After all the mistakes and blunders I’ve made during the course of this build, you’d think that I would have gotten them all out of my system by now. But no - everything that’s happened so far was little more than a warmup. You have no idea how close I was to having the wheels come off this build entirely.
I’m serious - if not for the fact that this model comes with two different heads, I would not have an intact Gundam F91 to show you. When building one of the heads, I lost two parts, and broke a third. The only reason I’m still left standing is luck, plain and simple.
I don’t want to get too grim here - despite facing that many more gruesome screwups, thankfully I was able to fix or recover from most of them. There’s only one flaw that’s glaringly obvious, and only if you’re looking very carefully. This could have been waaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse.
With that out of the way, let’s dive and finish this build.
Right Arm
Normally I don’t do this, but for this build I need to talk about the arms separately. Because the left arm has the beam shield emitter, its construction is somewhat different.
We’ll start with the right arm, since it is the simpler of the two.
Honestly, there’s not a whole lot going on here. This part of the build is the only one that feels more like a High Grade. You’ve got a simple inner joint:
Some armor to cover the joint:
And then you connect the forearm:
The only thing mechanically interesting here is that can rotate at two different points; first at the shoulder joint, and then at the forearm (with a third rotation point at the wrist, at least once I connect the hands).
Visually, there’s not much to remark about here. The arms are one of the only, if not the only part of the F91 that can be described as “boxy”. I suppose the upper arm - what with its curved pauldron and decals - is kind of interesting, but by and large this is one body part that doesn’t deviate too far from the norm.
Left Arm
The left arm is identical to the right one, with the exception of its forearm. That’s where the beam shield goes, and so we need a whole bunch of extra parts (and some newly shaped armor) to accommodate it.
The gizmo below does inside of the forearm. It’s what allows the shield emitter to pop out when deployed, and then fold in flush when not in use:
In retrospect, this would have been great to paint and detail, but considering everything else that went wrong, perhaps it was for the best that I didn’t tempt fate.
While they generally look the same, I do think it’s a bit shocking (at least initially) how much wider the left forearm is:
I really love this shield gimmick. It’s another fun, mechanical feature that makes it feel like more than just a plastic model.
The Wheels Fall Off Part 1: Clear Coat Goes Bad
Up until now, the Mr Hobby Matte Coat has been a pleasure to work with. It takes a lot longer to dry, but the results speak for themselves.
Until they didn’t. It turns out that I used the entire can on this model; by the time I got to the arms, I was on the last few dregs. And either there wasn’t enough of all the compounds left to get a good mixture, or I didn’t shake it up enough. Whatever the case, it started to dry … shiny. So shiny, in fact, that it looked as if the left arm hadn’t been top coated at all.
Without knowing what was going on, I assumed I had simply missed a few spots, so I applied another coat. And another. And maybe another after that. Still it was shiny. I felt like I was going crazy, so I picked up the arm and began to scratch at it, just to see if there was, in fact, no paint.
Dear reader, there was paint. A lot of it. So much, in fact, that it started to come off in goopy. gloppy hunks.
I ended up stripping almost all of the topcoat off of the left arm with rubbing alcohol and elbow grease, at which point I re-coated it with my old, regular Krylon paint. By some miracle, it didn’t cause too much damage. You have to look really close to notice anything is wrong on any of the white pieces. The most visible evidence of this ordeal is on the inner frame, which is still quite shiny looking.
Later on, this happened again on one of the pieces of shoulder armor. One of them sprayed fine, but the other one started looking shiny again on the top. The only difference that time is that I accidentally touched it when it still wasn’t dry (same as with the Mr. Hobby gloss coat, it’s not easy to tell when it is or isn’t dry when it’s shiny). That created a nice, big, ugly thumbprint, which I (thankfully) was able to fix with another blast of Krylon paint.
I think there was still a little bit of Mr Hobby paint left in the can, but at this point I gave up on it. Next time I use it, I’ll make sure to shake it thoroughly each time, to make sure it stays evenly mixed. And I’ll be sure to be extra careful when the can gets low; if it turns out that this is just a thing that happens when the can is close to dead, I’ll be able to prepare for it in the future.
PS - I’m not 100% certain that it actually dried shiny. It is entirely possible that it simply hadn’t finished drying. On previous nights, I would top coat my pieces and then go to bed, so I didn’t see them until after they had been drying for hours. But on the night when I built the arms, I was working much more quickly. If I had stopped and come back the next morning, it is entirely possible that they would have looked perfect.
Comparison to the High Grade F91
I feel like a broken record, but once again the High Grade arm has both different detailing (particularly the pauldrons on the upper arm), and different proportions:
This is one time where the difference in proportions feels like more than just a mere observation. The HG arm looks so skinny and scrawny. Just a little bit of extra meat on its bones would have gone a long way.
It’s the same story with the left arm. Whereas the MG version looks huge and wide, the HG one only looks slightly bigger than usual:
Hands
After all the tiny, intricate little parts used across this model kit, Bandai cheapo-ed out on the hands.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before in at least one of my older models, where there are only two hand “cores”, each with a dedicated thumb piece, and a bunch of finger attachments that you can plug in:
I’m not sure how well this kind of hand grips onto accessories, but I do know that they’re a lot sturdier than typically High Grade hands. The finger attacments are easier to swap, and you never have to remove the outer backing piece. Basically, there are fewer opportunities for something to break.
No Open Palms
I almost forgot to mention this - the model comes with no open palm hands. That seems like a glaring omission.The Wheels Come Off Part 2: RunningMascara Panel Lines
Like a lot of builders, I think different color panel lines look better on different colors of plastic. In the case of white plastic, grey lines look much less harsh than black.
Unfortunately, I rarely ever get to use my grey Gundam Marker, because the Krylon topcoat tends to make it bleed. As I expected however, that isn’t the case with Mr. Hobby Matte coat, so my Gundam Marker finally got a serious workout.
But as I eventually found out, Mr. Hobby paint can make the marker bleed, provided that you don’t let the marks dry. That is exactly what happened with the panel lines on the white backing pieces for the hands. Further attempts to go back over the lines didn’t really help: Eventually one of the pieces looked so bad that I decided the best thing to do was to simply paint over them entirely:
It isn’t pretty, but it also isn’t an eyesore. I chose light grey because I knew it wouldn’t stand out or draw attention. Most people don’t really focus on hand backings anyway, so hopefully these won’t be too noticeable during action poses.
Comparison to the HG F91
I’m only showing this comparison so you know what the hands are supposed to look like when properly panel lined:
Honestly, it’s a stupid bit of detailing. They should have just left them plain and unmarked (and I should have said no to panel lining and left them be).
We’re Doing a Part 6
F*ck it - we’re going this in six parts. I can’t let this post go on any longer, and we still have the shoulders and the head to cover. Trust me when I say that neither is going to be any shorter in length.