I’ve gotten a few questions recently about the process I went through to put together my Samus Aran model kit and also asked about some tips and pointers that may help other people out. I’m glad to give any sort of input as I definitely made some mistakes both minor and huge. So let’s get to the dirty work.
First I want to go over some stuff I used to put it together. The list is pretty basic except for a few exceptions. These tools and items will most definitely help make the process run a little smoother.
- Dremel Tool Set
- X-Acto Knife
- Krazy Glue
- J.B. Weld
- A container to hold the pieces
- Some soapy water with detergant
- Toilet Paper (crazy huh?)
- Metallic Green Gundam Marker (completely optional and I actually just had it lying around)
- Sandpaper about 220 grit
When it comes to the Dremel you can get the basic kit here and it should come in handy for any more modeling and household stuff you may be so inclined to do.
I started off by putting the unpacked pieces in the container (tupperware for me) and then filled it with warm water and dish detergent. This gets the manufacturing grease off of the resin pieces which is a must if you plan on painting it. I also used an old toothbrush to gently scrub the pieces. Once I was done I rinsed them off and left them to dry. You’ll have to wash them again because of the drilling to come but this gets the pieces clean so handling them is better.
After cleaning them I took the X-Acto knife and cut off the extraneous pieces. The mold making process will leave pieces of resin that aren’t meant to be a part of the model. Unfortunately the instructions don’t exactly show where the actual extraneous pieces are so you’ll have to use your best judgment. You’ll also want to be careful to not cut off to much and in some places you may have to use a carving effect to get rid of the pieces.
Once the pieces have been cut away your gonna have to take the Dremel plunge. This is where I made the major mistakes which resulted in some, what I affectionately call, “battle damage”. The Dremel is mainly used to drill out the holes for the ball and joints for the model. For some reason the holes aren’t deep enough and you have t0 do this pretty frightening task. The mistakes I made are pretty obvious in these pics (click them to get some mega-size pics).
Up there is where the drill went all the way through the shoulder piece.
Here is a straight on view of the hole. When the ball and joint is in you can see the rod of the joint.
One of the reasons this happened was that the rod piece of the joint was too long and wouldn’t fit into the shoulder all the way. What I should have done was drill the hole as carefully as possible and then cut the ball joint rod down to a smaller size. You will eventually do this anyways when working on the wrist ball joints.
Same problem where I did drill a hole through the closed fist hand. Ouch!
Just as another example I also screwed up the leg which only resulted in a bigger space and no unsightly holes on the other side.
The next thing I noticed was that the rods of the ball and socket joints wouldn’t always fit snugly in the holes. To alleviate this I took the aforementioned toilet paper (I told you it would come in handy) and would tear off small enough pieces to wrap around the rods. The next step is messy so be prepared and be careful. You have to drop some beads of Krazy Glue onto the wrapped toilet paper and then use your fingers to press the paper and glue up against the rod. Just be careful to not let your fingers stick so be fast with it. Make sure there is enough layers of toilet paper to provide the snug fit. You’ll have to wait until these pieces are dry so go ahead and play some Super Metroid while ou bide your time. You want to make sure the pieces are dry other wise when you put them into the holes they will be permanently stuck and the best thing about this piece is it’s articulation. Once the piece is dry do a test fit as you may need to do another layer if it is still loose. If it’s too thick then you can easily sand the rod down until you get a snug fit. Do frequent checks on the fit when doing this though as you may sand away too much. The pic below shows the finished product.
I also performed this toilet paper treatment on the upper arm piece as it fits loosely inside the shoulder piece as seen below.
As a side note I didn’t do this to the arm cannon and opted to commit myself to the downgraded look. In retrospect I should have done the same toilet paper trick and kept the option to change out the upgraded and downgraded piece whenever I felt. Oh well. Now you can learn from my mistake.
Another side note is that I did glue all of the gray pieces to their counterparts as they don’t just stick together. If you plan on painting each piece individually then I would hold off on gluing anything together until your painting work is done. I glued the soles of the boots, the arm tubing, the leg tubing, and the neck piece to their respective pieces. Below is an example of this.
The final bit of advice I have has to do with the visor piece. If you have the official Dimension Diver kit then this may not need to be done but I had a re-cast kit so I felt this would look better. The visor is made of a clear plastic but the color wasn’t dark green enough so when it was inserted into the helmet area the red of the helmet really shined through. I decided to color the visor with a Gundam pen I had lying around.
Unfortunately I did this after I put the visor in so I had to be extra careful. If you color it before you put it in you can be less careful and then get better coverage. You could also paint on the backside of the visor which I admit I didn’t do so I don’t know how it would turn out but I think it would be pretty cool. Here’s how my helmet visor turned out.
So that’s pretty much it. It was a fun and somewhat easy build and now that I know what to do I’d be a lot more careful. I hope this helps any of you guys out and a special thanks to VS Romero and Joe for finding and reading my blog. I appreciate the input and questions. Hopefully this helps you out in your builds and send me the finished pics when your done so I can post your results. Bye for now.
