(DONE Pics Pg. 3) Starfleet Ferengi Maurader "U.S.S. Xander"

[TheChronicOne]

What if during first contact with the Ferengi things didn't go sour and instead the Federation and the Ferengi Alliance became fast friends? That's what I'm talkin' bout!!!!    Anyway.... they eventually made a trade deal so the UFP got the license and schematics and blah blah blah to start producing their own Mauraders! 

The wares:



Yeah buddy it's just a seven piece kit!       Still, the backside of this thing is serrated/scalloped a bit and will probably create a fair amount of work when it comes to sanding. But... really??? A Mugatu could build this thing... it all comes down to painting it. For something like this to look worth a darn it will need some detail painting and shading and things of that nature. I'll try, for the first time, a bit of preshading on it and will try to do some things with different texture, etc.

Having to use spare transfers. I lucked out, however, and found everything I need! I thought I had burned through some of the pertinent needed bits of red striping but I found plenty along with things to use for windows as this kit doesn't have them molded in.

I actually built this very kit about 25 years ago but I can't remember any of it. All I know is I put it together and played with it. There was no painting or decalling...   Anyway... I'll need to do some dry fitting and just looking at it I can see things that will need filing to get the symmetry I need.

[TheChronicOne]

Got started on main construction about 5 minutes ago.

Already done! 

"Just gotta glue on the fiddly bits now!" 

Gotta wait on the glue to dry then see what I can do to sand the rear of this thing. Also, due to the shape of the sprue connecting to this thing, even with flush side sprue cutters, there are places that will need filler and PSR.

Still, all this won't take very long, I don't THINK. All the time on this one will be wrapped up in the paint work.

[nighthunter]

Ah, the Adversaries 3 kit Ferengi Marauder. How I loathed it, lol. I took the Klingon BOP, and got rid of the rest. It took a lot of work to get the BOP shipshape, putty, plasticard, and patience, lol. It was so with it, that the Romulan Warbird got me another BOP in trade, and the process repeated itself, lol! Looking forward to seeing how your Marauder turns out.

[TheChronicOne]

Ah, the Adversaries 3 kit Ferengi Marauder. How I loathed it, lol. I took the Klingon BOP, and got rid of the rest. It took a lot of work to get the BOP shipshape, putty, plasticard, and patience, lol. It was so with it, that the Romulan Warbird got me another BOP in trade, and the process repeated itself, lol! Looking forward to seeing how your Marauder turns out.

Thanks!!  Yeah brotha.... these things are kind of beastly aren't they?!  lol    I remember the BoP being my favorite out of the bunch..... I also remember gluing the engines on the Warbird the wrong side out. . . ...  .   

[TheChronicOne]

Getting some work done on this one finally.


Ignore the silvery airplane. It's just in the photo because I used this in my blog thread as well. If anyone is interested in what that is, go check it out in the blogs forum.

Last time around I used a fair amount of glue to kind of fill the large gap created from gluing the two main pieces together. Took awhile for the glue to dry up then I went in and sanded it. Not perfect but at least now the seam area looks more integrated and part of the actual design instead of a canyon running through the build. I also sanded away the "slag" and other areas that were "messed up" from trimming and glueing. I used this awesome sanding block type sponge thing that has wound up being an invaluable tool because it COUNTOURS TO THE WORK really, really well in certain instances. About to go buy 5 more of the things. . . .



Not too bad! I can definitely live with that.

Anyway, over the past 1.5 hours I've sprayed it with a coat of grey primer followed by 4 mists coats then a final wet coat of white. I will now let it hang around and dry for no less than 48 hours then it's time for my pre shading experimentation.

I'm still not entirely sure how the final paint scheme will be but some parts will be grey and of course the requisite reds and blues that make Starfleet ships look so nice!  Should be fun.. I'm especially looking forward to how I can make the engine areas look where the clear parts go.



Until next time!

[TheChronicOne]

White paint is done and ready for pre shading. I've never done it before so uhhh......  don't expect much. I'm not going to get crazy with it, either. I just want to get my feet wet and see if it's something I could possibly choose to get better at and incorporate into other things.

That's what I'll be doing next.  Otherwise... there is one little piece that glues to the top that I guess I should paint. I'm thinking of painting it grey I guess.

After that, though, it's time for more white paint... enough coats to cover up the pre shading sufficiently then I'll let it sit around for a few days and dry. After that, not much left but transfers and one last coat of clear to end with the gluing on of the clear pieces.

Current state:

[TheChronicOne]

OK, all done with the pre-shading! 

Not trying to get carried away, at all. I just want to get a feel for it. To that end, the underside, followed by the top side:






Yay?

Anyway... I don't wany to put more coats of white on until the white already on there is done doing its thing. According to the directions and stuff... If I'm going to do multiple coats, I either need to do them within 15 minutes of each other or I need to let it dry up sufficiently. Problem with outgassing or some such yadda yadda or something. It would probably be fine but I rather like not risking it.

[TheChronicOne]

Put another coat of white paint on. Good to go! The pre shading did its thing. Not too pleased with some parts but other parts of it turned out pretty well although methinks some of the line I made could have been thinner and also less messy. But, whatever!!! Looks fine to me. 

Now on to the painting. This is important on this one because of all the different panels and such on here. It would look totally boring and just plain not right for the entire thing to be white and just have transfers on it. I have to do SOMETHING to put some variations on this so I elect to paint some of the raised panels grey.

I chose the right color then somehow started painting with the color I didn't want to use.  EH??    Oh well... this is cool because I decided I could use both shades and have even more diversity of color. Not a bad idea! I guess my sub conscience was looking out for my best interests.





MANY more colors to come. I plan on going Full Hippy on the areas where the clear parts go that represent the warp engines. I want to put not only blues in there but try to put some thin lines of purple, red,  yellow even to give it a bit of depth. I was thinking of doing the inside of the rim red, then the flat surface will be based in blue then I can come back with more shades of blue moving into purple then trying running a bit of yellow in there. At that point I can dry fit the clear pieces and see if it looks OK or not. If not, I can try something else! I'm actually looking forward to this part quite a bit.

Other things... hmmm... some of the raised panels are enough off the rest of the hull that I would like to experiment painting with sponge material. The panels there toward the front of the top part of the crescent .... those I will try this on. The rest will be hand painted then finally I will come back in and fix all the areas where I went out of the lines... and there are a bunch so far.

[TheChronicOne]

Here we go again! I take two pictures the same identical way mere seconds apart... one looks great, one looks like I took it from the bottom of a swimming pool. 

Oh well..... been painting. This is going to take awhile. Not only will it take some odd amount of coats in certain places but I'm definitely going to have to come back and cut in and do mutliple passes of clean up.



 

Oh well!! Progress is being made and I think the new color is definitely making this look better.

[TheChronicOne]

Looking forward to getting back to work on this.

I'm going to do a bit of sanding and the like on my C-Fury project and try to get it to the stage I can finish gluing all the main components to the body of the plane then I plan to devote the remainder of my modeling activities today to this thing.

I could potentially be done with it today as I'm well on my way painting it and if I can get that done I can gloss it and start the decaling.

That said, there's this little seperate raised piece I need to paint and I'm thinking of giving it a construction flare as this is a salvage ship. So.... like a dark grey with yellow stripes on it. What is it? Who know, but it should look neat. As always, if it does not, I can just paint over it and call it good.

TTYL

[TheChronicOne]

Painting for the last ~2 hours. This is tedious stuff on here and I try not to mask much. I did mask SOME because they were just straight lines but everything else is by hand and of course there will be a ton of touch up.

Well, we now have 7-8 different colors on here with more to come. Trying to walk the line between good detail and "tacky" and so far so good, I think.



Probably going to let the main ship sit around for awhile and shift me efforts to the little part that glues on top and see if I can get something going with that while I "rest" from painting on the rest.

[TheChronicOne]

Great googly moogly the paint work is tedious on this lil hocky puck looking horsecrab lookin half frisbee boomerang moon lookin . . . .. .. . 

It's turning out nice, though! I've already started on touch up and some areas are done, even.








Probably 3-4 more hours worth of painting over all. I'd GUESS it was more like two but I always factor in time for mistakes and clean up because it always happens. That, and trying to keep all this white clean using these reds and what not.... woo...   lots of breaking to wash my hands and a lot of very calculated maneuvers.

[TheChronicOne]

One last update. Yet another round of clean up work done. Getting closer and closer!

[TheChronicOne]

*$*%&(^$&(^^&@%$ Camera I swear! I fought this lil monkey and gave up with mediocre photos. 

Oh well.... Painting continues. I'm getting painfully close but the closer I get the more tedious the touch up.

I'm getting to the point now, however, where my skills just aren't up to par and my lack of superior tools coupled with said skill level means I'm reaching a precipice and to continue further will be an exercise in futility. But, hells bells, from more than a foot (meter...? whatever... reasonably small measurment) it looks fantastic. It's just..... man... pictures brings out all the flaws.

ANYWAY.



Front... you can see there where I still need to work on the darker grey panels. I think I'll be leaving the blue panels and the two lighter shades of grey panels along the crescent rim alone. Those all look nice to my eye.. its just these darkers ones giving me fits. But... they getter better and better each round of touch up so we're moving in the right direction!!


Camera work a bit better this time but you can see where I stand. The four red parts (impulse engines[sub light speed engines]) are still a bit wonky. These two colors don't exaclty get along.    You should have seen this crap earlier.     But, getting close to done with those then I'm coming back in with yellow and maybe some orange colored pencils to put in some hilites. Also, the grey scallop area....  cleaned that up a bunch today and I'd say I'm somewhere around 80-85% done with that. Just a bit more touch up.

The things left are the warp engines, the pincers, the drop ship, and other underside detail.

I stopped and counted today and I'm up to 11 different colors applied to this so far!       Glad I decided to get after it though... this would be boring as hell if I left it mainly all white.  Man, I can't wait to start decalling this....  I bet once the transfers are on it will be busy, but in a good way. (I hope so)

TTYL

[PR19_Kit]

That looks very intricate, specially for a model that size. And looking very good so far too.