RX-77D Guncannon Mass Production Type - Stage 1

Well I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day. I did but I got a speeding ticket... :( bleh.

OK onto today's post, about my work on the RX-77D Guncannon Mass Production Type.

First, this kit is seems so extraordinarily simple after working on the Sinanju. My mind felt relieved at the relative straight forwardness of it all. Also... I hope to be able to incorporate some of the techniques I learned (and used) building the Sinanju into this model with a better effect. At least I should be able to see the results quicker. First I'll start with the assembly

This kit only has three panels and not that many parts. I decided that, for this kit, I wasn't going to snip or sand away the nubs as I usually do and just left them on. Usually when I remove a piece from the runner I shave down the nub with my knife. When I first started modelling I actually took it a step further and sanded it down. All of my model kits have sanding marks where the nubs where but that was the only part I sanded. Because of that those parts would collect dust and dirt the fastest (because of the extra grooves). I'd constantly be scraping at that surface to clean it (when it got really bad).

For this kit I decided that I was going to do heavy treatment on all surfaces, that means sanding at the end, before priming, and then, if necessary, sanding again before painting. I also wanted to do ALL the seam lines for this kit and went through great pains to do so... well... that's an over exaggeration, because nothing about this kit is a great pain. It's all very simple. Refreshingly so. So because I decided that I was going to commit one whole stage for surface preparation I didn't do ANY doing assembly. Just got the pieces off and stuck them together! That was it. I've done this only once before and that was with the FG Rasiel and GN Sefer and I realized that omitting that one step cut down my build time DRAMATICALLY. I built the whole kit relatively quickly. Maybe 1 hour. This is what it looked like at the end.

I was very happy. It looks great in its stock form. Not a lot of articulation or range of movement but... its a long range support mech. It's not meant for flashy moves or speed. I'm not doing any upgrades or mods to this kit at all besides the holes which I'll talk about now. This is a relatively common mod for this kit. Take a look.






I bought an electric drill a couple of weeks ago to fix my tape deck (Don't ask. It worked though.) and decided to also use it for this project. 44 holes later and I'm done. I added a bit of basic putty to some areas just to smooth it out. I'll sand it down later. This is basically what I've done so far.





Before I drilled, I scored the drilling areas a touch so the drill bit would find the center more easily. It was a nice idea but didn't help much. The bit tip was a bit too blunt to find the small hole I made. Either way it worked out fine in the end.

After I glued the pieces together using Tamily Cement (liquid) I organized them into sections according to colour. As usual this is a re-colour job and I will be changing the colours of all the pieces. Red to Olive or White, Brown to Gun Metal, Blue to Black

Special note about the shoulders. The shoulders actually have two separate layers, so the first one has to be seamed and sanded before the 2nd one can be started.

That's all for now. Now the sanding process will start. I think it may take a while