The LunaDiver is one of those instant classics from MaK. It’s a perfect balance of organic design and mechanical details.
In 2009 Jason Eaton recreated Kow’s original 1/20 design as a pattern for a resin cast kit. I was not able to obtain one at the time of release and accepted my fate. Fast forward to 2023 and Jason was cleaning out the last of his MaK items and generously gifted me his original master. The master had some wear and broken pieces over the years of storage and took some minor shipping damage before I received it but it was a tremendous honor to have the original in my hands.
Gallery of the finished model. A build log follows below.
The main body was broken down into two large and heavy halves plus a separate piece for the tail. The whole thing weighs a little over five pounds. My first step was to hog out some of the epoxy putty to lighten the load. This step allowed me to secure a mounting point for a 1/4-20 t-nut and thoroughly secure the tail with epoxy glue and screws.
The most time intensive part has been blending putty for the part halves and multiple primer and sanding steps to smooth out the surface from the assembly and repairs.
This is easily the largest model I have built, measuring at twenty-one inches long and twelve inches wide.
To display and support the model, I used a camera mount with a ball joint. This was mounted to a large piece of MDF to maintain stability.
All the smaller bits and pieces will be added once I am satisfied with the surface. I plan to use brass pins wherever possible. I still need to replace rivets and panel lines too.
This is quite daunting, yet I’m super happy to be working on it.
I've made some progress on the plumbing that wraps all around the Luna Diver. It's trickier than I anticipated to make everything symmetrical.
Plumbing is complete and a fresh coat of primer has been applied.
After multiple rounds of primer and sanding, I finally have a mottled base coat applied.
I chose a camo scheme from one of the 1/35 scale kit camo cards. I toyed around with other schemes, but this one just really worked on the beast and the white will be a nice canvas for space weathering. I used a photo of the snowman nose art and scaled it up in a graphics program to create a template I can print out for hand cut masks.
I gave the model a clear coat and applied several decals scattered about.I also picked out a few panels with accent colors.
The weather stage for the LunaDiver has begun. Several of the decals silvered badly so were pealed or sanded off and the areas touched up with an airbrush. The model was given a couple of overall and selective filters to unify the base colors. Weathering so far has all been with oil paints. Small chips and scratches are being applied with a small brush.
