Finished my first Gundam today

Welcome to the world of Gundam! These are fantastic kits, take your time, plan ahead and follow the great advise in the links here:

http://www.fichtenfoo.com/ and http://www.gamerabaenre.com/

Use cheap plumbers tape to mask interior structure for painting leg armor.

modify and customize as needed  (its all battle repair anyway!)

Oh, and dont read too much into the Gundam Movie...it wasnt much about Gundam anyway!

I am a Universal Century guy, so my prerference for kits is in the UC 0079, 0080, 0083 and MS 08th team range. (this will make sense later on, trust me!!! :) )

HTH
David

Oh, don't get me wrong....I am a HUGE Gundam fan....I'm up on UC history.

I've just never built a Gundam kit before.

The one I got doesn't have any interior like some of those pics.

This is what I picked up....

http://www.gundamstoreandmore.com/ban917986.html

Oh, great your up to speed then :-)

Lots of new people getting into the Gundpla action after seeing what they CAN be made into.  I use tons of aircraft warning stencils on mine and have a set of german WWII tactical symbols just for use on these kits. Dont know what the tactical symbols mean, but by the time you lay one on top of the othe they become a really cool looking servicing placard!

I am at work on my Wappa and have ideas for a Riverine Patrol Boat like inthe opening scene of MS08th team. I have a Monogram River Patrol Boat that will fit the bill nicely as a base kit, just need to Feddie-ize it. 

I got my Zaku from GSAM pretty quickly.  Started on it that night. The UC  kits seems to have interiors but the Seed kits do not. One of our club members built up the F91, and aside from the mecha being physically smaller than thier UC counterparts in the same scale, it did not seem to have the internals that the others have.  

I find that a three way fingernail board (medium fine and supefine) used after cutting the sprue with a Xuron sprue cutter takes care of all of my problems before I get to the fit/assemble stage.  I have one cutter that I just use for Bandai kits.  cleaning up the nubs on the Zaku hose peices was time consuming but worth it.the plastic polishes outglass smooth.

NOW, some parts may be ABS and that will react differently.  They will be dark grey or black and will look and feel different, and glue will not affec them the same. Luckily this is where your strenght parts are like hip joints.  

Hope this helps

David 

I just finished the torso....these are pretty cool little kits....very nicely engineered.

I was so impressed, I ordered a RX-178 Gundam Mark II and F71 G Cannon from GSAM

BTW....one question. Do you use future on a gundam after completion?

i do, its my final gloss coat prior to weathering and decaling. Then I mix in a few blobs of well-mixed Tamiya Flat Base and use the future/flat base as my final coat at higher pressure.  I have been using Future for years and prefer it to all the others. simple and no mixing , and I can add clear colors and Jacquard PearlIT  to make effects.

David

Here's my progress so far....

looks good so far, not hard, huh?

On the next one try thinning down the V antennas. they mold them WAY too thick! :)

David

Finished!

Here is GAT-X103 Buster Gundam as it left the factory.....

Very Nice!

 time to grab another on, eh???

Im goign to work on my Zaku tongiht, would love to paint it this weekend........

David

Yup....I am getting started on my RX-78 when I get back from vacation.

I gotta hand it to Bandai....they really made an awesome kit...very ingenious how they engineered these things.

Nice one, btp2k2.  I'e also been a huge fan of Gundam for a while.  Done a few over the years, but alas, not too many survived.  I'm bigger into the gundam wing series myself.  Just order a few of them a few days ago.  then I found some oldies I had in a box somewhere.  Burning Gundam from G Gundam series, a Guntank R-44 from UC F91, blitz gundam from Gundam Seed, and buCue fromGundam seed.

Currently, I took the guntank apart and I'm going to redo it in more militaristic colors.