Saturday, February 25, 2006

Helping Hands I Don't Understand!



Bandai kits(Gundam) fit together like crazy. I do glue up, sand, putty and paint but I can cut and assemble and have a solid mech in a few hours. Then, sated, I can as easily disassemble and rebuild at my leisure!
I want to get good at this.
Went to HLJ, ordered some books, excerpted below. How to translate..that is the question!
When I started Usenet was a great resource...not anymore. Most tips/tutorials have moved into various forums. I catch myself wasting an hour clicking through topics when I could be beating my head against the wall with the wrong putty!
I hope the double edged sword of that last sentence gets through..
guys that build these kits are always willing to help, and that is terrific. Very few flame wars, and most posters have blogs or sites better organized than yours truly with pics.

LED Mirage 2 Heads, Choice Made


AaacK! My HEAD is in a Vise...Produce? Am I a vegetable?!!!

Shogun or Centurion? Well, my 144th scale version had only one head style, that of Centurion so this will be the Shogun. That decided it is time to get these subassemblies finished.
The new mag-lamp will help me get smooth seams. Putty, sand, prime.

Twelve pieces? Seems such a simple thing!

Dry Fit prior to putty and sand..already looking sweet.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

New Music

Latest arrivals:
1. SHOTGUN WEDDING VOL 4 (DTL VS. SYRUP GIRLS)
GRIME/HIPHOP/GHETTOTECH/CRUNK/ELECTRO DJ MIX
VIOLENT TURD RECORDS.

2. V/A LEAF RECORDS CHECK THE WATER Since its initial foundation ten years ago by ex-4AD press officer Tony Morley, UK-based experimental / leftfield electronic music label Leaf has explored a self-professed 'suicidally eclectic' path that's also resulted in the unveiling of several major talents along the way – witness the critically lauded likes of Caribou (formerly Manitoba), Four Tet and Susumu Yokota, who've all contributed pivotal releases to the label's highly respected back catalogue.

3. Nara '67 - Import CD Bossa Nova/Tropicalia in Portugeuse

4. The Wind That Blows The Robots Arms CD The ingredients: old school metronomic beats, drill & bass cranial shakeups, sci-fi cinematic ambience and atomizing glitch hop. Shaken or stirred, this is a very fine cocktail indeed.

5. Lesbians On Ecstasy Giggles in the Dark Remix Features remixes by such gaylords and fag hags as: Le Tigre, Tracy + the Plastics, Sean Kosa, Kids on TV, dj Ai, Scream Club, Jody Bleyle (from Team Dresch), Katastrophe and 1-Speed Bike.

6. METHODS OF DEFIANCE the Only Way to Go is Down New York City's finest blend of do it yourself/resist/outsmart/destroy comes together under one name Method of Defiance. 1 legendary bassist, 1 iconoclastic beat and sound splicer, and 1 time defying drummer join forces on A project 2 years in the making.<--the newest hardest Digital Mayhem from the master: Bill Laswell.

Model Hours 5-9 Swordplay, Waist, Veil

Nothing slows documentation of model progress like a flaky 60 dollar a month cable connection. Cox will be called in the AM.
This is just more sprue cutting, organization and dread...dreading the putty of course. Once I have cut out all the parts, glued the subassemblies up I will be puttying the cracks, and sanding more.
Primer begins by Sunday.
no pics until fat pipe is fixed :(

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Model Hours 3-4 Sanding, Sub Assembly




Model work moving forward, squeezing time out of the dry stone that is my working life. I have shut off cable and loaned my X-Box out--though neither was much of a distraction.
Sprue cutting will continue for a couple more weeks, but once a piece is cut it can only be identified by comparing to the picture. This has forced me to be somewhat more organized.
Since assembly begins at the arms, then the legs, there are left and right side pieces. I prep the pieces and store in seperate containers. This is perhaps a vain attempt, but faster than writing a part number on the inside of each piece.

There has been(and apparently always will) a debate about when to prime and when to paint. Here are the options: on the sprue, after removal from sprue, after assembly. I am opting for after sub-assembly.
What sub assembly is, for example, is the gluing of left and right miror parts, with the rubber movement tubes between the halves. Most of these subassemblies are covered by armor. Once glued together I will sand and putty the seams so they do not look like they were ever 2 halves. Then prime.

Because most of the sub assembly is covered I will brush paint metallic over the primer.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Model Hour 2 - Sprue Cutting





Second step in the build process is cutting the parts off of the trees. Once they are cut I use an exacto and sand paper to deburr. This is fairly time consuming but fun, as I can then dry fit the pieces.
Wave is not Bandai, this is not an intricate snap together kit, glue is definately required!

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Model Switch


I took an Earth and Beyond break from modeling a year ago. My glues are dry, surfaces dusty, but more importantly I am rusty. Rather than risk an expensive, slow, resin kit build I am going to warm up with an injection molded Wave model.
This one is a 1/100 scale LED Mirage. I have completed a 1/144 scale pictured here. This kit is a Wave kit, a very good kit! 1/100 will be considerably larger than the first one, my intent is to capture the build on blog so to speak.
I am not a fan of the Anime that inspired the robots, but the Five Star Stories model designs are terrific. When completed this model will have a nearly fixed pose--it is Bandai that makes the "action figure" style Gundams.


My table is covered in "self healing" rubber, for the many x-acto knife wounds it will suffer. Before I begin sprue cutting later this evening I will set up clamp lights, the camera tripod and take stock of tools and materials. I have already purchased most of the tools I will need, but rest assured I hope to provide an accurate report of money and time spent.

The piece trees are washed to remove mold release. This will give better paint and glue adhesion, as well as a smoother finish.

Next model I will add some "jet dry" to the rinse, cut down on spotting and reduce drying time.
Budget so far: Model = $40.00 <--includes shipping
Time so far: 1.5 hours = area prep, partswash

Saturday, February 04, 2006

The Birth of Sixty Minutes--or--"Good Luck and Good Night


Traveled an hour for this Black and White treat. Clooney is fighting the good fight indeed, with sharp focus and multiple battlefronts. Witness: "K Street", "Syriana", and "Good Night and Good Luck".
"Good Night" is the film I just saw, and it is rich and tight all at once. Subtext, allegory and timeliness make this more than just a great civics class. One of the coolest things is that it is rated PG, which means you could show this in school, as early as the 4th grade.
Many adults have complained about this being a "boring" movie in online reviews, after all there is no hip-hop soundtrack, gunfire or car chases...umm, whateva.
What is truly satisfying is the parallel to our current political climate--where to question the governments actions = a wiretap and a squint and several questions about patriotism. As a straight history lesson it is hard to argue with archival footage. I now live in the state where the Eisenhower museum resides..his warning about the military industrial complex all but forgotten in the sea of "red"(no, I am not immune to that irony).