My First Gundam Build:WIP of PG Banshee:Giant Claws Mounted

[shovelchop81]

Apr 25, 2017 13:52:36 GMT -5 Maethius said:

Those fists are incredible!

I know, very impressed by them, they now have their covers on that hold the palms together. I really need some new nippers with ergonomic handles! My bloody palms are getting bruised on a kit like this!  

[shovelchop81]

Ahh...the arms... a pain in the butt! Partly my fault and partly design/tolerance issues. My fault was misinterpreting the LED wire path and "tuck away and hide" instructions initially, you need to undo the wire on the torso fist where they tell you to hook it out of the way earlier in the build; but it's still like working on Japanese bikes! They expect you to stick the wire loom into the smallest of places as if "mass distortion" was a real life thing, it is possible but only just by the skin of your teeth! ;-). The rest is all on them, the POM caps in the shoulder joints will need to be removed (which involves disassembling both shoulders down to the parts you made 6 pages earlier :-( )and shaved out a bit so they can clear the sharp lip on the base of the shoulder peg so the arms can go all the way on properly. The last annoying bit is in the shoulder armour, there's a long thin translucent orange bar with little "wings" barely attached, literally half a sprue's thickness of brittle plastic that is supposed to be able spin, flip, slide do the damn Flamenco with other parts attached to the "wings" but it's far to delicate to cope properly IMO. One "wing" started to break off so I had to glue it but even Superglue on a roughed up surface couldn't do it so I used a method I developed years ago by mixing glues to get a very sticky and ridged bond when dry. I put a drop of Bison Universal/Kit glue (soft but very tacky and thick) then add a drop of superglue on top that acts as a catalyst/hardner to turn it into a compound tougher and stronger than Two Part Epoxy resin or Araldite glue. I've taken pics of his forearm stored beam sabres as I'll most likely forget later with all the other weapons to come including two more beam sabres! Oh yeah, there's a bunch of internal stickers to apply in the arm building steps which are easy to miss so watch out for those tiny "peel back" symbols! I forgot to photograph the larger square ones that go IN the forearms.





The "wing" on the right started to break:





Repaired:



Gap on shoulder pegs:





Test fit, reshape:





Fixed on both sides:



Unhook the bit the tip of the arrow is on before doing anything else!!



I missed that at first:



You have to keep the excess wire and connector compressed and packed into the outside of the gap or the cover will not fit!

[Maethius]

That armor looks brutal! I've never heard of the Bison adhesive before- how is your experience with it?

[shovelchop81]

Apr 27, 2017 1:13:28 GMT -5 Maethius said:

That armor looks brutal! I've never heard of the Bison adhesive before- how is your experience with it?

It's European, Dutch actually, designed for repairing rubbers, soft plastics, cork, leather etc.. as it's still very pliable when cured; I've used it mostly for fabricating 1/6 clothing, costumes that mix materials like plastic with leather or fabric. Good stuff but hard to find even in the UK now as they had to change the formula to meet some stupid UK health and safety regs so the Bison Kit we now get in the UK is crap. I used to bypass this problem by picking up a shelf-full of the stuff every time I visited the folks back in Greece but now I order it from a Dutch camping shop online as so far they are still using the better formula, if it looks like honey it's good, if it looks like butter it sucks (only supplied in tins so far as I know). I used to buy it in tins and fill a huge horse syringe with the stuff and put a cap on to dispense it that way but don't trust the tins now. Damn, I've had a long history with this glue! It's faired better than any relationships anyway..

[shovelchop81]

Head work... but not "head work" i.e. no probs really apart from being very fiddly with microscopic parts to keep track of and fit. It even has the moulded in magnets in the horns just like the real Bandai! Still tricky to get to work properly but might wear itself in with a bit of use. I finally started watching the episodes of UC with the Banshee in them, he's meant to be black not blue! I'm thinking of spraying a dusting of black primer over him with all the orange hidden to protect it from overspray, then do a bit of metal weathering using sponges to bring out the detail once he's done.





The measurements are in cm:





























And a sneak peek at the light up feature with the armour closed:

[shovelchop81]

Forgot to add two head crests so here are pics with those although I will now be taking off all the gold parts and masking some of the grey (joints etc..) so I can spray him now with black primmer since I still have a load left over from my last 1/6 Death Trooper scratch builds. Ironically I'm now building the backpack that has the only black pieces in the set!! (well and the toes) but you won't even see it!. I also want to fix an issue with the bicep connectors, the arms are prone to falling off already at the polycaps since they are upside down cones which is a daft design for an important connection; I'll drill a couple of holes and add screws to fix that.

[Maethius]

That is quite the regal-looking machine! Love the head crests and optional armored face!

[shovelchop81]

Yes that face swap is another clever feature on this kit, I've only ever seen Takara do it before without having to remove a face or turn a knob on the head like an old He-Man figure (Manyfaces?) and that was done later since this kit was first released in 2007 apparently; either way the Takara one was on the AOE Leader Class Optimus Prime that came out way after the film.
Decided to go for it and do the spray painting with some relatively basic masking (I hate masking!). Took some parts off, some apart, some masked and some closed up as tight as possible with my fingers crossed that no overspray would get in there! ;-)
Aside from running out of black primer just shy of finishing it seems to have worked out quite well! There's the odd bit of overspray on some grey but that just looks like weathering and gives the parts more depth, the remaining exposed blue from the transformation parts is a bit of a bummer but still blends fairly well with the black matt in most cases, giving it a midnight blue tinge that breaks up the matt subtly in most places and will be hidden on the inside in others. I had to use matt black (not the matt black primer) to finish off some sprues and the feet but that should be fine. As you'll see in the pics the clear orange seems to have come out pretty much unscathed, it was a gamble but seems to have paid off so far; I still plan to do some sponge work to bring out the details a little and perhaps get rid of the blue on the opened mode knees.
Just checked, the matt paint works fine with the matt primer, both look the same for what I need (last two pics are a mix).
Oh yeah, fixed the bicep joint problems too with a little drill and a paperclip, they can swivel as much as the electric wires allow and with no fear of the arms falling off which will help a lot since he will have some mega sized weapons! I just hope the delicate elbow joints don't explode!























A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE BLACK PLASTIC, BLUE PLASTIC AND BLACK PRIMER:

[shovelchop81]

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!! Two LED wires snapped right at the soldering connections on both rear waist skirt panels so the whole waist LED harness is out now because they're in series not parallel! It might not be possible to fix the back ones as they have a tiny circuit board for the gradual light up feature making the contact area for soldering microscopic :-( I can bypass the back two though and hopefully get the side and front ones working again by soldering to the wire itself. I could buy some loose non circuit UV LEDs or just use orange ones to replace the ruined ones I guess, I hate bloody electrics! It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it or how well you understand it, the physical connections from real motorcycles to little models just break all the bloody time! It's what made me have to walk away from my Custom 1/6 War Machine build and why it's still not finished; damn electrics!

[shovelchop81]

Damn horn broke as soon as I touched it when I sat down for a coffee still waking up and no I didn't sit on it! , great way to start the day! Ah well fixed now, quite a few delicate bits have broken on this kit, I don't think it's because it's a KO it's just that they are so thin that being made of anything wouldn't prevent them from breaking if you try to remove them once attached or just cause material fatigue by using them too much like the booster panel on the back skirts, has a tiny hinge that they then decided to cut out a gap in! Why? Wasn't it fragile enough already? It has to support the largest skirt part and an integral articulated booster system. Ah well high end models, what else is new, even the human equivalents are fragile! LOL.
Taken pics of the LEDs with broken wire connections so you can see what I'm dealing with, on the plus side eBay do sell small UV LEDs cheap and even prewired, I also might be able to fix these as I have an idea how to stop the two solder puddles converging and causing a short circuit..











WIRES BROKE HERE, ALL FOUR NOW:



SOLDER CONTACTS HERE, >1mm GAP BETWEEN THEM...

[Maethius]

I've learned from my wife, who was big time into Warhammer 40k and War Machine, to brass pin delicate parts on the first build; don't wait until they break because they WILL! On my last build the tiny LZ Gatling gun pins snapped as I was posing it for photography. I KNEW going in that those suckers wouldn't make it, and could have saved myself a lot of stress at the end if I had just clipped them off and made brass pin mounts right out of the gate.

Love all the details... the wiring looks like a pain in the butt. ^_^

[shovelchop81]

Yeah prevention is better than a cure in many cases but I tend to pin things after they break as I deal with so many different types of materials in my scratch built customs I can never guarantee which parts will fail or whether a pin will be an improvement or just bodge fix! Sadly you can't pin the clip part of hinges!
I'm ignoring the electrics for the moment because they are indeed a pain in the butt as you put it! The same with the blaster rifle as it's a ridiculous amount of parts for something he wont be using since he will have a giant railgun permanently attached to his arm! I built his wings/back crest but didn't like the colour, luckily I still had a bit of gold spray paint left so removed the "yellow" parts (with the odd breakage here and there of course but superglue will fix that) and sprayed them straight with no primer due to the limited gold I had left, any flaking or thin coat areas will just show the pearly yellow not grey or white primer.
Building the giant shield now, much more fun than that rifle would be even though it involved more black painting. It's the size of the manual already and still has more big parts to be added!!

Rifle parts:

[shovelchop81]

Yup the shield is bonkers but in a good way! ;-) I think he goes astro-surfing on his days off! Love it! The gold for the wings came out well too, I just hope it cures thoroughly as many metallic paints like chrome have a problem doing that due to the high metal content.





Inches:

[shovelchop81]

Here he is armed with his shield and beamsabre, the collar wing crest back together and gold now. I need to do some gold detailing before I add any weathering. Weapons add on kit next.

[shovelchop81]

Built his railgun, massive weapon that can fold up onto his arm. Spotted the extra pilot included in the weapons set is actually the female pilot who first pilots the Banshee and the other is the male, nice touch that.