Back in the day, these model kit posts were almost always accompanied by a showcase of some new tool or gimzo that I added to my collection. That has not happened in a long time. Truth be told, I probably did pick up some new doodads here and there over the last few years, but none of them have been earth shatteringly useful or exotic, so I felt no need to mention them.
This time, however, I am quite excited to show off two new additions to my arsenal. The first one is rather big, and very exciting:
When we moved into a new house, I lost access to my old workbench, so some family chipped in and got me this one for Christmas. It comes from Harbor Freight, home of the best knockoff tools China can make. With two drawers, a built-in light, and plenty of space, it gets the job done. Most importantly, unlike the last workbench, this one is all mine (Mrs. Wolfe has her own bench on the other side of the room).
The second item is another holiday gift courtesy of Mrs. Wolfe. It is much smaller, but has the potential to be extremely potent:
I don’t remember ever seeing this in any craft store, so I am extremely grateful that she found it. This should make weathering my models much easier. I have no idea how it works, but it says “applicator included”. How hard could it be?
Oh, hey, I am supposed to talk about an actual model kit now, huh? Okay then, we can build the Second Death Star, the one I mentioned here.
The Build
One of the truths about Star Wars’ is that due to its ubiquity, its space ships and technology have been rendered, drawn, reproduced, and reinterpreted in any number of different works in any number of different mediums. On one hand, this is nice, as it gives a model kit builder a certain amount of creative freedom. On the other hand, if you happen to want your model to look exactly how you remembered it being “back in the day”, you have to find sufficient reference photos to use as a guideline. That can be easier said than done.
For the Second Death Star, I plan on taking a hybrid approach. I plan on using this photo as my baseline reference:
I love the look of the Death Star’s exterior in this shot. It uses two shades of grey that are irregularly and unevenly weathered. The Death Star is such a simple shape, and this is a great way to give it some texture and character.
What I do not love in this shot is the look of the unfinished side of the space station. It uses the same color as the exterior, and while that may or may not make sense (I honestly do not know whether it makes sense!), I think the interior guts would look better using a different color entirely. Obviously this would provide a greater sense of contrast, and in turn I believe it might give a greater sense of depth and dimensionality. This is important, as we rarely (if ever) see the Second Death Star from any angle other than this front shot. Without seeing the unfinished half from the side of the back, it can be difficult to get a sense of what just how unfinished it really is. This is why I plan on giving my model kit that extra bit of color separation. Time will tell if it will end up being the right decision.
The entire kit fits on a single runner, which you can see here:
(Spoiler Alert for the future posts - all of the kits I got for Christmas fit onto a single runner)
My first reaction is that this does not feel like enough pieces. Are those handful of exterior pieces really enough to cover the entire thing? Are those interior pieces enough to fill it up with stuff? I mean, I guess I know the answer already, but still - how is this going to come together? And how big is it going to be when finished?
I began working on the exterior pieces first. I figured I needed three types of paint here:
- A simple, plain grey to represent the innermost shell
- A blue-grey to represent the paneling placed atop the inner shell
- Some black to add weathering
I also figured I would apply all three colors in that exact order. Bad idea. Turns out the best approach was to reverse the order of the first two colors. In other words, star with the blue-grey:
Then fill in the cracks and crevices:
I have to say, this looks really good already. The panel lines are so thin in some places that even when using my smallest brush I found myself needing to wipe away excess paint. This ended up smearing/streaking/mixing with the other grey in a way that makes it look appropriately distressed. I could be happy leaving it like this, but fortune favors the bold. Let’s try adding that one final bit of weathering:
It looks better in person, but all things considered this pretty much the look I was striving for. Well, except for the Super Laser dish. The instruction booklet shows a weird, multicolored pattern on the dish, like so:
I simply could not recreate this exact pattern on such a small scale model. Instead I tried to emulate it using larger shapes and patterns. I think my approach could have worked, but without any guidelines, I had to do the whole thing freeform, and some of the patterns I painted look like a child’s work during a finger painting spree.
Moving on to the exterior, I decided that in order to get the color contrast I was looking for, I needed something darker. Not only that, but I thought it would look cool to give it a different texture as well. I ended up mixing about two-thirds shiny gunmetal grey paint with one-third black, and just a teensty hint of brown as well. The result is what you see here:
You may also notice some hints of rust coloration in this photo. That is the result of the Tamiya Weather Master I mentioned earlier. It turns out that it works a lot like eye shadow or blush, both in terms of the consistency of the compound, and the way in which it is applied (via a bursh/sponge tool). It gives you great control over how intense you want to the color to be; I can easily see myself using this stuff on nearly every kit I build going forward.
There is one other interior piece, which I call the “anchor” piece, as everything else plugs into here in one way or another.
This one is a bit of an oddball. You would be forgiven for assuming that only the top and bottom of this piece are visible in the finished kit, but the truth is that quite a lot of it can be seen. The question, then, was how to color it. I could have gone with the same gunmetal-esque look of the rest of the interior, but I really like some of the little conduits and pipes running along the wall. I decided to paint the piece flat grey, then fill in the details with Sterling Silver. I think this will add another welcome sense of color separation to the ensemble (that, or it will stick out like a sore thumb).
With that complete, the kit is ready for assembly. There are no decals to speak of, save for the one that goes on the display stand. Also, I only clearcoated the exterior pieces (I wanted to keep the interior parts looking shiny).
The Finished Kit
To borrow Darth Vader’s words from the legendary Star Wars Gangsta Rap - We got a Death Star
Sorry, I could not help but bring back a classic. But here is the actual Death Star:
Is it perfect? No, no kit ever is. But this is way closer than I ever expected to get to the vision I had in my head. I think the exterior colors mixed together perfectly to create that distressed look, without the colors all blending into a complete mess. As to the interior, I think the choice to use a darker color was the right one. I do not think it adds any extra sense of depth, as I previously speculated, but you can really see all the details that are etched into the interior pieces.
Now for the negatives. The biggest knock against this kit are the seam lines. Being a large globe, one could perhaps claim that seam lines were unavoidable here, but I still feel as if some of the pieces could secure more closely together, especially these narrow exterior pieces:
I tried my best to glue them together to minimize the appearance of the seam, but I had no way of keeping them secured together long enough for the glue to sufficiently cure.
You can see another egregious seam line here:
I tried to mask these by filling them in with paint, but it did not work as well as I hoped it would once the paint dried. Worse yet, it smeared way too much, forcing me to touch up some parts of the exterior again. I decided to just leave it alone after that.
Another negative is that the exterior is not uniformly colored. I painted each piece independently, and that means some of them are slightly darker than others. This is no big deal when different sections of a large piece gradually shift in tone, but when you have two differently colored pieces connect near each other …
My final complaint is not with the model, but with my photos - they do not show off the rusty highlights very well. This picture does the best job, but it still fails to do them justice:
Suffice to say I cannot wait to use this weathering kit again.
Back to the positives … I think it was the right call to use the grey and silver combo on the interior anchor piece. It adds another sense of detail and intricacy to the core of the model:
I also like how some of the interior pieces can be seen through gaps in the outer shell:
All in all, there is so much to take in with this kit. Every angle has something new to appreciate. It is certainly one of my favorite Star Wars kits so far, and I look forward to seeing it every day in my display case.
Other Thoughts
- I have stated before that so much of the appeal of these Bandai Star Wars kits comes from the sheer amount of detail poured into them, but this Death Star kit really drives home just how impressive it is that Bandai is able to put this much detail into these pieces, especially at this tiny scale. I have seen other Star Wars model kits from other manufacturers over the years, and more often than not they look like toys (or even worse than some toys). Bandai’s kits manage to look and feel like replicas, and that makes all the difference.
- You may have noticed the tiny lights I painted across the body of the kit. At first I disliked how these turned out, but they look much better on the finished product.
- In some of the photos I took, the clear plastic stand is almost invisible, giving the Death Star the illusion of actually floating around in the air. That was unintentional, but a very cool effect nonetheless.
- Earlier I mentioned how infrequently we see the unfinished side of the Death Star. That is not a problem with this kit, and wow … I don’t care how much the Emperor wants to claim this to be a “FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION”. This thing is only half finished.
- The fully assembled model is not large, but it is larger than I expected.
Next Up!
Next up is the other kit that came in the box - the Star Destroyer.