I nailed down my pose earlier in the week then got most of the current work done over the weekend. The weekend was fairly busy, but I did get a good amount of work done on the sucker. I spent most of Friday night filling and doing final bits of the initial sanding and clean up on the resin parts which ended with the resin parts being dunked into a purple power bath.
Starting off with the pose, I did some searching and found the box art for the Gouf Custom HG model. It was much more dynamic then just standing the model up, however the box art pose is done without the gatling shield. To sustain the weight of the shield and weapon, the frame for the arm will need to be fixed posed, so I picked out my pose then carefully removed the armor pieces and applied glue to the major joint areas. I first used tamiya glue to get into the plastic on plastic areas, then followed this up with epoxy glue for added strength. The last piece I will need to glue is the shoulder joint, but that will have to wait until I’m done with the build and at the final assembly stage. For now, this is what I want the guy to look like when I finish it.
On to my Friday night. Manny and a few others came over, and we did a comparison with his recast kit against mine. The recast was considerably lighter than mine, a good number of areas were also thinner, and there were a few more areas for clean up than I had. Still the quality of the cast is fairly decent. I think I’d like the lighter resin, at least for the left arm. Terry brought Duke over so we redid the picture of him building warhammer.
At the end of my night, I had all the visible surface defects filled with light curing putty and sanded. Other rough areas were also attended to and then the resin pieces were all thrown into a purple power bath. I cannot enough, the importance of this step. The bath in purple power, or any other industrial strength cleaner that is safe for use on plastic, cleans the residual mold release that may be on the parts. Mold release will prevent paint from sticking to the surface of the kit and this becomes very troublesome when painting and masking the kit. Paint will flake completely off the kit down to the primer. The parts are left in the bath for at least 24 hours.
Sunday rolled around and I had time to work on the kit. First thing was to pull the parts from the purple power bath and throw them into some clean water to rinse off any residual cleaner. I actually used two baths of water to clean the parts. Once the parts have been rinsed off, they are placed in batches into my ultra sonic cleaner and run through to further scrub the parts to thoroughly clean them. After a run through the cleaner, the parts are placed on a paper towel to dry.
While the resin parts were being cleaned, I went to work on the plastic frame parts. They were skewered and primed with a base coat of gloss black. Once that cured for a couple of hours, a coat of alclad magnesium is sprayed over the major exposed areas.
Sunday night, the resin parts having been completely dried, are skewered and primed. This is the initial priming session that will show the majority of the missed sanding spots, surface defects, and bubbles that may have been missed in the bare resin. The parts are being painted separately because it is easier to work on fixing each individual part before moving on to just building minor sub assemblies. Once the resin has had a full days worth of cure time, I can get down to fine tune sanding and fixing the missed areas. Hopefully, I’ll only need one more priming session before I can get down to gluing together sub assemblies and getting down to actual paint on the kit.
This ends the model building portion of the weekend’s post. This past Saturday was spent partially at the OC Fair, then up to Frank and Sons, then over to the Hollywood Bowl, then ended at Nicky and Angel’s house for Nicky’s birthday party. Yeah, Saturday was kind of a long day.
Su-eun came by Saturday morning, and we headed over to the OC fair in our quest to get minions. They actually restocked early that morning, and according to another staffer at the fair, this was going to be the last restock for the large minions. We ended up with one, ate lunch, and got another, and once we had the second, we called it a day and headed out. They fit nicely into my back seat.
Su had never been to Frank and Sons, so I took here there as we still had several hours to burn before heading out to the Bowl. It’s probably clear to her why I don’t need to ever by anything at AX or any other nerd/geek convention. Stopping by one of the booths, I see a stretched canvas print of Deadpool, so I quickly text Angel to get confirmation that Nicky was a Deadpool fan. I had remembered that she was, and figured this was tacky enough that it would work nicely as a birthday gift. I didn’t have enough cash, so Su spotted me and I picked it up. While walking down another aisle, Su suggest that we can just tell Nicky the gift was from both of us. *sigh* Gotta love laziness to go out, think, and get a different gift. Wandering the show a bit we stumbled on Steve, and he gave me some money for the carpet cleaning I did a few months ago. Hooray, I now have money. Su’s still going to be lazy and just attach herself to my gift for Nicky.
After about an hour we headed back to my place, then I prep the night’s dinner and picnic basket while Su worked on her horribly proportioned Mazinger kit. Steaks done cooking, off to the Bowl. We got there, parked, and walked towards the Bowl. We had arrived right on time, 6 PM when they were just starting to allow people in, and we grabbed a table and ate dinner. After dinner, we dropped off the cooler and walked to the top of the bowl and snapped a few pictures. A kind older gentleman snapped a picture of us for me.
I took a close up picture of the bowl, and after I had taken my first picture, they were testing the lighting and lit up part of the bowl, so I snapped another picture just to get the contrast. Pretty cool lighting effects.
The opening act was a UK band called Morcheeba, a mediocre band at best, but it was entertaining. They have a small following that was present at the event. They played a 40 minute set before the intermission and then Sergio Mendes and his group came out. It was all pretty good with the exception of the rapper they had brought. I guess I’m just not too into free style rapping, or the guy just sucked. The night ended with flamingo dancers which was kinda cool. Note to self for the next HWB trip, bring the better camera. My diving camera as nice it is that it fits into my pocket can’t take squat for zoomed in picture nor videos. All the videos I snapped had horrible sound quality and I just deleted them.
it was a fun night. Traffic on the way out sucked because there was an accident. Only one car, so it was probably a hit and run, or a drunk driver. Well if it was a drunk, at least no one else was involved. I texted Angel to make sure folks were still awake. They were so we headed over and got there around 12:30 or so. I got complaints from folks that I was late. And Nicky made it clear that she would have been very put off if I didn’t show. Glad I made it. They were in the middle of rockband when Su and I arrived. And as soon as they finished the song, Angel gets up and hands the drumsticks over to me. We play for about an hour and a half and Nicky forces us to stop, giving us an ultimatum for 2 AM. I snap a few pictures proving that I’m there….
Damn, apparently, I missed a pretty good drinking fest. Every is tired and already coming off their drunkenness. And I, for no apparent reason, still have a little bit of energy after my long ass day.
