Confidence, a Gundam Beyond Global Build Story

A group of builder and toy collector friends wanted to do a timed group build, so they picked this kit for being new and fairly easy for anyone to grab and assemble. The goal is to just build it within the 2 week span of Aug 1 – Aug 15 2020. That’s it. No requirements for paint, mods, etc. Like the Nike ads say, just do it – or in our case, just build it!

The Gundam Beyond Global kit was picked for being new, easy to build, and most importantly, pose-ability. We are talking a group of toy collectors that generally like to pay with the figures. The kits arrived and at midnight Aug 1st, we kicked off the build. In preparation for the build, I grabbed a bunch of tools and detail parts I had only slightly used in my more recent builds to see about incorporating them more into this project.

Today is Aug 14, 2020, and I pretty much finished the kit last night and snapped final pictures. Complete details of this build after the jump.

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Dom Barrage June Week 3 update

Holy crap, holy crap… I’m finally getting into actual paint that isn’t primer! This is a small update, but only because things are slowing down with the build and I’ve been doing more detail work since the big blocking and building. This post starts with the arms. Looking at the reference pictures, the arms are more boxy than the standard Dom, so I started gluing plastic strips to the arms. Once that cured, I added some putty to fill in gaps and sanded and shaped the part. Then a layer of primer to check the modification. The process for beefing up and squaring up the arm piece is pretty straight forward. Styrene for blocking, putty for gaps and filling in missed areas, then sanding the thing to shape it out.

The arms are pretty plain for now, but the detailing comes next after the jump.

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First new project of the year! 1/100 Dom Barrage

Feb 1, 2019. I started this immediately after finishing the Dreissen project. Pretty much the same day. I stumbled upon the Dom Barrage, MS-09 F/Br a few years ago and was interested in doing a build of it off the MG Dom. But the reference pictures were pretty lacking and I think I found one online, built from the HGUC Dom Tropen. Using a Dom Trop really makes sense since the Barrage is a variant of the Tropen (Funf). I did find a conversion kit for the Dom F, but since I’ll have to modify that kit. So since there wasn’t a 1/100 F, next best thing was one of the MG Dom’s off my backlog. I already built 2 of these. And for some reason I have 2 more. According to a friend, one of them belongs to him, but he doesn’t build so he doesn’t mind me using it. Ok, references aside, the idea lingered in my head as a possible big project. But with the limited reference materials, I was hesitant. Fast forward to a few months ago, while playing Gundam Battle Operation 2; they released the Dom Barrage as a playable support suit. Once I got the suit, it meant unlimited screenshots from as many angles as I can get. Challenge accepted!

An MG Rick Dom is sacrificed for this and the project officially begins after the jump.

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Back to work on the RGM-79SP-2

Finally getting back to work on this project. Taking a two week vacation really breaks the momentum I had going for this kit. I actually thought about bringing pieces of the thing with me to work on while I was in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Then, knowing my damn luck, I would have lost said pieces. So I just quit cold turkey and left everything here. Plus, I really didn’t have time to do any sort of model building while I was gone. Hell, I even got to catch up through the first half of Iron Blooded Orphans by marathoning it on my flight back as my attempt to reset my biological clock and fix the potential week long jet lag. It worked, I only ended up taking an hour long nap before landing back in LAX. Ok, enough digression. My trip to Tokyo and HK was quite fruitful. I ended up picking up a bunch of new tools that I immediately put into use. While in Hong Kong, I visited the Man 66 Hobby shop on the 7th floor of the Richmond Commercial Building in Mong Kok. I saw a damn cool cutting tool, “the Chopper II” which is an improvement on “the Chopper” that I had picked up a couple of months ago. So my first order of business when I got back was to order this via Amazon. It is pretty damn difficult to get back into building mode. So it took a few days. I didn’t quite know where to start; or actually, I wasn’t motivated enough to actually start. But over the last week, I started slow on a few pieces here and there. The majority of the work for this post is focused on the legs. We’ll start off with where I last left off.

So the last update on the project, I had cut up the outer calf parts. The problem is that the cut isn’t precise. So after sanding an opening, I needed to glue some plastic back into place to rebuild some of the screwed up areas. So this past week, I’ve been slowly adding more plastic, sanding it down, test fitting, then adding more plastic back, and resanding, etc. I also glued the two halves back together so that I have a solid connection on the ends. It seems counter intuitive to cut the part in half only to glue it back together, but it makes for a much easier process for this kind of a mod. The last picture in this series shows what it currently looks like. There is still some cleanup work; but I’m progressing. I also added some strips of styrene to the back of the thruster housing. I still need to sand and prep that bit of detail.

Continued after the jump!

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