The Gouf Custom Exceed Head Casting Factory

Time for a little update on the Gouf Custom Exceed Head conversion kit progress. This has been a fairly productive month, most of the time has been spent making the mold and making casts for all the parts. But time to play some catch up. The last time I left off, I was still working getting the shape of the head correct, or to a point that I found acceptable. After the priming sessions to check for the correctness of the surface, I can get to scribing the final bits of detail for the side of the head. There is a definite order of operations here, since scribing before getting the shape right would just lead to rescribing details that are covered up by more putty used to shape the head. The first thing is to lay down some tamiya masking tape for curves. The tape is a little rubbery and considerably thicker than the standard yellow tamiya masking tape. This allows for the tape to curve and keep a continuous line along the surface. This is perfect for masking curved surfaces and just having curves. I’m not using this to mask, but as scribing tape to help guide some chisels. If I am careful with the chisels, I can scribe in a perfect line. For the purpose of scale, I used a .5mm to scribe in the lines. I started with a .3mm but found they were a little too thin for the scale. 3mm Mad Works carving tape is used as the scribing guides for the detail lines perpendicular to the line that runs along the lower half of the head. I liked using the Mad Works carving tape over dymo tape since it’s clear, which makes alignment very easy; and I can reuse the tape a couple of times in comparison to dymo which is only useful once then the stickiness is completely useless.

More updates and information about the pre-orders for the limited casting run of this project after the jump. (more…)

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Labor Day Exceed Gouf Update

Slow progress, but I hit a decent milestone at the end of this past weekend with the first session of primer, so it’s time for a post. I have a couple of tool discussions here so this will be good for future reference as well. First up is the drafting compass. We’ve all used these in the past to draw circles on paper. There is precision with the wheel adjustment so here, I can use this to mark up an area on the kit for drilling a hole. The back of the head needs a attachment point for the Gouf’s cables. The compass comes in handy to accurately measure how how far from a point of reference to make the marks. And I can easily mirror the mark on the other side of the head so I have symmetry.

Once marked off, I have a guide for drilling in the holes that will eventually dock the head cables.

If I take the compass and use the needle end as a guide along the bottom of a plastic piece, I can run this line and effectively draw a parallel line to the edges of the parts to draw in a guide that I can then tape along and scribe in a parallel detail line.

More about the build and another tool after the jump.
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