Refurbishing an old Regult kit

[jardann]

Hi everyone. I've been pretty quiet on these boards lately, but I've begun work on an old Imai Regult 1/72 kit and I thought I would post some pics about it here. I actually started a WIP thread over on Starshipmodeler Forums, but since this is a Macross kit I thought it would be good to post here as well.

This kit came to me from a large lot of built and unbuilt kits that I picked up off of Ebay a long time ago. I got a ton of stuff for cheap and have had a bunch of fun looking through all of the old kits and random stuff that was thrown in the lot. The Regult kit had been built, but was done pretty poorly and was in pieces anyway. You can see the state the parts were in in the following pics:

Pieces

Close up of the head, showing the heavy and sloppy paint job and the ugly seams.

You can see in this pic that one of the thruster details for the "ear" parts is installed upside down and the paint is piled on the one part.

Those thruster detail parts had to come off, but unfortunately the edges broke into ragged pieces and I decided to scratchbuild some replacements.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jardann

[jardann]

Looking at the box top and line art for the Regult, I decided that the thruster housings on the "ears" were more round than the original parts represented. So, I scrounged around and found a couple of these to start with:

They are old PC microphones. I am using the microphone end part and cutting it to conform to the "ear" part on the Regult.

After a bunch of cutting, grinding, sanding and filing:

I was able to come up with these new thruster housings:

You can see the difference here:

I'm pretty pleased with them and I have found the perfect size bell housings to fit in the ends to represent the actual thruster nozzles.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jardann

[jardann]

Oh yeah, the kit had some exciting "bonus" figures riding around inside the box too. Take a look at these specimens!

Pathetic aren't they?

[jardann]

OK, so I tried to sand all of the rough paint off of the parts. The head and the one ear were the worst. I hit the legs too.

At this point I wanted to get an idea of how the model would be posed. This needed to be put into a fixed pose because most of the joints were loose and wobbly, or just falling apart. This is the pose I decided to go with:

I think it has at least a little bit of life to it.

I secured the pose by cementing all of the joints into position using Tamiya Extra Thin cement. It works quickly and flows easily into the seams in those tight spots. After that, I turned my attention to the legs. I added shims to the seams with wide gaps and also wedged plastic into the spaces left at the joints in order to secure them a bit more.

Then I puttied all of the seams and left the parts to cure for a couple of days.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jardann

[jardann]

I was able to spend some time on the kit yesterday and so there was much sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and.....you get the idea.

After I had the seams taken care of (relatively), I decided to add some detail at the joints that were really moved out of place due to the pose. I cut some concentric ring shims to fill in the spaces at the joints. Hopefully they provide a little bit of detail in those areas.

Tonight I was able to get a layer of primer on the head and ears. The primer does reveal some flaws, but I think I'll be able to live with them. I want to dirty this Regult up a bit and make it look kind of worn and used up. Hopefully the flaws will blend in a bit as I add the weathering.

My goal is to get this finished by next Tuesday so that I can take it to the local IPMS meeting. The theme for this month is "anything Japanese" so I think the Regult will fit in nicely!

Thanks for looking in on the thread, and please feel free to share any thoughts and ideas. I'll post some more as I make progress.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jardann

[grapetang]

Nice progress! It's always fun working on discarded kits like these. No fear of cost, modifications, nor perfection (not to say that it won't be perfect! ) Looking forward to seeing the Regult come to life!

[Gian]

Nice!

It would be cool if you replace the "eye" for a retroilluminated red crystal ball

[Gabe Q]

This makes me wanna pick up a couple of the Bandai reissues and build em up! Great work.

[EXO]

WOW! That's so cool with the microphone parts! It's actually really interesting to see someone recover a badly painted model as oppose to a new model from scratch... can't wait to see more.

[jipe]

Thanks to save this old poor regult kit

Do you plan to apply the standart color scheme ? thinking about it as we see so many scheme for the valks. It could be great to see a non cannon scheme.

No project on the figures ?

[Kurisama]

Nice! Lovely to see this get a second life - good work!

[jardann]

Thanks for the interest guys! Gabe, the repops are pretty reasonably priced, and to be honest, the "bones" of this kit aren't bad. The joint system is pretty ingenious and they seemed to work pretty well although they coudl be fragile and loosen up over time. That's why I have to go with a fixed pose for this refurb. It is kind of freeing to work on these old kits because there's nothing to lose and I can experiment as much as I want.

jipe, It's funny that you mention that because I was just contemplating some changes to the scheme as I worked on the kit last night. The decals had to be sanded off and I don't have exact replacements. I do have some other Zent style decals but they are a bit different. I just might follow your suggestion and mark this pod up as if it was from a different platoon or something.

Keep watching guys.

Hopefully I can get this done by next week.

[jipe]

I was thinking on a blue / white Regult who likes to be green as a Q-Rau or something like that.

I should try by myself on a kit.

Edited July 12, 2012 by jipe

[jardann]

Green is the first color that comes to mind, but that's not a big variation from the blue. Purple could be an option, just like the male power armor. Or it could be orange for a trainer like the VF-1D! Limitless possibilities!!

Last night I got the head part all taped up ready for painting so I've got to decide. I really want to get some paint on it tonight if possible.

Does anyone know how long Tamiya fine primer needs to cure before spraying a color coat over it? It sure does leave a nice durable surface.

[derex3592]

I never had any problems painting over it the next day after I sprayed it. Cool restoration build! I have the re-release of this kit in my pile of things to build.

[MechTech]

I think its too late now, but don't forget that soaking it in some Pinesol will strip the paint off without harming the plastic. I actaully tried it my self first. Looks great so far! I'd be paranoid that the mic thrusters still worked - MT

[big F]

Excellent use of the Mic parts, and kudos for re-animating the old mashed up kits.

I never built my one of these but I do have the re-pop of it.

Also I have the 1/200 Monster kit which I built in 1984 and my brother modified in the late 80's I plan to restore it to original as I have a re-pop of it so I can recreate decals. I was thinking of a Low-Vis type paint up for it.

Rule 1 in model making never throw any kits out no matter how hidieous the build was and never never throw out the left over parts on the sprews.

Rule 2 anything made of plastic can be use in modeling as parts replacement..

[Benson13]

How about a Minmay Guard Regult?

[jardann]

Hah! Great idea Benson, but it's definitely too late for that now. A Minmay guard theme of her red Chinese dress would be hilarious!

Thanks for the tip MechTech, but I wasn't too worried about some uneven paint as I wanted the kit to look a bit old and used/reused by the Zents. We know they arean't supposed to really repair anything or do much maintenance on these and I wanted the finish to look a little rough or uneven, just not slathered on and drippy. I haven't used pine-sol, but for removing paint I have had good luck with a product called Greased-Lightning. It is a degreaser and is biodegradeable and pretty easy on the plastic too.

Well, I actually finished this baby last week. I spent a couple of very late nights finishing up and then when I checked back on the club website I realized that the "Anything Asian" theme night isn't until September!!! My own darn fault, but at least I finished a kit!! Now that I realize I have more time, I may add a touch more weathering and a nice flat coat, but it is done for all intents and purposes. Sorry I didn't post more in-progress pics as I went, but I thought I was under a severe time crunch!

[jardann]

I'm going to post the other pics I took now in the build order so you guys can see how the build progressed.

First are the legs after masking and painting. I have just started to remove some of the tape here:

A couple of pics of the legs with the fresh paint job:

It's pretty hard to make out with the poor lighting in these pics, but the dark areas are actually a very dark purple. I think it looks pretty good in person and I really liked the sheen that the paintjob had at this point, but I couldn't leave it like this. It was too clean for a Zentraedi mecha!

Next is a pic of the "ears" and the gun barrels. I was really pleased with the way these turned out. I used Tamiya gunmetal and then added some black and airbrushed in the shaded areas. The original two smaller guns on the chin area were broken, so I found some inexpensive paint brushes and I'm using the ferrules to replace the broken gun barrels.

I actually painted the rear hatch black and had just used a brush. I really wasn't happy with that though. So, I sanded the black down lightly, exposing some of the plastic again and then I gave it a light coat of the dark purple color. You can just make out some of the color variations that produced and I decided to go with it.

Edited July 23, 2012 by jardann

[jardann]

Next up is the head. Here it is still masked up from the painting session. I had masked for the body color. Then I had to add some more to protect from overspray of the purple and gunmetal colors.

Various angles of the head with the masking removed and the weathering begun:

The green isn't a dramatic change from the anime blue color, but I think it maintains the military feel and besides, these pods are for the average Zentraedi grunt so they don't get as bright and complex paintjobs as the armored soldiers or the Meltrandi elite warriors. (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

[jardann]

Here is a picture of the beginning of the weathering process for the legs. Mike Salzo had mentioned his process for weathering with acrylics on the acrylic base coat in his 1/48 pod thread. I tried his method, but I was either too impatient or too heavy handed and when I used the iso-alcohol it really tried to remove the base coat and I had to touch up a few spots on the head. So, I reverted back to oils and tried a ''filter" technique with various colors. You can see the dots of oil paint and the first streaking I did on the upper part of the leg. I think it worked well, but the red was too much. I ended up removing as much of the red as I could because it just overpowered the other colors and as it blended it just turned everything brown.

Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures of the weathering process. Once I got started, I just went at it until i was finished.

[jardann]

So here are some pics of the final assembly!

I'll try and take some pics out in the daylight one day soon just to see if they will show the details a little better.

I'm quite pleased with the results, especially considering what the pile of parts looked like at the start! Seams really are the bane of my modelling existence, and there are still some that show in spots on this model, but they are pretty small and over all I like having this baby finished and on the shelf. Like I said, finished is better than perfect and this one is done.

Thanks for all of the comments and support guys! It really helped keep me going while I was trying to finish this thing under my percieved deadline. lol! Anyway, more comments are always welcome and hopefully everyone enjoyed watching the process of this build. Let me know what you think!

[Gabe Q]

That is just a fantastic job! A touch of genius with the smaller guns on the chin. I'm really glad you took the time to post this for us. Thanks...

[Reïvaj]

Great job, thanks for sharing!

[Benson13]

Great job bro. You really turned that thing around.

[Kelsain]

Nice!

I'm just finishing up my old refurbished 1/100 - it's amazing how much better the proportions are on the 1/72!

seeing your work, I'd be tempted to pick up a 1/72 repop, but it'd probably sit around for another 20 years, like this one...

Edited July 23, 2012 by Kelsain

[Gian]

Fantastic work!

[jipe]

Really nice job. 1 Regult saved !

[big F]

Excellent job looks factory to me

[grapetang]

Great color scheme & nice work! Very creative replacements for the missing parts too!

Like I said, finished is better than perfect and this one is done.

I like that and should adopt it as a motto. Kanata sent me a similar bonus figure that would be worth "correcting". Have fun at the IPMS meet!

[Jefuemon]

How about a Minmay Guard Regult?

Hmmm, I know someone who has a set of decals available

[jardann]

Thanks guys! I'm glad you like it. I always enjoy seeing other people's WIPs and finished kits. It's nice to contribute some content back to the site.

Kelsain, I'd love to see some pics of your 1/100. They are nice, but yes, the detail and proportions are even better on the 1/72 regults. I highly suggest you pick up a repop! They are pretty reasonable now and the assembly is fairly simple. If I can rejuvenate this old one, it shouldn't take you too much effort to build one up straight from the sprues!

Grapetang, I first heard that motto over on the ScaleModelAddict website. A nice website for all around modeling with a lot of Sci-fi too. I think it rings true in almost all situations, but especially this hobby!

Those are some nice decals you have listed jefuemon, but I've already got two Minmei Guard valks waiting for bench time and I think I'd have to go a little different for a regult. It's a nice deal though, good luck and thanks for checking in!

[Kelsain]

Tonight I've got to put down some Future on mine - got some Insignia White that needs fixing, and I've already discovered you can't just brush that over the Tamiya acrylics. I'll snap some photos before hand and update my WIP thread that's buried somewhere...

[MechTech]

It came out great and the green still looks good. Nice job! At least somebody's cranking a finished model kit out - it's not me - MT