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I'm not really a great fan of gundam, largely because I've never seen it and the only info I get is off the net or talking to people, but I know a heavily armed mech when I see one, and the H-arms custom is definitely that. This was part of the reason why I bought it . I got a crystal type kit which means that it's made of clear and chrome plastic so you don't have to paint it, however many years of slavishly following every detail on aircraft have made me want to make everything as per the prototype, besides all the seams show if you don't sand and putty and if you do you have to paint it or else it looks like junk. There were two sprues of clear parts which are normal plastic and one polycap sprue, but two sprues were chromed plastic which was then painted with some weird kind of black/purple paint. I cleaned all the areas to be glued on these parts so the glue would stick properly, this kit is supposed to be "snap together" but I used glue anyway. During construction I encountered several problems mostly of my own making, first I painted the inside of all the clear parts black so that light wouldn't pass through them and because the inside of the armour needs painting any way as you can see some of it. This meant that when I came to paint all the white areas the black showed through the white. This is a standard problem and a reason not to buy kits made of black plastic, what I should have done was to paint the inside white first which would show on the outside of the clear part, then black over the white which would show on the inside of the part. |
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problem was fixed by using two coats of tamiya spray matt white then
finally painting with the citadel paints I chose for the model. Gundam
models should be painted with gunze sangyo paint (I think) but the
instructions either say which, but they're in japanese or more likely
as the kit is not intended to be painted they don't say at all. The
second problem came during construction, as I was used to test fitting
aircraft parts I did this with the gundam, however as it is a "snap
together" kit the parts acted as designed and stuck. I fixed this
by shaving pins and enlarging holes slightly so that the parts could
be separated after test fitting. This problem should always be kept
in mind when building "snap" kits using glue. The third problem I
encountered may not have been a problem however in the absence of
any reference material I decided to cover over some holes on the front
of the backpack. There are three holes on the front of the backpack
at the top and two at the bottom and the way the piece is moulded
suggests that they are there so it can be moulded properly rather
than from choice so I covered them however there are some rockets
on the back pack and these holes may be air intakes or something.
After all these problems were sorted out the gundam was quite easy
to build being a nice change from more demanding tasks like the innards
of the revell beaufighter. The painting was also quite easy with citadel
paints (I mixed the colours to match the box and instructions and
thinned them to make brush strokes less noticeable) and aided by the
fact that the polycap construction of the moveable joints allows the
gundam to be disassembled into separate bits of arms, legs, feet,
torso etc. so that each piece can be painted separately. On the whole
this is quite a nice kit very strongly constructed and you can "play"
with the finished result to some extent (unlike the Mk IX which is
terribly restricted in movement). The whole thing is much better than
the Mk IX (as it should be, it cost 6 times as much but that's still
affordable). |
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