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Engineernerd Builds a Gundam Kit Part 2

October 16, 2015 | By Engineernerd More

gundambuild_2

So my Gunpla kit arrived from Amazon fairly quickly. Oddly, the outside of the box was not shrink wrapped. Everything inside was in a a couple of plastic bags and looked intact. The instructions were at the bottom of the box.

I was immediately struck with the number of parts. And wondered what I had gotten myself into. For a couple of nights, I was scared to touch the pieces, but spent time pouring over the instruction. Mrs. Nerd asked how many times I was going to look at them.

Speaking of the instructions, all of the text is in Japanese. I don’t read Japanese. For the most part, I wasn’t concerned about the text. There were a couple of symbols used through out I wasn’t quite sure of though, but was able to find answers at Gunpla101.c0m. If you have ever put a model kit together, you know that most of the instructions are pictures showing assembly steps with no language needed.

They also have pictures of each of the part runners with numbers. I asked my buddy Cordicon what the “X” marks on these pictures meant. He told me that some of these kits share runners and the pieces with the X’s were not needed for this kit.

The other thing I was struck by on the runners is one had three colors of plastic. Mostly yellow, but a couple of pieces in black and one in translucent green. One runner was also rubber instead of hard plastic. This was very odd as I’ve never seen it in a Western model kit.

I also picked up a few thing to get me started. I picked up some fine paint markers for lining panels. There are a number of ways to line panels and different styles. So I’m going to try some stuff and see what I like best.

I also picked up a small pair of wire cutters and set of small files at Lowes. The cutters aren’t as fine as some of them I have seen for models, but they are better built. The files were a small set with different configurations.

gundambuild_3 To tip my hand a bit, when I started using them, I didn’t like them. They would be okay for large material removal, but they are a bit coarse. I actually went to Hobby Lobby and picked up some narrow sanding sticks. They are about an 1/8″ wide and 3″ long, kind of like a flexible emery board. One side has 320 grit and the other 240 grit. I’ve like these much better than the files.