I am a crappy modeler

Hasegawa makes some really nice models. The quality of the molds are excellent and the scribing is really good. I want you to know this.

I have (had?) a beautiful, 1/72 scale plastic model of the VF-1A Super Valkyrie featured in Macross: Do You Remember Love that I bought when I was still living in San Francisco. I kept this model in storage for about 6 years or so, waiting for the moment to come when I would be a sophisticated enough modeler to really do it justice.

I am still waiting for this moment.

Regardless, I got off my duff in January and decided to start building it (update: you can read about how this happened in this post).

Now, if you’re not that familiar with model-building, there are some things you’re supposed to do to minimize the amount of problems you’ll encounter during the build, and maximize your chances of ending up with a model you can be proud of. I heard about most of these about halfway through the kit. It was the wrong half, by the way. The God of Modeling here will enlighten us on how things should (have) be(en) done.

Wash all the pieces in water/mild soap/dishwashing liquid

“Pizza covered hands are kinda like soap…”

Clip model pieces off the runner/sprue (the little skeleton that holds the pieces) and never twist or pull them off by hand

“Pull them off by hand? Okay.”

Sand down bumps and “flash” left from the sprue and the injection molding process

“I don’t have any sandpaper. Hmm. Hey, an X-acto knife!”

Prime your pieces to reveal imperfections and increase paint adhesiveness

“Let’s see…primer…primer…what’s this? Gloss White. Ah. That’ll do.” (PSSSSSHHHHHHHHH)

Fill in seams with putty/glue/filler and sand till they’re flush

“Paint’ll cover up these seams, right?” (PSSSSSHHHHHHHHH)

You’re not listening to me at all, are you?

“Who said that?”

And that, my friends, is how I killed a Hasegawa Super Valkyrie. I don’t think I’ll go into how I tried to re-scribe some of the panel lines using my knife after I oversprayed the entire thing, or how the wings no longer have corner lights because I flinched with the tweezers, twice, sending them both into the ether. Oh, did I mention the kit is discontinued, too? Yeah. There’s that. I killed an awesome model that I can no longer replace (read: cheaply). And it’s from my favorite anime series ever.

This pretty much sums it up.

_{Not pictured: workmanship}

I thought it was mostly beyond repair, but I still have about half the model left. The sub-assemblies I can sand and fill. I can prime anything that hasn’t been painted, and sand and fill them as well. There is a huge section that’s been painted, though. I can try to strip it, but I don’t know how the plastic will fare. The cockpit is out of reach (unless I risk popping off the windshield). I’ve been thinking I might be able to just redo it with the blast shield down so no one has to look at the misery I’ve wrought in there.

The upside to all this is that I probably won’t ever build a model this poorly ever again. The downside is everything else.

(update: Hasegawa still makes one circulating Super/Strike Valkyrie, but at $50-ish dollars after shipping, I think I’d rather take the learning experience of trying to repair mine)