From the top down, the head and helmet are fine although the helmet has quite a tab on the backside which not only has to be trimmed off but requires a little re-sculpting of the edge. Not a huge issue in and of itself but it could have been done better. The strap castings are okay, but there is a lot of flash on them, indications of a production mold starting to go bad. The body also has a lot of flash, again not a big deal, no detail is missing and its relatively simple to clean up with a knife and then a file. the only real issue with the body is the pitting of the metal across the back from shoulder to shoulder. The primer should be enough to cover this. I'll find out! The arms though, those are on the not good side of the equation. The right arm has flash and slipped, i.e. the mold didn't align properly and the arm is not cast quite correctly. I have seen worse and this wasn't so bad that I couldn't fix it. The same thing happened with the left arm and the Thompson SMG. The left hand, the grenade and the canteen are all fine. The base had a considerable amount of flash as well, again it just took more time than I expected it to.
Needless to say, prep time took a little longer than I expected. I then did as much assembly work as I could. In this case the body to the base and the arms to the body. I also glued the Thompson's strap in place and did some preliminary bending. Its close but I'll do the final adjustment once its actually glued to the body after painting is done. The head, helmet, left hand, right hand with SMG, helmet straps and the grenade will all be painted separately.
With assembly done I put it all in the booth and primed them in grey. Badger's Stynylrez grey primer has become my favorite airbrush primer at this point. I have a couple of other colors that I want to start experimenting with especially after watching James Wappel's videos, he has developed some very interesting techniques.
A few pictures of the evenings work:
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| I managed to get the box open without cutting myself. When I cleaned up the desk so I could use the new painting station I found the British Airborne Jeep that I have been looking for. One important note on the Hobby Zone Paint Station, it is a lovely white surface but it is not a cutting surface, you will scar it up pretty quickly if you don't use a cutting mat. |
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| The pieces |
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| The assembly |
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| The rest of the pieces |
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| Primed, sorry the lights are pretty stark in the airbrush booth, but he really is primed at this point. |
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| I don't see any immediate flaws after priming so I think its okay to start the painting. I intend to do the initial work with the airbrush and then follow that with the brushwork. |
He's off to a good start. Wish I had looked closer at the casting in the beginning though. I would have returned it and tried something else. The production mold definitely needs to be replaced at this point.
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