Returning to the upper torso, I now have the control panel getting painted. The last updated had the beginnings of painting this area. I hand painted in the button colors. Once the paint is dried, I sprayed a clear gloss because I wanted to add some water slide decals for the dials. The center screen is color shifting iridescent stickers from HiQ, so different angles will give a different color reflection. It works well enough as a screen for the control panel. I also did a quick mock up with the upper torso and the primed lower torso.<\/p>\n
More about the final steps of this build after the jumpp <\/p>\n I had glued the leg joints a month ago, so now that I got the lower torso surfaced prepped and ready for paint, I can glue in the leg frames – which are the inner frames from the kshatriya binders. The kit came with 2 different sets of frames, one for the newer design of the opening binder and the original design for the non opening binder. Since I decided against having the binders open, I’m just going to use the original design for the rear leg. I will need to make some fixes to balance this part with the two front leg frames. Once glued, there is some mobility with the joints.<\/p>\n Now that I have the leg frames glued, I need to add some details, so I grabbed some 24 awg solid wrapped wire and the 28 awg magnet wire and made some coils to run from the leg frame to the lower body along the leg joints parts. Making the coils is simple, just wrap the magnet wire around the solid wire and done. There’s a quick test fit for length and the rough look and feel before moving on to the next step. Styrene tubes are cut and glued to the leg joints. The coil is then threaded through these tubes to connect up the leg frame and the lower body. <\/p>\n The plan is solid, so time for execution. Measurements on the leg joints are marked off with pencil as this will guide the tube gluing locations. The tubes are glued and another quick mock up with the binders connected to see how everything fits. It is always important to keep testing fitting as you build because the smallest of changes will seriously mess with the proportions and how well things fit together. <\/p>\n The coils are then threaded once the glue has cured overnight. I need a transition piece for the lower body so some more styrene tubes are cut and glued to the body and then the coils can have a termination end. Another transition piece is made from the Kshatriya’s thrusters. <\/p>\n Time for some more test fits with the binders. The upper torso is pretty much done at this point. I’ve been procrastinating the binder work because there is a considerable amount of work to clean up the two resin casts.<\/p>\n Here’s what the bottom of the kit looks like with the cables and transition partes all glued together. <\/p>\n Since I’m going for the cute yet deadly angle, I figured I could up it a level with a “pew pew” sign. I picked out a font I liked and used the cricut to cut some letters out. These letters were then glued to a thin sheet of styrene that will be the pew pew flag. I bent the plastic a little to create a slight wave. Then did a test fit with the guntank barrel. I printed a few of the pew pews as I was going to use multiple flags, but I figured that one flag got the point across.<\/p>\n The flag get painted and the lettering is painted by hand with enamels. The letters are raised so this is easy to do. As one of my fellow TGG guys pointed out, the raised letters on a flag make no sense… but then again, what part of this whole kit makes sense? So it all goes to the nonsense of it all.<\/p>\n I casted some thruster bells from a previous project. Reusing molds is a great money saver. I also casted a part from the ore gun. These parts will eventually be the thruster and engine attached at the bottom of the binders. The side of the lower body got some detail work. I created a little ladder with those heavy user parts that came with the first MGs (Zaku\/Gundam) Back when the MGs first came out, these kits also came with added details that were labeled “heavy user parts”. These were rarely used since they required glue. So I think Bandai abandoned this pretty damn quickly. It’s a shame because us more hardcore model builders loves these little details. It’s one less thing we would need to scratch. Another round mold was added at the bottom completed this detail.<\/p>\n Next up, the rear binder leg’s frame gets some styrene plates glued into place where the funnels attach. The new design has these closed up and to sorta keep everything looking similar; the styrene covers are glued into place. The last photo is the paint-mask-paint process for the kit’s bar detail.<\/p>\n Now for the dreaded resin binder clean up work. Each of these binders took about 6 hours of work to clean up and fill. The process would have been much longer if I used traditional epoxy or styrene putties. I used light curing putty which significantly sped up the process. I can add the putty, throw it under the UV lamp, sand, and continue. The heat sinks for the resin binders needed considerable rebuilding, so that was carefully done with light curing putty as well. The last picture shows a comparison with the repaired binder and yet to repair binder.<\/p>\n Having spent 6 hours working on one binder, I got a little burnt out so time for some fun work. I decided to create a little display base for the kit. First up was to use the pirate parts I jokingly made to create just a pirate petit guy. Using some left over sprue and a small thruster bell, I created a peg leg. I scribbed some lines into the leg to get some wood texture that should look decent after it’s painted and washed appropriately. I also lay out the basics of the base on the wood board. I will be cutting up the plastic so this is just the design phase. I have 4 petit guys for this, so each head gets it’s own LED system and ear switch. <\/p>\n Since I had made the helmet, I wanted a way to display both the petit in the driver seat as well as the helmet. My brainstorming brought me to the idea of a petit guy hanger. Pirate guy would be directing things as the old salty veteran that’s already lost appendages in previous battles. The narrative now puts the pilot I built as just a testing guy. The real pilot will be painted in the same scheme as the main kit and be standing aside while the helmet is getting lowered. This allows the display of the helmet. For this, I slapped together some parts and created a crane to hold the helmet. The helmet is connected to the crane via magnets so it can be removed and actually used on the blue pilot. Then comes a very rough mock up of how everything will look. With a crane in the scene, I need a crane operator and a control panel. The other kit will just be under the kit doing inspection work. This is how the scene plays out in my head; I just need to execute it… later. Break time is over and I need to finish the other binder.<\/p>\n And we jump right into primed and ready to paint binders. The desk is cleaned from all the construction work.<\/p>\n There are some minor fixes for the binders after the priming. And those are fixed relatively easily; so only a few sessions of prime-sand-putty-sand-prime.<\/p>\n The lower body gets some paint. I painted alclad exhaust manifold for the heat sinks for the body’s thrusters. This is then masked so the rest of the lower body can be painted. Details for the binders are painted and masked off.<\/p>\n While all the above are at various stages of drying\/curing, time to move onto the top of the binders. I start with painting them white, as I will be painting these with clear orange as I have with the other orange parts. Prior to the clear orange, I want to do some hex masking. I did a quick video broadcast about this step and it can be seen here:<\/p>\n<\/a>
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