HG RX-75 Guntank - Part 2
We're back on the guntank! Just as a reminder, my plan is to eventually paint this, I just wanted to get it assembled first. As you may recall, I did the wheels and the base on the couch in between doing serpent custom posts. Today I was kicking back enjoying some wine I had opened with dinner earlier, and decided to get a little more progress done at the computer desk. So we have migrated there, and I even pulled up a youtube video of "best gundam theme songs". Anyways, here's our work area for today, and a reminder of where we are starting from:
So the next step is the treads! They've got some nice flexible soft grey plastic that will wrap around the wheel holes. This stuff is nice because you can nip as close as you want and it wont ever have stress marks, but, its soft/rubber enough that if you try and do gentle shaves with a knife a bit will often hand on. A little frustrating, but take it slow and do it right the first time and it isn't that bad. Then it just hooks at the bottom of the middle wheel, wraps around, and hooks back into itself, pretty securely! (I also snuck in the yellow button in the waist on the last pic)
With that done we can move to the arms. Pretty simple, lots of polycaps. One thing we'll touch on later - look at all the curved surfaces where two parts meet. Seam city, my friends, seam city:
Luckily all these parts pop in and out just fine when fully joined, so first I went for some tamiya thin cement to get pulled into the gaps via capillary action to at least prime the pump. with seams like this i didn't expect it to fully fill them. Note while the red is pretty accurate, the grey isn't as bad as it looks - the seam sucked in a lot of the glue over the seam itself, while the glue built up over the non seam parts, and the curved surface just makes it look even worse. But none the less it wasn't quite getting what I wanted. I was VERY careful at this point to use thin layers and angle the parts to make sure glue didn't get to the polycaps.
So it was time to break out the big guns. This Zap A gap Medium CA+ is what I often use to assemble 28mm miniatures. Its thicker than the thin cement, and can be used a little more for gap fill. Its great for attaching the flat surfaces where an arm and a shoulder meet on those minis, and then getting a little around the edge to make sure instead of gaps where they meet, theres actually a slight outwards bit of glue I can cut/sand down to even. It does come out faster and thicker, if you're not used to it definitely use a precision application device of some kind or you will get it everywhere you dont want and have fingerprints of glue and stuff glued that shouldn't be glued. But you can see here how it actually can retain an outward bluge on a flat surface while wet - it will collapse in a bit as it dries but will still be a smaller outward bend i'll then knife down and sand down.
At this point I had done a LOT of gluing, knifing, and using like 500 grit sandpaper to re-round all these round parts. by the time I got to the head and those GIANT cannons that are totally round and have a seam the full length of the top and bottom, front to back, I apologize but I just stopped taking pictures. The heads rather simple, its the guns that took a lot of fill, scrap off extra, sandpaper smooth and perfectly round. Then once everything was done, a little work with some higher grit over everything that I had touched that felt round to the touch and I was ready to call him assembled!
They are some long guns, aren't they? They're actually exactly the same, its just the camera angle and the back ones tilted higher But all in all this kit filled what I wanted from it - it was a quick build I could get a lot done relatively fast and in between other stuff, it fits in with my collection of One Year War 1/144 that can be seen in 08th MS team, and its something I can improve on later. I will still probably paint it, though what paint job I haven't settled on yet. It's one of the things that would actually benefit from optical camo, as it stays more stationary then most suits and isn't as good in mobile combat. So I may just paint it either greens or browns or greys to blend in, or go with some camo scheme, or just something besides the standard "I'm a gundam please direct your attention (and weapons) this way, if you'd be so kind" color scheme of the brightest brights.
Another good point is it can often be found for under $10 at most popular sites (let me know if you need recommendations). In the future I may try out a Severe battle damage scene where I would have to wreck a kit, like a shot going through and exploding a model, or a sword cutting clean through (though its hollow with no internal detail so i'd have to like stuff it with random cheap wires and some fake structure), on something this cheap. I dont think any of the parts are particularly good or useful enough to really kitbash with, unless you were looking for flexable treads like this. But if you were a fan of the original series, or that era, and want the iconic guntank in 1/144, in a cheap and quick build, this works.
So the next step is the treads! They've got some nice flexible soft grey plastic that will wrap around the wheel holes. This stuff is nice because you can nip as close as you want and it wont ever have stress marks, but, its soft/rubber enough that if you try and do gentle shaves with a knife a bit will often hand on. A little frustrating, but take it slow and do it right the first time and it isn't that bad. Then it just hooks at the bottom of the middle wheel, wraps around, and hooks back into itself, pretty securely! (I also snuck in the yellow button in the waist on the last pic)
With that done we can move to the arms. Pretty simple, lots of polycaps. One thing we'll touch on later - look at all the curved surfaces where two parts meet. Seam city, my friends, seam city:
Luckily all these parts pop in and out just fine when fully joined, so first I went for some tamiya thin cement to get pulled into the gaps via capillary action to at least prime the pump. with seams like this i didn't expect it to fully fill them. Note while the red is pretty accurate, the grey isn't as bad as it looks - the seam sucked in a lot of the glue over the seam itself, while the glue built up over the non seam parts, and the curved surface just makes it look even worse. But none the less it wasn't quite getting what I wanted. I was VERY careful at this point to use thin layers and angle the parts to make sure glue didn't get to the polycaps.
So it was time to break out the big guns. This Zap A gap Medium CA+ is what I often use to assemble 28mm miniatures. Its thicker than the thin cement, and can be used a little more for gap fill. Its great for attaching the flat surfaces where an arm and a shoulder meet on those minis, and then getting a little around the edge to make sure instead of gaps where they meet, theres actually a slight outwards bit of glue I can cut/sand down to even. It does come out faster and thicker, if you're not used to it definitely use a precision application device of some kind or you will get it everywhere you dont want and have fingerprints of glue and stuff glued that shouldn't be glued. But you can see here how it actually can retain an outward bluge on a flat surface while wet - it will collapse in a bit as it dries but will still be a smaller outward bend i'll then knife down and sand down.
At this point I had done a LOT of gluing, knifing, and using like 500 grit sandpaper to re-round all these round parts. by the time I got to the head and those GIANT cannons that are totally round and have a seam the full length of the top and bottom, front to back, I apologize but I just stopped taking pictures. The heads rather simple, its the guns that took a lot of fill, scrap off extra, sandpaper smooth and perfectly round. Then once everything was done, a little work with some higher grit over everything that I had touched that felt round to the touch and I was ready to call him assembled!
Another good point is it can often be found for under $10 at most popular sites (let me know if you need recommendations). In the future I may try out a Severe battle damage scene where I would have to wreck a kit, like a shot going through and exploding a model, or a sword cutting clean through (though its hollow with no internal detail so i'd have to like stuff it with random cheap wires and some fake structure), on something this cheap. I dont think any of the parts are particularly good or useful enough to really kitbash with, unless you were looking for flexable treads like this. But if you were a fan of the original series, or that era, and want the iconic guntank in 1/144, in a cheap and quick build, this works.
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