I'll repeat the process of brushing with Mr. Surfacer 1000 and sanding it smooth. The area around the landing gear bay still needs a lot of work. I brushed Mr Surfacer 1000 down the seam line to try again and the surface around the seam looks a lot better after this round. However, on closer inspection, I noticed the gaps created between the nose nacelles and fuselage. To fill them, I smeared Squadron White Putty with a toothpick down their length. This created a big mess which I cleaned with a cotton swab dipped in lacquer thinner. This is possible because like Mr Surfacer, Squadron White Putty is laquer-soluble. This smoothed down the putty in the gaps but also removed the surrounding primer. That's OK because it's all getting a final coat of primer anyway. As you can see, preparing a surface for paint gets pretty tedious :-)

The next step is to give the cockpit interiors an enamel wash to bring out the detail. I'll be using these Tamiya Panel Line Accent Colors usually intended to quickly detail panel lines. These are essentially pre-thinned enamel paints with an applicator built into the cap. Before applying the wash, I coated each part with Pledge Tile & Vinyl Floor Finish (i.e., Future). The gloss coat allows the enamel to flow freely on the surface and collect in recesses. I "misted" the gloss coat onto these parts with an air brush set to a low pressure (~12 psi). Future is already very thin and need not be diluted, but I added a few drops of Windex to break the surface tension to discourage the liquid from collecting into beads. After waiting a day for the gloss coat to cure, I just slopped the wash onto each surface: grey for the pilot and black console and black on the other two parts. You can see how the grey enamel has found its way into the detailed surface, bringing out the fine lines molded into the legs, arms, and chest. Once the wash has dried, it's time to clean it up a bit. I dampened a cotton swab with Zippo lighter fluid and lightly dabbed over the surface of the parts. The Zippo fluid won't interact with the gloss coat, but it is a solvent for the enamels. The result is that the pilot doesn't look as dirty, but color is left in the recesses. Next, I dry brushed the seat and cockpit interior with grey Citadel paint. This enhances details on the edges of molded detail. The last cockpit flourish to apply is a detailed decal over the pilot's display. I'll use Mr. Hobby Mark Setter and Mark Softer to encourage the decal to adhere to the surface of the part. The first step in applying the display decal is to cut it off the sheet and submerge it in regular tap water. I use a small metal paint dish and a pair of tweezers to hold the decal while it softens. I've noticed that these Hasegawa decals are thicker than the ones that come with Bandai Gundam kits and take a bit longer to loosen from the decal backing paper. One the decal can slide freely along the backing paper, I gently brushed it into place with the point of a small brush. Using a brush tip is more tedious than a finger or cotton swab, but lessens the chance of breaking the fragile decal. I applied a little bit of Mark Setter to the surface of the part in preparation of this step. Once I was satisfied with the placement of the decal, I gently brushed Mark Softer over its surface. You can see that the surface of the part is curved and the decal must warp around it. The Mark Softer seems to be a weak acid and melts and stretches the material of the decal to conform to the curvature of the part. The shape of the part and decal is fairly complex and it was awkward to perfectly orient the detail to align to the outline of the part. Moreover, the thickness of the decal meant it was also stiff and I wondered whether or not it was really going to conform to the curves of the surface. However, I was impressed that the outlines of both the decal and part are such a good match. Patience won out and the Mark Softer eventually worked its magic. You can see the curves of the faint molded details of the surface of the part peeking through in the next few photos. Finally, I coated each part with Mr. Super Clear UV Cut Flat, which is a laquer clear coat that comes in a spray can. This removes the shine of the coat of Future and creates a dull, matte look. After super gluing all the parts together, the cockpit's all done. At the end of the build, I may go back and give the helmet a coat of Future to make it shiny again. Next time I'll assemble the forward fuselage!