Brian Ludden’s Y-Wing

This is my Fine Molds Y Wing, done up as “Gold Leader”. All the parts are from the kit – I had thought about replacing some of the piping with some interesting aftermarket stuff I had on hand, but in this scale nothing looked really right.

The kit goes together really well. Be sure you read the directions carefully about how to place the curved pieces that make up the outside of the engine nacelles. I had securely glued several of them on the kit before I realized that I had them in the wrong positions.

The piping goes in well except for one of the set of 4 pipes that are on the bottom of the wings – I had no idea how to make it fit correctly.

The cockpit is a bit sparse but you really can’t see much in there after the canopy is put on.

The struts that come out of the engines fit really well, although they are a bit fragile so be careful with them. Again, make sure you have the right part numbers, there is one odd part number and that one has a different shaped locator for the end cap piece. When I glued these onto the nacelles, I used some nice ratchet type clamps I got from Home Depot. They have nice little soft pads where the clamp touches the parts, allowing you to apply firm yet yielding pressure to the strut part, allowing the part to glue securely and evenly down the long length of the part.

Decals worked well, though they required several rounds with SolvaSet (the tough stuff) to get completely down and conformal. The decals provided for the blue bands for the engine are way too light in color. I used Testors Model Master enamel Intermediate blue, and it finished dead on to the shade as shown in “Sculpting a Galaxy”. The blue paint is peeling, and to replicate that effect I used the salt and water method – paint the base color, mask around the area to be painted, wet the surface, and sprinkle salt on the wet surface and let dry. Paint by airbrush at low pressure, and when dry gently rinse off the salt.

I used a coat of Future after the main painting, decaled, Futured again, followed by an oil wash of black and raw umber. Then I flat coated with two thin coats of Dullcote and followed up with chalk of different gray values applied with a stubby brush to get the weathering.

Brian Ludden