My Studio Scale TIE X-1 Advanced

[joberg]

Thanks for that info Jonathan I was just starting to explore brands of spray fillers

 

[swgeek]

You're welcome. The Upol is really good lightweight primer, perfect for delicate kit parts. They make a ton of different primers and some don't react well to styrene, so make sure you test it on something before you paint a piece you've spent weeks on. I get it at Auto Zone her in CA.

 

[The 48th Ronin]

Yes, thanks for that info.

Last year we went through some testing of different primers in the Laika model shop. We had been using NAPA primer, which was pretty good, but was prone to dry spray (in my experience) and more problematically, can failure (simply not spraying at all, or slow oozing loss of contents). We ran into supply chain issues with it though, which is what prompted the search for an alternative. One of the brands that we tried was Upol.

I personally have always preferred Evercoat primer (in addition to their glazing putties). I haven't needed to acquire any in a while though, so I'm not sure if availability has become a problem or not.

 

[swgeek]

The Evercoat rattle can primer I'm thinking of, I'm not sure you can get anymore. Too bad it was a good primer.
Tell Ken I said hi.

 

[joberg]

You're welcome. The Upol is really good lightweight primer, perfect for delicate kit parts. They make a ton of different primers and some don't react well to styrene, so make sure you test it on something before you paint a piece you've spent weeks on. I get it at Auto Zone her in CA.

I'm not sure I understand why some of their primers don't react well with styrene What are the major probs you had with those primers?

 

[swgeek]

I'm not sure I understand why some of their primers don't react well with styrene What are the major probs you had with those primers?

I'm not sure I do either. Certain primers must have a chemical that doesn't react well to styrene, acetone...etc. with the High 5, it will soften/melt styrene under the paint and the paint on top will crack.

 

[joberg]

I'm not sure I do either. Certain primers must have a chemical that doesn't react well to styrene, acetone...etc. with the High 5, it will soften/melt styrene under the paint and the paint on top will crack.

Wow...not good; thanks for the info

 

[swgeek]

Probably won't have any updates for a while, work is getting crazy, I have outside jobs to finish and real life is getting in the way.

Anyway, finished the lower "droid strip" today.

 

[Studio Kitbash]

That is flawless perfection. Man can you build these things!!!

It's also kind of amazing how in raw form it looks kind of wonky and uneven and kind of simple, but under a coat of primer it looks like you did it in Photoshop.

 

[rbeach84]

Indeed it does! Ain't paint wonderful!

;^)
R/ Robert

 

[philga]

WOW!!!

That is dang impressive!

(And I did not know you could laser-cut styrene -- was always told it produced cyanide and was lethal)

Following along closely.

I've never heard the thing about cyanide. I cut styrene with my laser all the time and I'm not dead yet.

 

[flimzy]

I'm finally getting around to starting my TIE Advanced thread.
As with all of my Studio Scale builds, I want to thank everyone who has done the hard work before me to ID the kits and share the information here. I also want to thank those individuals who have helped me directly to find those really hard to find ID's and kits. Thank you!
On with the build.
The first part I started with on this build that wasn't from my TIE Fighter project, was the wings.
I did a lot of work on the computer trying to figure out the dimensions of everything and laser cut the acrylic for the wings. I couldn't find any acrylic that wasn't metric, no matter what the acrylic shop said. After cutting and gluing the wing parts together I compensated for the incorrect acrylic thickness with .015 and .02 sheet styrene.
View attachment 1773973

Next was cutting up TIE wing stars for the interior central detail piece and exterior and interior vertical ribs. After that I glued on the Panther G parts and sheet styrene.

I could never find the correct light diffusion for the solar panels, so I modeled them in Rhino and printed them. I printed one master big enough for the largest of the solar panels (most of the panels are different sizes from inside to outside and from one wing to the other.) I then molded the master and cast all the solar panels, trimming each one to the correct size.

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And cat for scale.
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Next was the pylons (or what I call pylons). Again, I modeled these in Rhino and laser cut the parts out of .03" styrene. As with most of my builds, it took me three tries to get them (what I hope is) right.

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This is where it stands now. Most of the parts are just on temporarily.

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Wonderful

 

[joberg]

Crisp/sharp/cool

 

[greeble_gremlin]

Spot-on

This is the way!