1/72 Lancer II step-by-step

[Grayson72]

Well I finally got up enough nerve to try a resin kit. I gotta build em sometime .

I decided for my first resin kit to tackle Cobywan's excellent garage kit of the 1/72 Lancer II kit. An obscure mecha that didn't get much screen time, but the more obscure the better for me anyway. I chose this kit because it is relatively straightforward with few parts and isn't quite as rare and challenging as my other kits I have. Some of which I'd kill myself if I screwed up.

This won't be so much a step-by-step as it will be progress shots, should be pretty short work too since there's not too many parts.

I scrubbed the model with a toothbrush and some dishsoap and then soaked it in soapy water.

I filled and sanded the model with some putty in some areas and Mr. Surfacer 500 in others. I filled in the deep set holes for the semi-circles because I have decals for those, I think it will look better.

At first I tried spraying with rustoleum gray primer because I had read you should primer resin kits. Well it didn't stick too well and I wound up wiping it all off with paint thinner. So I'm going with straight Tamiya acrylics and it seems to be sticking pretty good, it shouldn't be a problem after I coat it with future and then flat laquer finish.

Another first for this model is pre-shading. The post shading I tried with my VF-1A CF's wasn't subtle enough for me so I thought I'd give this a try.

Here's a shot of the main body with the top and bottom engine nacels (sp?) glued on.

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the main cannons. The very ends of the cannons were brittle and thin and not totally uniform so I cut them off and replaced with brass tubing. I bought the tubing at my local hobby store. I then cut some tiny pieces of it with my Dremel tool using a cutoff wheel. I super glued them inside the ends of the cannons (which just happened to fit perfectly). The brass was a bit rough from the cutoff wheel and not totally the same size so I cleaned them up a bit more with my bench grinder. After that I cleaned them up even more with my jewelers files. Sounds like a lot of work for such a teeny part but it wasn't that big of a deal and I really like how they came out.

[Grayson72]

Here's a closup shot of the brass ends.

[Myersjessee]

great idea Chad! I can't wait to see more!

[robokochan]

Wow Chad! Looks Sweet! Can't wait to see more pics. Keep 'em comin'!

Rob MN

[Grayson72]

Here's some more parts that I've painted. The darker parts are burnt iron and the others are gunmetal. The gunmetal is a bit shiny bit it'll tone down after I spray the flat laquer finish on it. I decided to use different metallic paints to add a little more interest.

[Less than Super Ostrich]

Great! I'll watch this anxiously! Looks like your building instead of buying for a change!

[Grayson72]

Great! I'll watch this anxiously! Looks like your building instead of buying for a change!

Heh, yeah, I'm running out of room in my Macross cabinet and I wanna keep all my Macross kits in one place.

[wm cheng]

Great job so far - sorry to hear that the post shading didn't work out for you, I'll be interested in seeing how the pre-shading will be (I've never done it this way before). You might need a fair bit of the light colour to cover up all that black though.

Don't go building too much, you were my "See darling... look how much they have compared to what they've built! - I just need a few more boxes..."

The gun barrels look great!

[Grayson72]

Here's a part that was really fun for me on this model. Digging through my decals box to figure out what I wanted to use on this puppy. Here's a shot of the first pass, I may use more.

[Grayson72]

Ok here's the finished pic, I'm gonna put the rest of them in the regular model section.

[mechaninac]

Bravo! Looks fantastic.