Aston Martin DB5 - one careless owner!

[mattbacon]

This is the Doyusha DB5 in "Goldfinger" form, with two rather good figures of James Bond and Oddjob to go with it. I'm going to have some working, or at least interchangeable, features (eg rear armour shield, Boadicea wheel hubs, rotating number plate) for the full secret agent effect.

Started work with the bodyshell, to put into practice everything I've learned on my first three Ferraris.



The basic shell, in odd pale blue plastic. I've scribed the ejector panel in the roof - I didn't want to cut it out - but I have cut the slot for the armour.



Body primed, sanded to 8000 grit, and painted with a custom mix of Zero "Mica Silver" with some black to darken it, and some white to get a more grey tint. The original "Silver Birch" is distinctly more grey looking than metallic.



Zero's two-pack clear coat applied. I love this stuff!





And with the BMF applied. It's amazing what you can get it to stretch around - the door handles and rear number plate lamp and boot catch are all done with BMF, as well as the window trims...

Now, time to get started on the inside, and painting the figures...

best regards,
Matt

[Porsnatic]

Nice start, Matt. I'm also in the middle of an Aston Project, the Revell DB4 and next will be the hard to get DB6. Could you post a closeup pic of the decal sheet?

[tuned.by.twenty]

Beautiful Aston.

[da_ashman]

Nice work so far!!

[mattbacon]

I've been working on the interior and the figures...



I made a new dash by scanning the original decals, replacing the walnut dash with plain black, and the dials with real photos from online sources . The wheel is the same "sunny flesh" overcoated with Humbrol Clear Orange that I used on the 250 GTO. I've been watching Goldfinger clips over and over, and the tracker screen is clearly green when Q demos it, so I'm thinking the when it's turned off, without the map overlay, this is how it should look.

In place, it looks like this:



I made a "lid" for the central console - pretending that it's a leather armrest, matching the seats...

Overall, the interior looks like this (just dry-fitted - there's still the gear lever to come, and before it does I need to figure out how to have the lid flipped up with the eject button visible!)



Obviously, the briefcase will be painted rather than remain lurid salmon pink...

I decided to move the door panels inward, so that they sit below the windows - SFTB, they go too far back, against the outer skin. The downside is that there's no room for the handbrake, and I had to carve off various bits of detail from the seat sides, but overall I think it looks much better...

Enjoy this:



because this is the only time this will be visible! Even if I replace the side windows, it's tucked so deep into the drivers footwell that you can't see it.
I also found myself thinking... why isn't it under the passenger's seat? If I was an international super spy, I wouldn't want to be rummaging around under my legs to reach my weaponry... you could slide it out left handed from the passenger side. But... not, I guess, if it's got all the ejector seat gubbins underneath...

Talking of which


This is how the super-spy in question is looking. There's a bit more highlighting to do on Bond, and Oddjob needs stripey trousers. I've had one go already which went pear-shaped, so this time I'm going to try working on "areas" a bit at a time, rather than trying to paint one top to bottom stripe and move on to the next...

I feel like it's starting to come together now...

bestest,
M.

[Scalemodelfanatic]

This is one of my Aston Martins and you are doing a great job on a not to easy to work with kit, this is coming along GREAT!!

[MidMazar]

The figures look really realistic.

[tuned.by.twenty]

Great work on the figures!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, guys. This is where I'm at tonight:


This is the completed interior, and the "glass" fitted into the body. Since this was taken, I've "dusted down" the tyres to look a lot less shiny...


The briefcase is now a sensible colour. You can see the mechanism for the rear armour. As moulded, the turntable has an extra bit sticking up on the "slope", which needs to be removed. Even so, there's a lot of fiddling around to get it to work, and more still to come, I think.


This is the kit of parts as it stands at the moment. Bond is now pretty much finished, and Oddjob is just awaiting his hat. If you look very closely you can see that he now has pinstripe trousers... This was not fun to paint!

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

The finish on the DB5 may not be smooth enough for car classes at shows, but maybe it can be a "diorama base" for the figures! I'm calling these done, now, though when I see them in the daylight I may matt them down a bit...



bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

And here's where the car's at tonight. The rotating number plate took some doing... you really have to trim the "prism". and cut back the decals to the minimum printed area. And scrape off much chrome, and use silicone grease to protect the pivots. But it does work.

The chassis and body aren't fixed together yet -- I still need to do some more tweaking on the rear armour so that it will work in the raised and lowered positions.

The wheels are the ones from the kit. But I first hit them with some "Promodeller" weathering wash - a dark grey chalk wash - and then, since I thought there wasn't enough contrast, overlaid that with some Citadel "Badab Black" wash. The two together have given a really good depth to the wire wheels, IMHO...





bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Built straight out of the box, the rotating numberplate won't... rotate, that is. I scraped back the surfaces of the triangular rotor, and shaved off the apex of each of the corners. Then, I cut each of the decals right to the edge of the printed plate, so there wasn't any clear film flapping about. I scraped the seam line off the axle pins. Then I cleaned the chrome off the inside of the housing, and scraped all the chrome off the U-shaped bit that fits in behind and traps the rotor. I sanded down the inner face of that as well until it was about half as thick as it started out. Then I applied my trusty plastic grease (bought from a bike shop - it's intended for plastic mechanisms) to the inside of the bearing faces and the little slots, to lubricate and protect them from glue. Finally, having applied the decals, I slotted the rotor into the back part, where it was held in by grease, applied glue to the inside of the housing, and slid the back into it, clamping it with a clip at each end until it dried. Now, it does rotate, but you have to turn it gently with a cocktail stick, and be careful of the decals!

Here's the kit of parts for the last details:


From the left:

Mirrors. These are chrome plated but have darn great ejector pin marks in. I scraped off all the chrome from the kit parts and painted them with Metalcote, and also punched out a coupe of disks of card and covered them with BMF for the actual mirror.

Indicators. These are the clear "basic" parts, painted in Humbrol Clear Orage, backed with Citadel Mithril Silver

Bumper details. The tall ones are the extended "battering rams", the short one the regular parts.

"Boadicea" hubs. The extension rams have had the pins coated in white glue for a snugger fit.

Wipers. I sliced some thin strips from the rubber tyre "sprue" for blades and attached them with superglue- I trimmed them back to length after this picture was taken.

Machine guns. I scraped the chrome off the barrels, drilled them out, and painted them with Tamiya Gunmetal. The indicator lenses are Humbrol Clear Orange again.



... one last look at the inside before it disappears.

I cut the armour plate down by about 2mm, and fitted a wider strip across the bottom, to "ride" on the spiral part better. It's still a bit flaky, but it will both stay up when extended, and retract all the way into the body now, so that's progress...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

The car is now completed.

Spy gadgets deployed:






I left the ejector pin marks on the armour deliberately, for that "rough cast" look...

And a "regular" DB5






The fit of the rear bumper leaves something to be desired, and mine snapped as I tried to fit it. It's filled with microballoons, set with superglue, sanded, and covered with BMF to recover. You still have to trim the inner corners to get it around the rear end, and glue it in tight! You also need to trim the lugs that hold it in place, otherwise they poke right through the back of the car, and prevent the floor going far enough in...

Pix of the whole shebang to come tomorrow...

bestest,
M.

[Porsnatic]

A lovely build, indeed!...I've been following this build since the very beginning
and since I also in the middle of another Aston Martin, this one has motivated me to continue mine. It's a shame that there's no more Aston models around in comparison to Ferraris and other european model cars, specially no re-issue of this historical DB5 from Doyusha.

Originally Posted by mattbacon

The car is now completed.

Spy gadgets deployed:






I left the ejector pin marks on the armour deliberately, for that "rough cast" look...

And a "regular" DB5






The fit of the rear bumper leaves something to be desired, and mine snapped as I tried to fit it. It's filled with microballoons, set with superglue, sanded, and covered with BMF to recover. You still have to trim the inner corners to get it around the rear end, and glue it in tight! You also need to trim the lugs that hold it in place, otherwise they poke right through the back of the car, and prevent the floor going far enough in...

Pix of the whole shebang to come tomorrow...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

All finished now - the rest of the pics are in the Completed section:



bestest,
M.