1/500 Bandai SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 1980's older version
Well ever since I saw this cool kit back in the mid eighties at ( of all places ) a very cool import record shop in Seattle where me and my mod/goth punk droogies would buy many of our tunes but in the back they had all kinds of cool sci-fi stuff and loads of anime items including the complete Star Blazers kits by Bandai....well your humble narator and friend was not exactly in my nerdy model building phase in those days but that great TV show and that cool looking 1/550 scale Yamato was always on my list and now on to some ultra violent lighting! The upper main bridge and lower Science/communications bridge are lit up using EL lammp aka Light Sheet, optics and micro led's. Avitar's quarters has one single mini led and yes I had to carve and dremel out solid plastic as you may know there where no open cut outs or clear parts on the bridge tower including Avitar's quarters so I thermo formed my own clear sections before going hog wild with the drills and files. This was just a quick test shot as nothing is real tight and parts are loose.
To install custom decking I had to do a little Dremel work. I wish I knew then that the older Bandai
kits decking leading up to the forward main guns was curved up and not straight. Oh well.
kits decking leading up to the forward main guns was curved up and not straight. Oh well.
The Bandia kits decking was ONE: raised and TWO: in scale they would have been over three feet wide...So I used fine pre cut N-scale wood planks to create my planking pieces that would look a lot better and be a bit more in scale. I separated them into three groups and treated each group with slight variations of acrylic stains. Then cut then in short lengths and later laid then down on the new plastic deck parts ...so just like a real ship would have been made each tree and each plank would naturally have a different tone. NOTE: I know...wood in space? its an anime subject folks! ...now lets move on.
Here is the completed rear gun deck. Like the forward deck it will go into place after the hull has been pained and the guns are in place. I like to plan my projects construction methods so that I do as little masking as possible...its easier to paint and you get crisp & clean results...sure a good modeler can do very clean masking and there are more than a few good techniques but I am more of a builder than a painter.
Here you can see some of the Panel lines that pretty much are in the same location at the old 'raised' lines.
More Panel lines ....as you can see I designed them so no lines ran all the way across the bottom of the Hull....scribing panel lines across filled crevasses no matter what you use never looks right and can damage a new panel line scribing tool.
Here are the Yamatos medium size cannons. On the left is the smaller, I used brass rod with aluminum tubing for the raised detail, If I had a lath I would turn my own but they look pretty good and are very much the same size as the guns in th kit. On the right are the slightly larger set. I used aluminum tubbing so they are hallow. I also drilled out the ships main cannons but the pics were not clear enough....I will post those soon.