One Robot, One Car, One Headache

 So through this frigid weekend, I got some work done. Now I just need to finish up two builds. The first being the RX-78-2 Gundam. There are A LOT of mistakes in the painting on this. But at this point, it was a learning exercise. I'd say for the most part, it turned out well. I just need to finish up the weathering.

 

 The entire thing went together like a Snap Tite. No glue needed. Someone mentioned something about the joints, but I can't recall. A few are a little tight and I believe it has t do with the fact they're painted. As much as I wanted the morning star weapon, I think I am going to switch to the rifle. All in all, if I do another, more planning will go into it.

But I think I can hide a good chunk of my mistakes on this with a weathering, so we'll see. 

 

The Challenger. A true AMT/Round2 repop. Everything fit great during the fitting phase. But as I got closer to putting it all together, same AMT old molds. The window for example. First it had a massive, very thick nub connecting to the bottom of it. I cut well away from the window so I could slowly trim up to it. No go. Once it got to the last bit to cut so I could sand the rest of the nub off, crack! Thankfully with it in place, you really can't see it. 

Secondly with the window, it's too damn narrow to fit properly between the pillars. If it touches even the slightest of one side, it won't touch the other.  If it touches either the upper cross bar where the sun visors are, it won't touch the bottom and vice versa. So gluing this in place took some reworking, but regardless it's too small and there are gaps that won't close. 

 Seems all of the AMT kits i bought with the exception of maybe one or two have had window issues where they weren't molded correctly. 

 

 The dash, though I complained about it in the last post, really pissed me off. Either legless drivers are driving this, or their tooling sucks. I spent about an hour trying to set it where it should be. And where it should be, has the wheel digging deep into the seat. Any tilting of it and it looks like your driving a chopper.

I verified the dash sits flush with the interior tub, but it still looks like hell. Last car I had this issue with was a Chevelle from, you guessed it, AMT. 

The paint job turned out okay. After about 8 coats of the ULVS Clear Coat and letting it dry, it followed that up with Meguiars Scratch X and Meguiars spray wax. It's still no where as "shiny" as the cars at the show. But it works. I was going to do a few coats of Testors Extreme "Wet" lacquer. But with all the issues, and the fact it wont be a show car, I said nah.

And I've tested it in the past, the Createx makes a wonderful seal for the Extreme Lacquer. And the shine is quite nice.  Besides, part of the issues yesterday were fitment issues that weren't there during early stages. Once the it was altogether, the body sat up off the frame. I actually had to glue the frame to the body along the seam. 

 I'm kinda hesitant of using the PE on this. I would like to use it on a kit worthy of it. However, it was originally going to be a show car, and I bought it for that. There's still more work to do under the hood, which also has a massive gap now on either side that was never there before. I still need to do the decals as well. 

I'll wait and see. 

 

 

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70' Chalenger R/T - Update

 After getting colors laid down on the Gundam this morning, I decided to break out the Challenger. There's too much wrong with it I missed during prep that it won't make a show model. But it will look really damn nice in my display case. 

I mixed up the Createx Pearlized Plum with a 20% mixture of Createx's Candy Blood Red. I think I should have gone about 25%, but I still love the color I got.

 I put down 4-5 coats initially and let it sit. The one thing I like about Createx is it's quite forgiving and it dries to the touch relatively fast. This has allowed me to do a bit more here and there. 

 I thought at first, that i off sprayed it. Parts look thicker than others as seen above. However, when if a flat light, the color is even. The lights above are coming from the spray booth.

After about 2 hrs, I went ahead and added 4 more coats. I wanted to make sure it was thick enough because after the first round, a few areas rubbed off when it shouldn't have.

 After Letting these dry for about an hour, my curiosity got the better of me. I had to do a test fit. So i gently put the interior tub in and put the body over the frame. The engine wires made it tricky, because I haven't cut them yet. 

The interior really has me grumpy. There's two injection marks on the back arm rests. Despite sanding the hell out of them and using a tad bit of putty, you can't feel them, catch them with a blade, but you can see them. 

Another thing that pisses me off about some of these older kits is the ill fitting dash into the tub. According to them, the steering wheel should be flat on the driver seat. Anything else and it off sets. I have it tilted literally a hair upward, so you can see the dash and in looks too high. 

 In the original Challenger, the dash was wood grain. Or at least an option. The decals for this are solid black with minimal gauge details. I want the wood grain. So there are no gauges.

I still need to redo the air cleaner. The Testors Gloss Orange, despite thinning it seven ways from Sunday, just would flow right so it looks a mess.  

 

Currently, I have just laid down 4 coats of Createx  UVLS Gloss Clear. I will let it sit over night and in the morning I will wet sand it and do about 4 to 5 more coats. I did a few coats on the convertible top, but I think it's too shiny. We'll see in the morning. If it is, then I will brush on some Vallejo Satin Clear.

 

Once the clear has been polished, I need to start on the PE which I am scared of. it comes down to very shaky hands and trying to keep glue from getting everywhere.  

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RX-78-2

 I had some issues with the initial painting. I picked up some Mr.Hobby Aqueous Gundam Colors from Hobby Lobby. Never used them before so there's always a learning curve. After a few days of letting them set, I went back over all the colors with about 4-5 more coats to get a deeper and shinier color. The white was almost a pinkish white. 

The AK Chipping Fluid seems to be real active under these paints. Just a slight brush and some of the original paint rubbed off before i got the remaining coats on. I will have to be careful when snipping and assembly, but there will be a lot of touch ups. Let's just hope this paint brushes well.

 Yellow, like always was a pain. I believe I have around 8 coats of yellow to get to where it's at now. The red was the second color with fade issues. I only put 4 more cots on those parts and they look good. 

I'll let them sit for a day or two before I do anything further.  

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What In The Gunpla?

So my son in law has been at me for awhile to do a Gundam. I kept telling him to buy me one and I'd do it. Whelp... I got this from him for Christmas.

 

Guess I will stay to my word. I pulled it out of the stash closet today and started looking at it. This is going to be very interesting. The instructions, I'm not so sure on. I think because everything is designed to cut parts off the tree's and glue together, they are nothing like any of the other instructions from other genres or companies. I may even be keen to some older Dragon instructions at this point. 

 

Currently, I've washed the parts in warm water with some dawn soap. Now they're laying out to dry so nothing will really be done for a few days. 

I had to Google how to paint a Gundam. Or at least, best practices. Everything I read was kinda like every other kit, cut parts from sprues, prime, paint, assemble. But with this?  I think I'm going to leave the parts on the sprues and prime and paint them there. Mainly because I'm not familiar with Gundams and some of these parts look like others.  

 

 

I did however put the head together, without glue. It feels almost like a snap tight. I ended up taking it apart for the most part, gluing it to toothpicks so it can paint it. The aim is to air brush as much as possible. Hand paint very little with the exception of battle damage, shading and line accents.

I've seen a lot of these at the model con, however, they all seem to the be the same thing. Paint color to match the plastic part color. Only on a few have I seen any actual "work" done.  So since this is technically armor, I'm going to approach it like I would a tank.

Once it's been primed, I plan on laying down a layer of AK Interactive Chipping Fluid. Then I will use Createx's basic colors in Opaque. Once the paint is on, then I will begin to chip away some paint for a battle worn look. 

I have no idea what I am doing, but this should be interesting to say the least. It has a good selection of weapons to choose from. That said, I think I am going to stick with the shield and the morning star. Simple, effective and it will give me some retail space off the armor to play with.  

Maybe, I'll just paint this in an Ardennes Forest, German camo pattern and pretend it was a secret weapon they had. And if you tell me there is a story line like that in the comics or series, I'll slap you! So help the modeling gods. 

 

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New Diorama - The Dear Johns (WIP)

 Having completed the German 20mm FLAKVIERLING gun last year, it just sat in a display case. I decided to try and build a diorama for it. Ran off to Hobby Lobby to see what they had. I ended picking up a pair of trees, some ground cover, fallen tree parts and a wood base. Actually spent more on this stuff than I have most kits. 

After the heart attack and going back into the ER this past Wed, I needed something to focus on other than worrying about my heart. So I started to finish this up today.

 

 Began by cutting the bases off the trees and drilling holes into the wood base. Then I had to use a combination of Elmer's clear glue and nail gel glue. Neither alone wanted to hold the tree's in place. After making a mixture, the tree's held their position. 

Then i added the ground cover by brushing clear glue on the base in sections. This stuff is plump. Tried to make it thin, but the stuff clumped a bit. In the end, I like it, because it allowed for me to add tire tracks and "foot traffic" around the gun. The ground cover was misted with some diorama glue I purchased at HL. This stuff is sticky as hell. 

 

 I added a few of the fallen logs to fill in a bit of the empty space. Once the gun was in the position I wanted, I glued that into place with the clear glue. 

 I picked up a set of Trumpeter German Anti-Aircraft figures over at hobbylinc. These figures suck. The plastic is overly thick, I had to break out the big clippers to get parts off the sprues. The mold lines were in places where sanding them off, you sanded away a lot of details, with the exception of the leg pieces. 

 

The heads were attached to the sprues via the neck. Yet they had an extra "nub" on top of the head. This caused sanding away a lot of hair lines and other details. Fitting these, even after a lot of sanding was going to require some putty. 

 Once I was able to get the figures together and primed, I followed up with Vallejo paints. After the initial few coats of grey, I realized I used the wrong color grey. I intended to use Field Grey but used German Grey which is a lot darker. 

After this dried, I started in with the Field Grey. The underlying darker grey actually helped with shadows.  The skin tone was done in Vallejo Medium Skin with a little highlight of Vallejo's Light Skin. Black was thinned to water and all cloth creases, outlines, etc were done.

Sand Yellow, mixed with a drop of Mahogany Brown was used for hair and Mahogany Brown by itself was used for other hair. Refractive green was used to paint the shoulder insignias. 

Once all this was dried, I used an Burn Umber oil wash on them. I over did it, but I like the worn, dirty, tired look they have. I finished them off with two coats of Tamiya XF86 Flat Clear. However they're still shiny.  The gun was done in the same manor, and it's a flat tone. I'll let the figures sit for a few days and see how they look.

I bought some AV metal cases from hobbylinc as well. These fill in more empty space, but give the crew something to sit on and lean against. These were painted in Field Grey and finished with an oil wash and flat clear. 

 

 I need to add the "letters" to the figures and paint the field cup. I added two helmets and binoculars from the Tamiya kit I used for the Lost Soldier diorama.

If after a few days the figures still have a glossiness to them, I will need to figure out what I can use to dull them to match the tone of the gun. 

 

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Tamiya KS600 German Motorcycle

 After the model-con, there wasn't a whole lot I wanted to do while I recover from my heart attack. But I needed to do something, so I grabbed this KS600 from my stash and began working on it.

 

 This is the hardest kit I've 

done so far. Mainly because it is smaller than my other builds. Some of the pieces reminded me of PE, thankfully there was none used on this.

It was a great kit and a blast to build. Only real complaint are the instructions and paint colors. You had to look carefully at each section to see what colors were to be used versus the part numbers. I really didn't want to go German Grey, so I opted for the Dark Yellow. 

 

 Weathering was pretty simple. I just used one of my sanding sticks to rub away the yellow paint. Once the weathering was done, I finished it off with an oil wash. 

The figures were pretty standard. They were well molded, little flash and seam lines were minimal. 

 

 After some Vallejo paints, little bit of Tamiya paints, this little bugger is complete.

 

While waiting for this winter storm to come through, I decided to take it outside for a few photos. Doesn't look too bad. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chattanooga Modelcon 2026

 Squadron Hobbies out of Ringgold, GA was at the show like always! They did a very nice walk around video. You can see my tank at 20 minute mark  and you can see my soldier diorama at 58:48. 

 

 

 

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