The before and the after
Let’s start with the messy stuff
We’re only going to need to modify one piece fortunately, the wrist to hand connection. We start by cutting partially through the ball joint to hand connection with an ultra thin hobby saw. This is far enough, because now we can … … split it wih a little push. This is about the angle we want to end with, but it will be a bit too short, so … … I finish off the cut, completely separating the two, … … and prepare a small piece of plastic rod to place between them. I’ve used 2mm rod because that’s what I have on hand, but 3mm would have fit a bit better. This is what it looks like after I’ve attached all the pieces with plastic cement. It got a bit messy. Here it is primed , you can see it’s a little bit thin, and, very rough.
A Bit of Touching Up
To smooth the connection out and strengthen it, I’m going to cover it with epoxy putty. Epoxy actully means ‘two part’, so I gather a little ball of both ‘halves’ of the putty, wet them so that they don’t stick to everything, and start kneading. You can see there are still two separate colours, so I’ll continue kneading. And here it is, properly combined after about a minute of wet kneading. I make a little epoxy putty snake, and then wrap it around the connection. Again, I keep it wet so it’s not sticking to me. Then I use the wet tip of a kebab stick to poke it into position. Now I leave it to harden.
If this was for a bigger kit, or for a competition, I would definitely spend some time sanding this smooth; however, this is good enough for my purposes as it will be barely visible once the model is assembled.
Also, remember this modification will weaken the wrist somewhat, so I’m going to sand/scrape the ball joint down so it’s not so tight. If I didn’t, the ball may break off next time I pull the hand off.
Results!
Here’s the hand, painted up and holding the bazooka. Doesn’t the newly angled wrist look so much more natural? Here’s a close up of the same picture, and you can’t even see the roughness of the connection. It’s more noticable from the side, but still barely so. I should have sanded that handle a bit more though. From the opposite side. And a few more angles. Here it is, looking good on the fully assembled model. Oh yeah, I’m very happy with this.
This modification is really easy to do, and any model that has something held between the arm and body will benefit from it.
Next week, I’ll be taking a look at detailing up the rear skirt, a step that I reckon is mandatory on these HGUC Jegan kits.
Thanks for checking out TotalGunpla.com, hope you enjoyed it!