Monsters in Motion 1/35 Martian War Machine question...

Hmmm...ten days and 63 hits later, and not a single reply?
Not even a "Sorry dude, can't help ya!" !?!?

Popular kit!

OK, I'll try to make the question a little more generic:

How would you attach the thin vacuformed plastic lenses to the resin hull?
The lack of positive mating surfaces has me worried.

Of course, If I didn't care about maintaining the translucency of the lenses, I would just glue some plastic stock inside the lenses and superglue away.
But I would like to light the kit, which means I need obstruction-free attachment points...

I did get some good info from a buddy in another forum about filling the plastic lenses with clay and recasting them in resin, but I still want to explore other avenues with the lenses as they are.

So, if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.

If not, I'll drop by again in another ten days/63hits!

Why not make a clear resin copy of the entire cobra head with lens and embed the lightinng source (LED?) within the resin?

QUOTE: Originally posted by cmtaylor Why not make a clear resin copy of the entire cobra head with lens and embed the lightinng source (LED?) within the resin?

Great idea, but a little too ambitous for the likes of me!

I suppose the absolute best idea would be to attach all the lenses to everything, then recast the entire hull and cobra head/neck in clear resin, with lighting embedded...Very ambitious!

I have built these in the past (not the MIM one) but the contruction style is the same. I have to say first that I detest...did I say detest..I DETEST vacuform parts in general. With that said, here was my solution.

Provided the forms are true (as in contoured properly) shave back side down to fit flush or as close to flush as possible around the edges with sandpaper so that you have a nice fit and not protruding around teh edges (in my procedure neatness don't count). Don't worry about screwing up the clear parts with the sand paper, you'll be painting over it anyway (unless you plan on lighting the kit, in which case, my method will not work for you).

Once they are trimmed nicely, superglue the edges of the casting and set the glass in place prperly aligned. Now you can continuse with you sanding to get them seamlessly blended in to the body (leave a slight line at the seam as a guide for masking later) and finish sand with 600 grit paper.

To paint: since the "lens" in the film are not "clear" (kind of like foggy lime jello) I used the paint method. After masking, the paint procedure is as follows:

First coat- Neon green
Second coat- Tamaya Trans Green, keep applying thin mist coats untill the green darkens to the shade you want (slightly darker at the point and edges to create depth)
Last coat(s) are clear coat to gloss ( keep all layers as thin as possible)

You're done, if the edges bother you (like my anal self) wet sand to feather flush with body using 400 to knock down the edge and 600 grit for final, smooth transition. My extra step was to polish carefully with Novus #2 and #3 to a high gloss.

Now you can mask and paint the body, you can chose to leave the slight paint edge as demarcation, or use these same methods to remove that line as well.

Noone said building kick-ass models was easy ;) Good Luck

Thanks, XFactor!
That is precisely what I have decided to do. No lighting, just some fancy painting!

You are exactly right about the non-transparency of the "lenses" in the film. On my old Lunar Models build, I dulcoted the interiors of the lenses to impart the proper translucency.

Thanks for your reply!

no problem ;)