Part 7 - Bandai 1/60 Gundam Exia Out-of-the-box build - Shoulder

Here is the tough part. Since it is an out of the box build, I am not going to mod it, so there is a lot of masking and sanding to do to make it works.

And exia has this blue soft plastic part linking the shoulders that makes it very "interesting" to build. I decided to mask off the GN cable (the blue plastic part) to start off.

Putting it together.

Glue the pieces and clamp them down for an hour or so.

Prepare the other shoulder while one of them is drying.

Move on to the second one and clamp it down.

More internal details. I also have to mask the finished (sand/prime/paint/shadow) inner connector part to the shoulder.

All dry now.

Also sand down the shoulder cover while I am at it.

Now, it is time to putty the lines on the shoulder.

Also need to do the inner line with the GN cable sticking out.

Waiting for the putty to dry.

After some serious sanding, the parts are primed.

No line. The way I wanted.

Now, washing the panel lines.

Done, round one of panel line.

Looks good enough.

Here is the finish product with panel lines, shadow and top coat.

The other one is also done. The masking works well.

Restart the masking to prepare to put the shoulder cover on.

Now, mask the whole thing.

Both left and right.

Now, put the shoulder cover on.

Clamp and wait for the cover to dry.

Do the same thing for another one.

There is a huge gap between the shoulder covers. So, a lot of putty is needed. It is also curved, so the putty will run down a little bit ... not the easiest piece to deal with.

Sand the hell out of it.

Sanding another round. Need to make sure I will not kill the overall structure.

Here is the shoot after rounds of fine sanding.

Also need to sand the side.

The overrun putty is taken care of.

Prime the piece. It looks great.

Until it totally drys, you can still see the line.

More resanding.

And resanding.

Here are the sticks I used.

After prime, it is all good. Start painting.

No line :)

The first coat is done.

Start to add shadow.

Looks pretty good.

Now, the exciting part of taking the mask off.

The white is still white.

The GN cable is still there without dark blue all over it.

Yeah. the masking works.

So, all three colors are there. The inner dark grey, the while shoulder and the blue cover.

Also unmaks the other one.