Lesson 3: Seam Line Removal

 

Part of the nature of model-building is the presence of seam-lines, where there is a visible gap where two parts fit together. In Master Grade or better models Bandai does their best to hide seams, but with the low parts count of High Grade they're inevitable. The Zaku II I'm building has a particularly noticeable one on the torso (and the leg but I don't have pictures of that) which I'll be using to demonstrate how to Seam Weld, the removal of seam lines using plastic cement and modelling putty.

 

Note: seam welding should only be done if you're painting the model. It looks very bad otherwise.

 

The first step is to take the two pieces and put them together with a small gap in between. Then fill the gap with Plastic Cement. Use more than you'd think. You're trying to make a solid bond and it doesn't really matter if there's some spillover, since you can remove it. Then smoosh the two pieces together. There should be excess if you've done it correctly.

You should then give the cement time to dry and cure. If you don't the next step will start tearing out small chunks of the plastic and fixing it will take a lot of extra time. This is what it looks like when it's done (it usually looks a bit less shiny, this camera is crazy).

The next step is to sand down the excess cement. By doing this you create a single, smooth surface over the seam.

 In theory. In reality there's almost certainly some places where you didn't put in enough cement or something else, and the surface still has pits in it where the seam was.

To fix this you apply modelling putty to the areas that are still not smooth. I for some reason did not take any pictures of this, so I'll be using pictures I found online.

 

Once the putty is dried and cured, sand it down until the area is smooth (pro tip: use a fingernail to check for smoothness). If it isn't, apply more putty and do it again. After priming it will look like this:

 

It looks like there were never two pieces to begin with. It seems like a long process, but it looks very nice and most of the process is waiting.

Lesson 2: Cutting Out Pieces and Removing Nubs



Sprues are a necessary part of the injection mold process for model kits, but removing your kit's pieces from it can be a pain. However it pays off in the end, as nothing makes a kit look bad, especially after painting, like leftover bits from the sprue (usually called nubs). The techniques I use tend to get the nub flush while avoiding damaging the part itself.

Don't Be This Person

 

First, use a pair of side cutters (also called nippers or clippers) to cut off the piece leaving as much of the sprue attached as possible to it.

Cut Here

Then cut bits of the sprue off bit by bit until you reach the point where the sprue narrows. Then you use a hobby knife to shave off bits of the sprue until it would be possible you might accidentally cut into the piece. Try to make sure you cut downwards with the knife toward the desk. Don't cut toward yourself unless you want your workspace to look like a shrine to a dark god. The reason you cut like this is because plastic is a fibrous substance at the cellular level, and any major cut will bend and snap it, leaving stress marks in the plastic that's left, which can show up even after painting.

After that,  take some sandpaper and sand what's left of the nub down until it's smooth. I use 400 grit sandpaper, which I would put as the minimum grit for modeling. Anything lower than that and you'll star to scratch up the rest of the piece. 400 grit is usually listed as "ultra fine grit" or "super fine grit," but these are lying to you. Those descriptions are meant for woodwork, which needs rougher material. 400 grit should be very cheap at Lowe's, Home Depot, or maybe even Wal-Mart. You might need some higher grit sandpaper if you end up accidentally getting some deeper scratches in the piece. I use 1000 grain sandpaper buff out scratches, and you'll more than likely need to order that on Amazon.

 Finally, test for smoothness with the single most precise instrument in your arsenal: your finger. If you can't feel much of a difference between where the nub was and the rest you've done it (bonus points if you can't figure out where they were to begin with)! Now that you're feeling proud it's time to do the same thing with the other 175-ish components of an average High Grade gundam kit.

Lesson 1: Pre-Production

The first step with model kit making is in some ways the hardest: figuring out what you want to make. There's thousands of high quality models out there from $10 to as high a price as you can think of. In terms of gundam model kits (which I'll probably shorten to "gunpla" [plastic gundam] a lot in these posts) there's still hundreds of choices. To practice modelling techniques and painting I suggest the High Grade gundam line. It has the most selection and the cheapest prices (they're at most $15), and they have stickers and seams that look so much better welded and painted. I can't help you much in deciding what to make, other than do what you think looks good or will be fun to make.

Krishna-themed Kshatriya

 Once you know what model you're working onThere's many different ways you could get an idea for a paint job or custom build. It can start from a desire to make something interesting based on the universe's lore (a Zeon-scavenged RGM-79 for instance), wanting to use some cool parts you had left over from another kit (such as using a sniper kit as another model's shoulder-cannon), painting a kit to be closer to its animated or real life counterpart (every single military kit in the world), wanting to be evocative of a concept (my own US Navy-themed Grimoire, currently on the backburner), from a group build (my Back to the Future Union Flag, which I have to get done by September), or you just like a certain combination of colors (my Black and Orange Gundam Heavyarms I've been putting off work on). It's important to me as a modeler that I have something in mind before I build, since I find straight snap-building kits to be pretty boring. Be warned that techniques like seam welding will sometimes permanently like parts in place, so it's good to have a plan.

USN-themed Grimoire

Orange-Black Gundam Heavyarms 

Part of that plan is to have a good idea of what the finished model will look like. Luckily for anyone who models anime kits, it's incredibly easy to do a 2d mockup of a color scheme using line-art. Line art is a black and white drawing with no shading of just the lines of a figure in animation. Enterprising mecha fans have taken art of gundam (among other series) mechs and cleaned them into line art so that it's easy to put color onto them in MS Paint with the bucket tool. First go to this website and find the gundam series your model came from. Then copy and paste the line-art into paint. If you're using Tamiya lacquer spray paint (which while a little pricey is well worth the cost) you can then find swatches on the Tamiya website, copy and paste it into paint, and use the dropper and bucket tools to color parts of the line art to your heart's content. It's a lot of fun to experiment with different color combinations and styles, so I recommend doing this. My line art drawings are scattered throughout this article, and this final picture is for the project I'm going to be using for my examples in future tutorials: my Hobby Zaku II: