Strike Freedom Construction - Day 2

Not too much progress on day 2, only the head is completed. I mentioned in the last post that it's difficult to sand the small parts, and the head certainly took some patience and dexterity to get it sanded.

Speaking of small parts, master grade kits usually have an internal skeleton which is made up quite a number of small parts, and more importantly, there are a lot of nooks and crannies making it quite impossible to sand. Luckily, the skeleton would be covered by the outer armour so here's where I got a bit lazy and decided not to sand it.

Actually, for this particular kit it makes sense not to sand the internal skeleton since the Strike Freedom is supposed to have gold joints. The parts for the internal skeleton is molded in this "dirty" gold colour that probably wouldn't stand up well to sanding. Instead, sanding the parts other than the skeleton helps to enhance its shinny look. So it would seem that the no paint technique is well suited for this kit.

Strike Freedom Construction - Day 1

Ok, it's about time I resurrected this blog. And what better use of it than to chronicle the construction of that MG Strike Freedom Gundam model I have sitting in my closet collecting dust?

That's right, I'm finally going to build it. I have a picture to prove it. Here's how it looks after the first day:



As you can see, I've got the upper body assembled. What you might not see from the pic is the new technique I'm trying with this one--the no paint technique. What's special about this technique you ask? After all, anyone could build a model without applying paint on it. Well, the difference is that I'm sanding each part to get rid of the glossy outer layer. I read about this technique a while ago and I wanted to try it because I thought this would be less working than painting... silly me... It's actually turns out to be quite a bit of work, but there is less chance of messing up. So far I'm pretty pleased with the results.

That's it for today, stay tuned for day 2!

P.S. I just realized I talked about this sanding technique a couple posts ago (time-wise it was a long time ago!) I was experimenting on BB Gundam model at the time. Sadly that model is still incomplete, it was just too hard sanding all the small parts. I definitely wouldn't recommend this technique on models smaller than 1/100 scale.