Super Heavies pt. 2
The tanks have pretty much been built. The spots that need to be masked off to prevent paint have been taped off. The reasoning for this, should be well known. Plastic and super glue do not connect well to a painted surface. They tend to eat at the paint and generally make for a much weaker bond.
Anyway, I digress, while looking the tanks over, I could see a few locations where the resin just did not have a great fit. It left a gap due to a bad fit or from the resin just splintering due shipping or whatever. There were several that needed filling just from the resin fit, or lack of. The overall build of a Baneblade tank leaves large gaps on the sides where the armor plates meet. Those spaces are just too big. They will just swallow washes and look huge! I had to do something about them before I put down a primer.
Looking to fill in the gaps, I had many options, greenstuff was available, but it just seemed to be too time consuming, but would fill any and all. I am always looking for shortcuts, and I saw sitting in one of my drawers, packages of styrene. Hmm, I had three sizes to choose from, two rods of 1.2mm and .8mm and flat strips of 1mm. You will need superglue to fill any resin to resin gaps, but plastic to plastic gaps are easily filled with standard plastic cement, Tamiya liquid cement please. This could be much easier than greenstuff in general and a stronger bond to boot when plastic is involved!
You can easily rearrange these steps to whatever you need, cutting first is always a good practice, with the gluing last, just in case. So here is the process I used.
Simply lay the plastic rod down into place. In this case, it's just behind a sponson. One of those regular Baneblade gaps.
Next, I added glue to begin the bonding. You will have some time to work the the plastic before it really sets. This instance, the glue gives the fitting some bite so the styrene isn't sticking to you finger or wanting to just fly out, etc.
Tamp the styrene down or maneuver it into place to get a good fit. I used my sculpting tool with a rounded end. With the styrene rod softened due to the glue, you have some ability to force it into tight spaces or even shape it slightly. You are also able to bend the rod for curves.
The leftover piece was then carefully cut away either with a sharp knife or sprue cutters. Be mindful that the unglued piece will have a tendency to 'fly' away the shorter it gets.
Other examples of the process are shown below
Your mileage may vary depending on what gaps you need filled. With the different pieces of styrene, you can fill differing gaps or try for varied effects. Here the flat strips are used to fill in along the sides, and a rod on the front where the resin top meets the plastic front. In addition, they can be used for other decorations or designs. You may have seen the strips used for rifle straps.
If you do a quick search for fillers you may also come across super glue with baking soda
Scale Model Guide also has a couple of links
I'm hoping to get at least a primer of black down on these three tomorrow, maybe even the first grey.
No comments:
Post a Comment