While waiting for the paint to cure on the rest of the Falcon, I started painting the turbo laser cockpits. I added some black to the barrels of the turbo lasers themselves. It helps give them some depth. Then I painted and assembled the cockpit seats. They were pretty simple, the only colors needed were flat black and some silver. There are supposed to be some lights on the targeting computer boxes but I couldn’t find a proper place to put them and the details don’t lend themselves to lights either. They look pretty good nonetheless.
Next I started on the cockpit interiors. Lots of panels, some gray, some light gray, some black and a couple red. Then a bunch of silver for the ribbed hoses and lots of lights. On some of the lights I over coated with transparent red or yellow. The effect came out nice. Some of my panel borders are not the straightest, but they are not too bad. When you look at them from the angle of the front windows they look much better.
It took a few days to finish the cockpits, so by this time the base coat on the rest of the Falcon was cured. I got out my spray can of Tamiya TS-13 Clear to provide a smooth base to start applying the decals. I needed to apply a few of the decals before I could finish the assembly. Then I can finish applying decals and then start the weathering process.
I used the Tamiya TS-13 Clear spray on my 2001 Discovery One model recently and the base coat on it was also Vallejo paint. In that case it was Model Color White Gray. This time I had used Vallejo Model Air White Gray for the base coat. After spraying the sections I went back to inspect them in case there were some places I had missed. That was when I noticed that many areas now had alligator skin where the paint looked cracked and the surface was slightly rough.
I’ve never had a problem with paint cracking like this before. I checked online and sure enough, many others reported a similar thing happening when applying spray can Tamiya TS-13 Clear over Vallejo Model Air. Well that was just great! It will take me a while to figure out how to remedy this situation, so the next post may be a bit delayed. Lesson learned.
I do have some Tamiya X-22 Clear Gloss that I can try. It may work out better, since it is an acrylic. My big mistake apparently is that the spray can clear is a lacquer that can have that type of effect on some acrylic paints. Since X-22 is acrylic it might work better. I’ll try it on a test piece first so I don’t end up with another disaster on my hands.
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking.
Luhman-ations 