I have always liked the updated Gelgoog style of the Galbaldy-ß, a slimmed down and Zeta-fied version of a classic MS. And as you may have noticed looking at my 100-Shiki kit, I have a fetish for shiny metallic models, I just love the look of chrome! So naturally I'd be interested in building the AMX-117 duo. And the conversion of the old Bandai 1/100 Galbaldy-ß kit looked like a great next step in my ever more difficult modeling adventures, enough scratchbuilding to try out some new stuff, but not so much that I'd give up on the project. I was also excited by the chance to build two models simultaneously (yes, I'm building both), so this project was a must. I plan to release a resin conversion kit after I'm finished, since I needed molds to duplicate the extra parts anyway.

The Plan
I started by coming up with a list of new parts I'd need for the conversion: Shoulder and forearm armors, backpack beam sabres, beam javelin, toes, misc. details (head spike, etc...). These all seemed doable. Then I took one of my Galbaldy-ß kits and started checking out the proportions. The kit is actually quite good, as are most kits from this series, but it does need work, even if you're just building the original MS.

The Model(s)
Since this is such an extensive project, I'm dividing the pages detailing construction up by body part, and will add sections as time permits and parts are completed (but not necessarily in that order!). Choose from the sections below to read about the project...