I picked up this little SD Kampfer at SCGMC 2012 from Tatsu Hobby, one of our vendors at the event. I sorta had the thing pinned and mostly sanded during the December 2012 build gathering. I did one mod to the kit, which was to add a styrene collar around the clear resin part that was the eye. This piece lights up and I wanted to have some focus to the light, as well as add a slight bit of detail to this rather plain section of the kit. Forward another year, again to the December model building gathering, this time, 2013; I take the kit out and continue to work on it. Filling in some of the bubbles I found, fully fixing the plastic collar piece so no light leaks. And getting some real sanding on the kit. The parts were then placed into a tub of purple power at the end of the build gathering; and subsequently forgotten about once again.
My excuse was that the Ver Ka Saz came out, the past several months saw to that progression. With the Saz done, I started back up where I had last left off, with the parts in the purple power. Even months soaking in purple power, the resin doesn’t get destroyed. I’d not recommend trying this with your own flesh; even the slightest touch of bare skin without quickly washing the stuff off will start a reaction. Wear gloves when dealing with the stuff.
First step was to finishing the cleaning started months ago. The parts are removed from the purple soup and place in some clean water. From the clean water, the parts are placed into the ultrasonic cleaner. Once run through the ultrasonic cleaner, they are removed and placed on a paper towel to completely dry.
Once completely dry, the parts are skewered or clamped, and the first layer of Mr Resin Primer is sprayed. This will show all the missed sanding spots and little surface defects still on the parts.
Since I don’t have any pinned pictures from two years ago, the below pictures will just have to do. There were some slight surface defects to deal with, but nothing major. So the parts were disassembled, resurfaced, reprimed, rechecked, and repeated if the fix didn’t take.
The progress for this kit was fairly quick, as I didn’t even bother to take pictures of the base paint. The base color is Alclad Silver Base, and over this was Alclad clear Indigo. I was originally going to use the Alclad Electric Blue that I picked up earlier in the year, but figured the Kampfer was always a darker purple tone, so I went with the Indigo. I’ll just have to save the Electric Blue for a future project.
Flat yellow is used for the thruster bell internals. The thruster bells were painted with Alclad Stainless steel as the blue tint matched the Indigo. This was a very quick spray job, so the paint for this kit isn’t competition level. I did go back and a fix a few things, but it was a project to blow off some steam. I added some decals and ran into the same issue that plagued me when I added decals to my 1/144 Sazabi. Letting things dry for a few days, I masked off the decals and carefully repainted the areas around the decal. The surface was already protected with Mr Super Clear, so it would be odd that Mr Decal Soften would react. My conclusion is may be the decal film used. I had no issues with the Sazabi during the decal process. But then again, I didn’t clear coat the surface before applying the decals, I clear coated after. Perhaps there is something to that. Further investigation is needed.
With the decal fixed, the parts were glued together, the mono eye piece was wired up, and the entire kit assembled. At this point, I still needed to do some panel lines; and this was a few weeks ago. As of this posting, I’ve gotten the panel lines done, I just need to wait for the lines to dry, do some clean up, then snap completed pictures.
