The kit is 1/35 cast in vinyl. It’s fairly old and somewhat rare-ish. As you can see it’s been in a battle or two that have left it unserviceable.
I didn’t build it for him initially, but I’m going to try making it presentable again. A few pieces are missing (that’ll be fun to fix). Some of the old joins have come apart. The legs are pretty much still good to go, just some touch ups needed. I’m assuming they were filled with plaster when built due to the weight and lack of flex.
The upper torso is another story, it was left completely hollow with no interior support. This caused a sag at the arms which started caving in the sides. This in turn has loosened the attachments for the missile pods. First step was a very high-tech, light weight structure, specially designed to support the sides from within.
Next is repairing the broken arm and other cracks at attachment points. Biggest hurdle I can foresee is paint matching. I have no idea even what kinds of paint were used, let alone brand or specific colours. I have absolutely no intention of repainting the entire kit, so this will be an interesting experiment in matching someone else’s painting style.
So for arm structure I liberated about 10” of roughly 1/8” aluminum wire from my wife’s craft closet. It was flexible enough to run from arm to arm through the body.
The broken upper arm was reinforced with some styrene strip inside to provide a stable mating surface, then superglued together. Not a bad fit, but definitely needs some finish work.
Next step was filling arms and upper body with spray foam for fill and stability. It’s quite possible this stuff has a shelf life, as it’s not drying as fast as I remember it doing in the past.
Well here’s a bit of an update. Summertime responsibilities took precedence and no modelling was completed. Our annual show was yesterday, I tried to finish this one in time.
For the replacement missile I tried something a bit different. I had a solid styrene rod the proper diameter, gave it a bunch of turns in a pencil sharpener to get the basic shape. Then chucked it in my drill for final shaping of the point using sandpaper.
I wanted the smoke to be easily dusted, so cotton wouldn’t work. Instead I used spray foam, the kind for around windows and doors. Sprayed a few piles, let them expand and dry, got one that looked mostly ok.
Painted with craft paints, it seems halfway acceptable.
I may have to adjust the colour of the missiles to make them stand out more from the smoke effect.
Still need to come up with a solution to the four chin mounted gun barrels, but honestly like the streamlined look of just the gun troughs.
