Bandai Y-Wing 1:72

I'm having building work done on my house which means that I've had to lose my hobby space. I wasn't in the best run of form anyway, so this has really hampered my productivity. To get out of the dust zone, my kids and I went to my parents for the weekend and as is customary, I had a rummage around my old bedroom in the hope of finding a few nuggets of nostalgia and hopefully old models! Well I found one! A boxed Bandai Y-Wing (1:72) that I received for Christmas a few years ago. Joy. With my parents taking the kids out for the day, I set to work on constructing the tiny, detailed model.

Having worked on some quite difficult Airfix models with my son (small fiddly bits that need lots of gluing and don't fit particularly well) I was amazed that I did not need any glue to make successfully build this and the level of detail and quality was pretty astounding. I would definitely recommend these kits to any serious model-maker.

I wish I had the larger scale version to fit in with my Star Wars Imperial Assault minis, but I can imagine creating a diorama where this hangs in the sky, it's smaller scale lost in the perspective of distance.

Once the kit was built the yellows were painted on (rather than use the rubbish decals) and then the weathering which was done very quickly. Without applying a primer, I washed a dirty brown, very dilute oil paint mixture over the entire model and when dry applied a further range of acrylic washes over this including blacks for the burnt effect near the engines and browns over some of the pipes. A few of the details, including the pilot, droid and lights were then picked out with acrylic paint.

Overall it was a very enjoyable day making and painting this. Back home, I've established a temporary site for my hobby exploits, so (fingers crossed) expect a few more posts in the near future of a variety of different projects.