captain america

Thanks, it was quite a challenging project to mold. Despite that little difference in size, I really had to change-up my mold boxes and the whole thing needed over 10 lbs of silicone. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

You're right. At a glance it looks almost the same, but there are some subtle differences in proportions and details. I still think the WSC version is the more elegant of the two. We'll have to wait and see how big this one is, but the price is fair, considering where plastic and resin kit prices have gone in the last 25 years.

Captain’s log: Friday, October 30th. Sweet victory!! Molds are done, decals are done, production has begun, and parts look excellent. You can now send in the balance of your 1/350 Starfish payments. for those who have paid the $150 CAD deposit, your balance payment is $187 CAD. I won’t be taking any new orders for this kit the time being: the order block is completely full and I want to concentrate on existing orders.

That looks an awful lot like Ikushima's Junchoon 2989 with the addition of a Peidoll spire.

The down side to those figures, other than being small and not particularly posable is the price. I don't think you'll find one (other than used) for less than $120. Five Star Stories doesn't cater to the casual fan.

FSS figures or Mortar Headds? Kaiyodo have produced a shitload of them over the last 33 years.

Trust me, if you get a Mortar Headd kit, you'll want it t be static. They have so many frilly, fiddly parts on them and were designed seemingly without a care for the laws of physics or gravity. The Volks IMS series has superb detail, but they're old-school type kits that require actual building/painting skills; they aren't Master Grade Kinder Egg toys masquerading as model kits. I found some older pics of MH builds to provide a size comparison.

The Junchoon First Sally Type design dates back to the late 80's and is no longer "fashionable." Nagano loves to retcon his own designs, and Junchoon has been replaced with the Engage. Your chances of ever seeing the former in plastic are essentially nil. As for rough surface texture on the Volks IMS kits, the Bang and Vatshu were the worst, but they were also the first of the series. The LED and Terror which I have are both nice & smooth, and I think it's fair to presume that the new kits will be at the same level, and perhaps a smidge better. One thing I'll want to confirm is the alleged softness of the detail, which the video's author points out as being inferior to the resin kit. I suspect that his impression may simply come from the translucency of the kit's plastic. The IMS LED is every bit as good as its resin counterpart.

Thanks for posting pics of your build! Built Buster pics are rare in the wild, especially in the Zeta configuration.

Depends on the Mortar Headd, and the time at which the kits were made. Older kits (late 80's) were much smaller. In the case of this Knight of Gold, the kit is about 27-28cm to the top of the head.

New video unboxing of the Knight of Gold IMS kit from Volks. Unlike the LED Mirage, it looks like they're offering the "lite" version first (ceremonial val balah). Presumably the buster launcher version will come later.

Quick Friday update: molding is well underway, with roughly half the molds now complete. The whole shebang will be ready by next Friday, when I will give the OK to make balance payments. Also, I wanted to touch on a subject that I think needed to be addressed. Many times on my kits, you'll see little (and sometimes not-so-little) triangular shapes in the recesses of 90 degree angles. These aren't added details, but rather molding gates that allow better resin flow and minimize trapped air (bubbles) in your castings. These are to be removed when building your kit.

The 1/350 Starfish masters are finished! I decided to take pics before I get around to doing the final mold-prepping and the instructions. This kit not only has nicer detail than the 1.0 version, but I've made it more accurate as well. Little things like the torpedo launch tubes and fighter launch bay doors are more faithful to the line-art, and the greeblies in the engine housings are more refined. Garfish was the best fish, but now Starfish is the top fish!

Just a few hours left to take advantage of the pre-order special. At 10:01 pm Eastern time, the kit goes to full price.

Quick update: next Friday's update will be postponed until the 16th, at which point the masters should be done.

I don't think there would be any demand for me to charge $35 an hour, for X number of hours to build, paint & shellack over the fine detail of the kit, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

I'll wait until I get to the molding process and see how well these tiny fighters cast before making any promises on extras, but it's something I'm aiming for.

Captain’s log: Friday, October 2nd. Things are starting to look interesting now. Pics 01 and 02 show the 1/350 scale fighter, which is utterly tiny, but accurate. I based the overall geometry on Sentinel’s 1/48 Legioss figure, which I consider the new standard. While a bit on the small side, it is the most faithful representation available. Pics 03-05 show the (mostly) complete cargo/fighter bays. I decided that since the bays themselves are quite shallow that they would need some sort of integrated catapult system to adequately eject the fighters into battle (pic 04.) If you turn your attention to pic 05, you will see the basic 3-part breakdown of the launch bay. The piece in the middle will be molded in translucent resin, and will act as a light-pipe for illumination purposes inside this otherwise limited space. Pics 06 and 07 show the hull mating mechanism. The bigger a kit gets, even if it’s the same subject, it will need to be re-engineered to address size and weight issues, and that’s what I did here. The large tabs on the fore and aft sections can, if desired, be attached to the center bulkhead with screws for both sturdiness and maintenance. The entire joint section will be hidden beneath a removable vanity panel. Easy-peasy! Pic 08: another practical change I made to the kit was to leave the side panels on the center bulkhead separate. That way, you can drill mounting holes into that bulkhead and mount it to a stand from either side, and even be able to switch the mounting from left to right for photography or lighting purposes. I got the idea from the studio model of the Enterprise Refit, and how they had different hard points on the ship to film it from various angles. Pics 09 and 10: the putty smash technique being put to good use. While I prefer to use Tamiya’s polyester putty for its fine detail, it has the drawback of taking almost an hour before I can start carving it. Bondo putty (the blue-gray stuff) will cut my carving time to one third, but doesn’t capture fine detail quite as well. Pic 11 shows the now sculpted snout sensor. Pics 12-14 show most of the ship, crudely taped together but looking great! All of the structures and components are sculpted, so the next two weeks will entail molding duplicate parts to finish the aft hulls and finally detailing the ship. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait!! 10 days left to take advantage of the pre-order special.

Captain’s log: Friday September 25th. When last we met, I was starting to develop the launch bays for the fighter. You’ll be getting an eyefull of those in the next update, but for now, I will continue to tutor you in the construction of the main hulls. Pic 10 shows me using the bull-nose cutter to create the opening for the ship’s frontal eye-sensors. Doing it this way ensures that the « eyes » will be the same size on both sides, and evenly spaced. If you’ve noticed that the work area is starting to get a little messy, you’re correct. In fact, this is a perfect opportunity to show you the milling station as I work on the ship’s horizontal sensor band (pic 11.) It will usually look like this way after as little as 30 minutes of machining, so before I go any further… …I break-out the shop-vac and clean off all the debris (pic 12.) Aesthetics aside, a dirty work area can become a safety hazzard, so a quick (literally 5 minute) clean-up brings it back to order. I used to leave the shop-vac on during the whole process, but as you might imagine, it’s very loud and produces a lot of uncomfortably warm air, so the best compromise was simply to clean intermittently. Parts now go back to the band saw so that I can begin shaping the vertical cross-sections (pic 13.) As before, this particular saw doesn’t allow for sharp curves or detailed cuts, so my aim is to remove as much excess material without cutting into the paper templates. The excess on this particular part (the upper forward hull) was removed using two cuts, but it’s not uncommon for me to make several cuts, depending on the part’s complexity. When there’s very little excess to remove, or a very complex shape, like in pic 14, I’ll just go straight to the mill. Here you can see the shaping of the aft main shruster bells. Because smoothing-out the huls would have taken far longer by hand, I decided to break-out my trusty belt sander to save some time (pic 15.) I will still do the final shaping by hand, but this machine will save me a couple of hours on all the hull parts. The second most glamorous part of the build: hand sanding! (pic 16.) To make sure both top and bottom hulls mate perfectly, I will lightly tack them together with CA glue and sand them together. The paper templates are still attached, and will guide every stroke of my sanding block. The most glorious part of any project is carving with a rotary tool! I’m basically sitting at my work station wearing sound bafflers, the shop-vac nozzle placed a few inches from my working surface, and I simply grind away (pic 17.) Because the hull parts are quite large, I will be shaping not only the outer surfaces with the rotary tool, but I’ll be hollowing them out as well: twice the fun! The outer hull shape is the main focus of my work, so my days are spent carefully carving away at the excess material, then refining the hull shapes with progressively finer sanding blocks. Once this is accomplished, only then will I aim the rotary tool at the insides to hollow them out. Pic 18 shows the end result of that week’s work. What doesn’t show-up in pics is all the thinking, plotting, adjusting and fitting required to make all the hull parts fit together harmoniously. Pic 19: as you can see, everything fits! But beyond merely fitting, the parts will have to fit sturdily together, and I think I achieved a rather clever solution for parts interlock, but more on that next week, so stay tuned!

Captain’s log: Friday, September 18th. Construction of the new 1/350 Starfish project is well underway. Pic 01 shows the basics of what I start a project with, that is to say the original line-art, same-size diagrams, some blocks of modeling board, resin-cast blanks for turning the round parts, and some basic tools. The upper and lower forward hull will require some fairly big blocks to machine from, and of course those will need to be squared. Which brings us to pic 02. Thankfully, my cross-slide table is long enough to accomodate such large pieces; otherwise, I’d have to mill two or three smaller blocks and bond them together. I try to crate assemblies in one piece as much as possible, if only to save time. These blocks will need to be properly squared and prepared for the next stage. Pic 03: with the modeling board blocks milled perfectly square, I can now affix the paper-cut plots. Pic 04: with the templates now securely affixed, I can use the band saw to begin basic separation and initial shaping. Not being a scroll saw, I can’t get very detailed cuts for fear of damaging both the blade and the blocks, so there’s still quite a bit of extra material to be removed. At this point, I have a few options for more refined shaping: the mill, the belt sander, the (now deceased) drill press, and the Dremel. Since I’m still at a very critical stage where I need to preserve the cross-sections, the mill wil be the tool of choice, bringing us to pic 05. While this particular step is slow and tedious, it allows me to remove material while keeping the blocks perfectly parallel. Once this step is performed properly, only a few minor square steps will remain, and then I can get the block to match the template shape with some careful hand sanding. Pic 06: here are two basic cutters used for milling: a standard square cutter on the left, and a bull-nosed cutter on the right. The latter is better suited for concave curvatures, whereas the former is used for square cuts and some convex curvatures. Since the mill was now thoroughly filthy, I decided to foul-up my other machine by turning some blanks used to make the thrusters. Several years ago, I made a silicone mold of some cylindrical shapes of various sizes, which I then fill with resin to make machining blanks. While resin is certainly much faster to turn than metal, it doesn’t preserve its rigidity nearly as well under heat and stress, so requires careful attention to work. Pic 07 shows the one of the main thrusters under construction. Pic 08: it took an absurd amount of work just to get to this step! Short to describe, but long and tedious to perform. In the upper-left of the pic, you can see a piece of « discarded » filler material which was removed by the band saw earlier. Being a precious commodity for me, this scrap of modeling board will be conserved, reshaped and repurposed in due course. Pic 09: the very early stages of construction of the belly-mounted fighter bays which will mount on the ship’s belly. The piece of modeling board between the walls is actually a template which will be used to create the semi-hexahonal shape of the container, which will be largely made with styrene. That concludes this week’s build log. Don't forget that you have until October 12th to get your deposit in to get your kit at $300 CAD. Next week’s update will already show a significant leap forward, so stay tuned!

As of today, I will be accepting pre-order payments for the 1/350 Starfish (Garfish) project. The full kit price is $300 Canadian + shipping for those who make their deposit payment before October 13. From October 13th and onward, the kit will still be available, but the price will be $330 + shipping. -The amount due between now and October 12th: $150 Canadian The balance will be due upon completion of the masters, circa late October/early November. Patrons located in Canada/the U.S. can send payment to me directly, while international patrons can direct their payments to @return2kitform I have already begun work on the masters, and you can expect the first scratchbuilding update next Friday, the 18th.

Apologies for the long silence, I mostly just update my facebook page. Yes, project is a go. I will begin taking deposits on Sept 11th. For those who pay the ($150 CAD) deposit up until Oct 12th, the kit price is $300 + shipping. On Oct 13 and onward, the kit price jumps to $333 + shipping.

Let's not forget the one-piece canopy with integrated HUD. It's not a substantial remolding, but an almost complete retooling.

Unlikely. The Dark Legioss requires significant retooling and it makes more sense to milk the existing dies before investing in new ones.

I took Sentinel's 1/48 Legioss and the original anime style sheets and compared them to re-plot the ship's size. There are stated numerical values, rendered size comparisons, both of which contradict each other, and then you have to have a ship that will actualy allow the fighters to fit inside the hangar bays while still doing justice to what the stylists created. That said, the stats posted on MAHQ are utterly off. You didn't think I was going to take the lazy way out, did you?