gunpla acrylic display

Read more about the article Hyaku Shiki 2.0 quick build and paint

Hyaku Shiki 2.0 quick build and paint

I picked up this kit immediately when it came out last year and started working on it. Back then I was finishing up the waterfront diorama and only soaked the kit’s runners in some purple power to strip it and just built it at one of the monthly build gatherings. To be honest, it looked pretty damn good in all it’s translucent nakedness. It would be really cool to completely do up the internal frame and clear coat the translucent parts and be done with it. Maybe a later project, I really liked the kit. For this one, I really wanted to paint some gold. I have a ton of gold paint. Finisher’s blue gold, finisher’s red gold, alclad pale gold, alclad titanium gold, alclad polished brass (very close to a gold), Mr color super metallic gold, testor’s enamel gold, gaia color bright gold, and an endless combination of chrome/polished aluminum/ + clear yellow or a custom mix of clear yellow/clear red/clear orange. I had some testing to do, and I sprayed a few swaths on a test part to see what looked best.

I decided on Finisher’s red gold since I wanted a warmer gold in comparison to the others but I also did not want a very yellow gold or bright gold for that matter.

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Read more about the article A simple, yet fairly elegant display base

A simple, yet fairly elegant display base

A few days ago, I was reading through some threads on reddit/r/gunpla and came across a thread asking about where to buy a specific type of display base. One of the users responded with a few links on how to build your own, and from this link in particular, I was inspired to search out some local suppliers and do my own version. The basic premise to the base are a few sheets of acrylic and some metal standoffs. The plastic pieces are easy, I’ve been grabbing scrap acrylic from local shops for a while and I dropped by one near my work and they sell the scrap by the pound. I picked up about 4 pounds of scrap plastic; gloss black, clear, and white and in different thicknesses. The next item was a little harder to find, the metal standoffs. There are plenty of sources online (amazon, eBay, online retailers, etc) But I wanted to see these in person before I picked some out; so I found a local sign shop supplier that was a wholesaler. The guy there hooked me up for a small sale since I wasn’t a sign shop (they only sell to sign shops)

So I picked up some metal standoffs seen in the above picture. Metallic black, chrome, and satin aluminum in the 13mm x 13mm size. They didn’t have the red and blue metallic ones in that size so I ended up with 13mm x 19mm, they’re a little taller. They sell individually for about 1.50 – $2 a piece, so I ended up spending about $42 or so for the 5 sets of 4.

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