Activity

Nutzoids, I haven’t done anything for so long I posted this in the wrong place!

Some progress on the MG Kampfer.

I have started drilling out the armor perforations (aka Izubuchi Holes). The shoulder ball armor will be getting little round inset details using drilled out pin heads. The pin heads are molded plastic, so they have nubs and parting lines that have to be sanded away before installing. I used a lighter to heat the metal portion of the pin to get the plastic head to slide off. Use tweezers or pliers to hold the pin, and watch your fingers if you try this at home kids.

The lower arms had their holes drilled out and the raised sections inside the armor pieces were ground off to make the armor appear a bit thinner.

The upper legs are in the process of getting their outer armor pieces separated. I have seen the model mags do this and could not visualize why it was necessary. Now I know – Bandai got kind of lazy here and didn’t define the uppermost area very well. It looked like they got confused, then just gave up while designing the molds. The upper locator pins all snapped off during test fitting (see previous posts) so I just ground off everything and replaced them with plastic rod and tubing. As a bonus the join lines go away, saving me tedious sanding, scraping, cussing, etc. One little note – the replacement pins had their ends colored with permanent marker to make drilling concentric holes easier. For putzes like me, it really makes it go a lot more accurately.

I wanted to increase the range of motion on the feet, so I cut the bottoms of the inner legs off and shifted them outboard a bit. This allows more clearance to the inner leg armor when the legs are spread apart. The cuts look terrible right now but I will tidy everything up soon. I’m not sure if it is apparent, but the leg modified leg on the right can tilt out more than the stock part on the left.