Planning customising/weathering 1/48 VF-1J and GBP

[nightmareB4macross]

Ok, moving on to the GBP.

I'm planning a green (Nichimo style) colour scheme, and I'm going to be lighting the legs.

First step has been to strip the armour down and clean it up with warm soapy water.

The lenses in the legs have been removed and the silver paint removed from the back. These will be futured, then silvered on the back with as reflective a stuff as I can find - suggestions for the chromiest paint are apprectiated! I'll drill out the armour behind the lenses' 'bulbs' and mount a super bright LED behind each, with leads trailing up to the knees (where I'll mount the batteries and dip switches behind the kneecaps).

Should look good.

Use chrome foil. It reflects light very well.

All you have to do is:

1. Cut to desired shape (always leave a little extra).

2. Remove it from the carrier and apply.

3. Use a toothpick to place it into crevices and corners.

4. Cut off the excess with a new sharp blade.

5. Your done.

I used this stuff frequently when I would build car models. Works great on bumbers and chrome trim.

[winterdyne]

Yay! I've managed to light a leg! I'll take photos step by step for the next one - I've not chromed the back of the lens yet, but it looks very effective! Nice overlapping parts, little light leakage. And with the removable kneecap, it's almost like they designed it with this modification in mind!

[winterdyne]

Ok, a brief mini-how-to on how to light the leg of a GBP... This was EASY.

Preparation:

You will need:

Tools:

A dremel / craft drill/grinder (not pictured)

Needlenose pliers

Snippers

A soldering iron and some solder

A knife, scraper or other favorite trimming and poking tool

Parts (for each leg):

1x 4V extra-bright white LED. 3.2cd. 3mm diameter. Nice and bright

2x LR41 (AG3) button cells

3x paperclips - ideally plastic coated and in different colours

2x 3 inch lengths of wire

You'll need to remove all paint from the back of the lens. Mr Muscle does the job. This will need to be re-silvered avoiding the indent (where your LED will illuminate).

Step 1:

Dremel out a hole in the front of the GBP leg as shown.

Using the pliers and pincers, straighten out the paperclips, trim to length and rebend as shown - the white one will form the spring for the battery mount, the red and blue the contacts for the LED. Remove the plastic (leaving some to colour code) with your scrapy knife.

Bend the white clip around the locating peg on the inner part of the leg as shown and then curl the ends into springs. CA it to the inner part of the leg.

Step 2:

Strip an appropriate length from the ends of your wire. Solder the contact parts onto your lengths of wire as shown. Put a fairly generous blob of solder on the other end. Don't worry about neatness, the wires are quite far apart so there's no real danger of shorting, and nobody should ever see them anyway.

Put a blob of blu-tack or similar around your LED, and put it in a clamp. If you've not already trimmed the pins, trim them now. Remember that the SHORT PIN IS THE ANODE (connects to -ve). Don't trim the pins to the same length!

Solder the blue wire to the anode pin, and the red wire to the cathode. Again, don't worry too much about neatness (although a neater job here helps with pin bending). You should now have:

Step 3:

CA the contacts to the inner part of the leg. CA the wire down to keep it neat. It helps to have the battery in position to do this. Adjust the white paperclip with pliers to improve spring. This will always be easier to adjust. You should now have:

That's pretty much it. Reassembling will give you:

You can switch off the lights by inserting a thin shim of plasticard between a battery and a contact like so:

If you can find a small enough switch to mount under the kneecap, that's also the place to do it. In either case, it's a good idea not to screw the knee cap on.

I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like painted up!

Edited January 7, 2008 by winterdyne

[hirohawa]

Looks great! Can't wait to see more.

[winterdyne]

Just about ready for the first gloss coat and decals:

[baltek]

That looks really awesome, winterdyne.

I wish i would have your painting skills to do the same with my VF-1.

I'm willing to see more

[MechTech]

That looks great and the lighting engineering looks great too! - MT

[winterdyne]

Washes are pretty much done... been using ivory black for the white (it's a dark brown) and carbon black on the green. Some light grey drybrushing, but it's not going well, will leave it now till after the flat coat, when there'll be more light grey drybrushing and a filter spray of desert yellow or tan/buff over the gbp armour only.

Pics:

Hope to have this finished in around 3 sessions from now (probably a couple of weeks).

Still not very good at the low-light photography. Whilst the lights look ok, I can't seem to get the colours looking right, and the nato black strips look green, but that might just be reflection in the gloss coat.

Edited March 3, 2008 by winterdyne

[baltek]

Very impressive work, man.

I really like the leds on the GBP. If I get one sometime i'll try to copy your gadget.