Tony’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Model Kit Review: AMT/Ertl’s Lost In Space Jupiter 2 (from the Movie)

(Page Two)

Next came the recessed areas snaking around the top of this spacecraft. These areas were first carefully hand painted flat black. When dry, copper was carefully dry-brushed into these crevice areas. Almost as if by magic the very nice, fine detail previously invisible now came to life. Even with my very careful efforts, though, I again inadvertently got some of the flat black and copper onto the lighter color on the hull. (More paint touch-ups would be required here also).

The next parts worked on were the two side hyper-drive parts, the rear main engine piece, and the lower circular engine. The first three were painted Flat Black. The circular engine was painted Gunship Gray, (straying away from the recommended charcoal gray color, which I also was never able to find). When all four were dry, copper was dry-brushed onto their surface areas. Again, this process brought out all sorts of detail previously unnoticeable.

The 6 left and 6 right outer hyper-drive parts were then painted. Both their fronts and backs were painted medium gray, as the instructions recommended.

(Main Construction Phase)

The three-piece stand was then assembled and the existing gaps filled and sanded smooth. To add some flair to the way the completed J 2 would look I broke off the top attachment tab, hollowed out the area beneath it and inserted a small dowel piece tapered to fit into the hole, tilted forward 30 degrees. A two-part 5-minute epoxy was used to glue the dowel in place followed by several drops of Cyanoacylate (super) glue. Then, a piece of masking tape was wrapped around this improvised replacement tab and the entire thing painted flat black.

Now, when the J 2 would be displayed, instead of it lying horizontally, it would be tilted to the side in a more dramatic fashion. I thought that this pose would more closely mirror the movie’s very maneuverable J 2, in addition to allowing the highly detailed bottom hull to be visible. (A down side to this I later discovered was that the “Lost in Space” words and logo would be difficult to see).

I decided to forge ahead anyway. The areas surrounding the “LOST IN SPACE” and “JUPITER 2” words were painted aluminum. When dry, these letters were carefully masked off with Microscale’s Micro Mask (liquid masking) medium. The entire stand was then painted flat black. When dry, gold was airbrushed free hand onto the stylized ‘L’ and ‘S’ letters. Flat black touch ups were then done, removing the gold overspray. Finally, the masking medium was removed. The stand was now complete.

I then went back to attack the Jupiter 2 sub-assemblies. The two “cup shaped” parts were inserted into the holes on the upper hull section. Again, because of the poor fit, I ended up using super glue to attach these two parts, applying a lot of pressure until the glue had cured.

The command center was then glued in place from below. Since I planned to hide the sparse internal detail with the windshield cover, I did no internal painting, along with not attaching the navigational unit.

Work then progressed to the bottom hull sub-assembly. The side and rear engine parts (that were now painted) were attached. The lower engine part was then attached. Although I had spent a good amount of effort and time trying to get a good fit here, the sucker still wouldn’t fit flush with the bottom surface of the hull. I ended up using super glue again, applying uniform pressure on the lower engine until the glue had set.

The next step was connecting the 6 left and 6 right outer side hyper-drive parts. All 12 were carefully super glued into place. With the parts being already painted, I didn’t want to deal with scraping the paint off to allow the model cement to work properly.

(Final Paint Touch-ups)

OK, the light at the end of the proverbial “hyper”-tunnel could finally be seen, (please forgive!) Due to numerous paint touch-ups necessary for the top hull section, I decided to paint this entire upper surface over again. The problem I had was how to paint the light gray on and leave the flat black, copper, and silver colored areas unscathed. I came up with a solution. Using Dulco’s “Stik-Tak” (Blue) adhesive putty, I carefully covered both the recessed areas, along with the 18 protruding pylons. It took a bit of time to do this. However, with the non-sticky/non-residual nature of this putty, removal would be a breeze.

After the putty was applied, the entire upper section was painted a final coat of light gray. When this was dry, the upper regions designated to receive the light Blue color were masked off using Scotch Magic Tape. The tape was burnished into the recessed outline using a toothpick. A sharp #2 X-acto knife easily cut through the pattern. Again, I decided to deviate from this recommended color and instead went with intermediate Blue. When dry, the required side details were hand painted gold.

(Final Assembly)

It was now time to attach the upper and lower hull sections together. To deal with the remaining gaps, I decided to cheat a bit. I had picked up some white adhesive Mounting Putty (by Manco) from a hardware store previously and decided to use this to fill in those confounded internal gaps. Pieces of the putty were pushed into the gaps from the inside, covering them quite nicely. This worked, completely filling the gaps. Touching up these white putty areas with flat black and dry brushing the copper on again would finish this particular task.

According to the kit’s instructions, I drilled a hole in the back of the upper surface for the antenna to be attached. Unfortunately, later when perusing some of my reference material I came to realize that this antenna was probably incorrect, since it appeared on none of my photos. (Oh well…)

The front docking unit was then glued in place, followed by attaching the two hull sections together. The two pin shaped lights were then glued in place using white glue. Finally, the windshield cover was attached.

(Glossing, Decaling, and Pastel and Air Brush Weathering)

The entire upper and lower Jupiter 2 was glossed over with three or four coats of Floquil’s Crystal Cote. When dry, the decals were applied. Unfortunately, I evidently did not have my upper surface glossy enough. All of the white lined clear decals that were applied silvered up tremendously. In addition, neither the Solvaset nor the Micro Sol/Set decal setting solutions worked very well on them.

I was so disappointed with the decals that I ended up stripping them away. After removing the unwanted decals, I did paint touch-ups on the necessary areas.

Since I wanted this space-baby to look as though it had indeed hyper-jumped through a sun and crash-landed on some deserted ice-planet, I decided to do some extensive weathering with pastels. After three attempts at rubbing light gray onto the lower portion, however, I still was not able to get that uniform weathered look. I decided to wash the pastels off (for a fourth time) and instead lightly dust on (via an airbrush) several coats of light gray.

(Conclusion)

Although this modeling project took many months to complete, this was mainly due to inactivity on it for long periods. All in all, the total numbers of hours-spent working on the J 2 were not very much. The small number of parts composing the Jupiter 2 helped to create a pretty simple, straightforward build. There were numerous fitting problems, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome with a bit of patience and persistence.

Painting the J 2 was by far the most challenging and time consuming part of the project, with much masking required for the many different colors. However, the effort and time put into painting the Jupiter 2 pays major dividends with the completed spaceship, which looks great!

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