Jim Davis’ AT-ST

Finally… after years of searching (not diligently but keeping my eye out for) I finally got the AT-ST model that I have longed to build. I was surprised at the detail this thing had and yet lack of little things that makes this such a great model. I found it on eBay and won the bid and got it in the mail and proceeded to do my research (popped in the Return of the Jedi movie and freeze framed for about an hour). After making my notes on the instruction sheet I noticed there was several things that needed to be done. The railing on top of the head needed to be scratch built and the front “eye” hatches needed to be carved out and scratch built.

The first thing I had a problem with was in filling in the big join along the side of the head… what a mess… I got it basically the way it should be, filled it in and sanded it down, still not happy with it, but I may go back over it with some sheet styrene later… but I was so jazzed just to be building this thing. I drilled out the holes in the cannons and that was easy using the tip of a hobby knife. Then I proceeded to carve out the openings in the “eye” hatches. That was fun, getting them to the same size and shape… that probably took me the longest. I used nothing but a hobby knife for it (couldn’t find my Dremal small bit holder).

Next step, creating the hatch covers. That wasn’t too hard… using a sheet of styrene I cut four pieces (two actual size and two just a bit smaller) and glue the small and the large together to give them more of a hatch feel to them. Then stretching out some sprue over a candle, I created the hatch cover braces and glued them into place above the openings. The railing I stretched out the sprue again and formed it into shape. The railing was held up by only 4 braces on top, so that’s what I used. I glued them into place and waited for the whole thing to dry over-night (wanted everything to be rock solid before I began to paint.

The next morning I pulled out of my dusty container my old reliable airbrush and filled the cup with Testor’s Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231). I sprayed the whole thing one color, waited until it dried and then changed colors to flat black. Then proceeded to do the weathering. Didn’t take long… this was an excellent model to build. When I got the basic weathering done, I pulled out the paint brush and began to dry brush the damage on it. I added a little dark brown mixed with talcum powder for the mud on the feet to give it a little extra umph. I was done… but was I?

I looked at what some of the other people have done with this model and was intrigued by what Mark Fergel had done with his diorama (excellent job Mark!) and although I couldn’t find the Micro-Machine Star Wars figures I prompted for a more simplistic setting of just the trees and the walker. I hope everyone likes it. Let me know.

Jim Davis