Star Wars B-Wing (Bandai 1:72 scale)

[Jakko]

And now for something completely different for me — well, not really, it's not like I've never built Star Wars models before



A B-Wing from Return of the Jedi.

This is a Revell import into the EU, as witnessed by a sticker with contact information and description in German, English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian on the side of the box, but otherwise it's straight from Bandai, exactly as sold in Japan and (I presume) the rest of the world. (Oh, well, and the "Nice Price" sticker on the front clearly doesn't belong on the box It's accurate, though: normal retail price of these seems to be around 70 euros, but I paid only just over half for it.)

Instructions can be found on Scalemates, so let's start with some sprue shots:



This is only the third Bandai kit I've ever bought, and must say the moulding quality looks very good. Still, I don't quite see the point of the multi-coloured sprue A. It feels like it's something they're doing because they can, not because it adds anything to the model.

For markings, you get both decals and self-adhesive stickers:



I suppose you could use the stickers as paint masks, but I've not decided yet if I'll try that.

 

[Jakko]

Well, these don't take very long to put together. It's not finished yet, but here are the major parts:



Before I can put these together, I need to finish painting the cockpit and especially the pilot, because the cockpit goes between the main fuselage parts so it can rotate relative to those. Once that's done, I can put the fuselage together and attach all three wings to it, then just add the detail bits like the guns and engines.

Though you can't see it very well in the photo, I painted the cockpit grey with shading and highlighting. It seems it's mostly grey in the movies, but I can't find any good pictures of it — the main things that pop up when I try to search for it are screenshots from games and pictures of other peoples' builds of this kit, plus things like the Kenner and Lego versions, none of which really helps for accuracy.

 

[Jakko]

Dryfitting things (carefully so they don't stick firmly enough that I couldn't take them apart again), I found that you can fit the cockpit after assembling the fuselage, so I put that together first:



Then I attached the main "wing":



This turned out to be a bad idea. The instructions tell you to fit the folding wings first, and I discovered this is because their hinges (C1, C4 and C6) need to be fitted before the big wing is. As a result, I had to take it off again and fit C1 and C6 hinges first, then I added the big wing once more, fit the folding wings, and then found out that C6 also couldn't fit because its locating lug should be trapped between the big wing halves … however, cutting that lug off let me put it in place anyway:



The hinge mechanism is interesting. On the sprue with the stand, you get two hinge pins for the wings as well. Since the stand is made of ABS while the rest of the kit is polystyrene, chances are you can't accidentally glue the pins to the model if you do glue the parts together, because model cement generally dissolves polystyrene but not ABS. (Tamiya Extra Thin does seem to dissolve it, though, but not very well.)

 

[BarleyBop]

I figure you probably saw this article.

 

[Jakko]

I didn't, thanks for the link

 

[Jakko]

This is the quickest model I've built in years, if not decades …



Two parts still missing here, but you can't see them in the photo, because I can only install them after painting due to the way I've made the model into subassemblies:



Of course, since this is a snap-together kit I could have built it without any glue at all and taken it apart completely again, but the photo above shows everything that isn't glued together The pilot is partly painted, as is the cockpit, but I can basically now start painting the model — though not yet, I want to wait for the glue to dry first