#avengersd

[captainmarvelthekree]

Thanos and Death by ChristopherStevens

[themarvelageofcomics]

Page from AVENGERS #53 by John Buscema and George Tuska

A border note from Buscema reads:

THEN I PULL THESE TWO THINGS AND THE WORLD IS MINE!

[sirfondlebottom]

Sides attached, hangar attached. I've started the massive cleanup job, it will include cleaning up all the joints and air holes, side trenches and any details that are badly out of shape. There was a fairly large fit problem behind the hangar where the 4 pieces meet and you can see how I've applied filler to that area, it's about a 1 cm gap. To keep my sanity I'm rough with the filler and bulldoze over detail when sanding. I then add it back with styrene and re-scribing which is way quicker than working around every detail.

Once this is done it's time to start drilling the myriad of holes for the fiber optic strands and start seeing a therapist regularly!

[sirfondlebottom]

I think I'll name my clamps, they're total bros.

I used styrene strip as spacers to get the trenches level, afterwards I filled the gap left below with Plastic Padding "Finspackel" which is a very fine, very hard, non-shrinking and well gripping filler. It adds very nice rigidity and will help the internal structure to keep the shape and combat warping.

[sirfondlebottom]

The side trenches have a myriad of air bubbles and what I guess is damaged moulds from previous castings of the kit. There's even pieces of rubber left in mine, so the next one would be worse and so on. There's also slight warping but that will be hidden when it's in place.

Three pieces make up each side and as always, clamp and glue. I'm using frames meant to hold shelves to clamp to, which I found cheaply at the local DIY store.

[sirfondlebottom]

All put together, the 4 pieces making up the belly are clamped together as per the instructions. Tons and tons of clamps are needed for this build. I also bought a belt sander to take care of the clean-up on these parts and I can only recommend doing so.

[sirfondlebottom]

Slight warping taken care of via clamping to flat surface and then blowing with a hair dryer to make the resin stay in the flat shape.

After making sure they're flat, the pieces are epoxied together. Although I did use some styrene strips as spacers there’s a wee difference between the two I’ll have to address later with some sanding and filler.

[sirfondlebottom]

Randy Cooper Avenger Star Destroyer

Mr. Cooper himself... this is a just perfectly sized model <3

I acquired this kit second hand on ebay. I had read on forums (and seen pictures) of kits in horrible shape so I was very apprehensive about buying one with the sheer amount of work that would go into it even if it was in good shape. The seller said this is one of the first batches made by Randy and sent pictures showing good parts not close to the pictures I'd seen of later kits, like here: http://www.therpf.com/f11/randy-cooper-blockade-runner-buy-not-buy-97635/#post2672485

After receiving the kit I can say it is in very good shape and not even close to the pictures in the link above.

Parts have slight warping on the larger pieces, which I've this far solved with clamping to a flat surface and a hair dryer. After seeing other builds online I also decided to throw together a simple "dock" for the kit to rest on when working. Other than that, there seems to be pretty bad fit between the larger parts, but nothing some filler and sanding haven't solved this far.

Some parts have air bubbles everywhere which will take a while to hunt down, but they're not much of an issue, just point applications of filler and minor sanding. On the flip side, some parts are squeaky clean and present awesome detail with only minor clean up.

I intend to light it which will be a first for me, but with the model being what it is anything else would be half-assed :D I'm also planning to add internal wooden structure in addition to the resin bulkheads, if not replacing the resin bulkheads completely to prevent warping.