Yesterday’s Sculpting, Today’s Converting (Battletech, Gundam)

Got some more sculpting done last night

L-R: PlasTech Valkyrie, F4X Thunderbolt, Hunchback -4J, Centurion, PlasTech Panther

L-R: PlasTech Valkyrie, F4X Thunderbolt, Hunchback -4J, Centurion, PlasTech Panther

Stripped the two painted PlasTechs I got off of eBay. I also blu-tacked the Thunderbolt sculpt; it needs some serious work on the armor, but the chassis is complete. I discovered shortly after this photo was taken that the GS hadn’t cured on the Hunchie, and I had to pull the top LRM frame and the left leg reinforcements.
The Centurion is a simple conversion to more closely match the actual art and card art: I’ve sunk the missile launcher farther into the chest. The ML needs to be resculpted, however.

On the Gundam 1/400 front: Tonight I converted up the rest of Michael vanOrden’s team, as well as his wife’s.

L-R: 2x 120mm MG/leg rockets MS-06J, 1x MS-06F with 240mm Zaku Bazooka

L-R: 2x 120mm MG/leg rockets MS-06J, 1x MS-06F with 240mm Zaku Bazooka

Image quality on these two is a bit shit, still working out a good lighting setup for shooting primed stuff.
This is your basic, late-war Zaku II team layout, before the adoption of the Zanzibar increased average team size. Some fairly simple conversion work here. The center Zaku has had its legs reposed and the left hand flipped. The far right Zaku had to have the shoulder shield trimmed to keep it from impinging on the bazooka. Gonna try heating and rebending the BZ again, but I don’t hold out much hope at this point.
Paint scheme will be tan and grey, heavily-weathered. This is “blue team”

L-R: salvaged artillery rifle, 100mm MG and shield, Giant BZ

L-R: salvaged artillery rifle, 100mm MG and shield, Giant BZ

Red Team has a support-focused armament.
The conversion work here was a bit more involved: I don’t have any base MS-05 models, so I had to cut down MS-06s and resculpt some minor details.
The right-most Zak has a Giant Bazooka (yes, it’s actually called that) salvaged from Johnny Raiden’s MS-06R, and a shoulder shield.
The center is a command mod mounting a resculpted shoulder shield (made into a close-combat shield) on the left hand and a 100mm MG converted out of the standard Zaku II 120mm gun in the right.
On the left, I mounted the salvaged gun from my Thunderbolt conversion as some kind of arty rifle. I added the magazine to the model, as well, and did some minor resculpting to the hands and grip.

Green Team (Reinhardt Wießmann) arriving as events warrant

A Productive Day (Battletech, Sculpting WiP, rust reference photos)

Well, after fiddling with that pen, I felt the need for some sculpting. My long-running Longbow/Spartan project is one layer closer to completion, and I’ve begun taking a miscast Hunchback from my Battletech Intro Boxed Set and turning it into a “Swayback” variant – in this case, the twin LRM-10/quint Medium Laser HBK-4J. Click to embiggen all photos – the knife shots below are quite large for reference purposesLongbow WiP 08 Oct 2013 - Hunchback
Then I went out to make dinner. Turns out a bottle of vinegar-based salad dressing had overturned onto my carbon-steel meat cleaver.
You may know what acid does when exposed to good steel.
I had the presence of mind to photograph it, as this is pretty much what a good bloodstain that’s been ignored will do to a sword/cleaver/knife. Commentary in the captions

Left side of blade, with a quick wipe to remove the pooled vinegar.

Left side of blade, with a quick wipe to remove the pooled vinegar.

Note the grainy texture of the corrosion on the right side, and the ring of corrosion around a nearly untouched center at the top of the blade (if there’s no contact with oxygen, the blade can’t rust – that’s why you oil weapons)

Right side, again after a quick wipe

Right side, again after a quick wipe

This side didn’t get it nearly as bad. Again, though, notice the texturing and contours of the corrosion around the clean areas of the blade.
IMG_20131008_191945_515IMG_20131008_191936_898

Here’s the blade after a scrub with paper towels, but before I scoured and re-seasoned it. This is what hastily wiped-off blood would look like if you let it sit in a corner somewhere. Also, note the color changes as the oil scrub absorbed the majority of the “fresher” light orange oxides on the damaged parts of the blade. The corrosion’s almost black underneath, building though thicker browns to a powdery, newer orange.

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