Category: Crafts

Berserker Armor Guts

May 7, 2025

I recently assembled the above model kit. It appealed to me not just because it’s a character from a manga I love, but because it’s designed to not require painting and has a cloth cape!

This is a Kotobukiya kit which means it’s got a slightly different design approach to Bandai, and from experience kits from this company are a little more finicky and difficult to assemble.

Appropriately, I used my new ‘GodHand’ nippers to make this kit. I bought these during the last Japan trip, and they cost more than a typical model kit! They are designed to produce a clean cut from the runners, which minimizes sanding and cleanup. They work very well, and I should have purchased a pair years ago.

There were no stickers and a tiny amount of pre painted pieces, but aside from these and the sword blade…

…everything else is black. This proved a bit problematic during assembly, since it was sometimes difficult to see the tabs and holes on the tiny pieces. Some parts are also very sharp, and I almost cut myself once or twice!

Overall I’d say assembly was a bit frustrating and a bit difficult compared to the average Bandai model. Aside from the reasons already mentioned, I was surprised to see some pieces required rotations when you assembled them, and others even required glue! The joints are also very stiff, and I even broke a wrist joint during assembly although the kit seems to consider this a possibility since the runner contained extras.

Here he is finished sans cape and sword arm. Incidentally – and unlike Bandai – the instructions contain no English.

The cape looks great and is threaded with wire to make it poseable, but it was a massive challenge to actually get it correctly on to the figure. A sort of collar device is supposed to lock it into place, but despite Herculean effort I never managed to get it working as the instructions suggested, so my cape is a bit ragged around his neck.

What’s interesting is while this is a model kit, once assembled it feels like an action figure. The seams are all but invisible in the black, and the stiff joints and excessive possibility mean you can display Guts into all the usual poses, including the crouching one I’m leaving him in.

And although it’s a kit (or action figure) once posed it looks like a statue, and will look nice on display. This may have been frustrating to make, and a little pricey, but I’m happy with it 🙂

Robo Chan Man

September 8, 2024

While I actively still buy and make model kits, I rarely blog them these days. This one is a bit different though, so let’s look at it:

It’s a Bandai kit from the early 1980s called ‘Robo Chan Man’. I believe this particular kit is based on a kids cartoon of the time, probably forgotten now.

I found this at an antique store in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t very expensive, and I was surprised it was intact and unmade after 40 years.

It’s a small and simple kit, but you can see it includes a screwdriver, screw and a pull-back motor.

The plastic is thicker and more brittle than what Bandai uses today, and it’s almost impossible to easily get rid of the cut lines when the pieces were removed from the runners. As you can see it’s also two-colour only, and while it is snap-together, it obviously needs painting to look ‘good’.

There’s the finished kit. It has very minimal articulation, and the girl (called ‘Patty’ apparently) is just a single solid figure.

With his legs up he can be pulled back and released, at which point he rolls around with surprising speed! I can’t show that here so I’ll illustrate with a photo of the manual:

It’s difficult to find information about this kit online, but it seems it was one of many including some based on larger properties like Gundam. Here’s a photo I found of five of them including the one I made:

I wonder how many of these kits still exist? Mine is made now, so there’s at least one less. It’s simple and unsophisticated but this was a fun look back at the early days of Bandai model kits 🙂

Let’s Forge Narsil!

September 7, 2024

There is a new type of craft toy where you make miniature items out of plastic and sometimes resin. Most of these are food based – and KLS has made a few – but recently one company brought out this Lord Of The Rings version. Inside the blind-packed plastic sphere is a kit to ‘forge’ a weapon from the Lord Of The Rings films.

That’s the contents, which include a few props and the tools and material to make the sword itself. You can see it comes with two hilts, which may be a hint the process isn’t trivial.

The blade is created by putting resin into a silicone mold. First you need to put a very fine opalescent powder in, and the process is a little slapdash. What’s the powder for? We don’t know, but our guess is to either help the blade not stick to the mold, or to give it a metallic texture since the resin is plastic?

The liquid resin comes in a tiny bottle and the kit includes this long nozzle to inject it into the mold.

This step was difficult since the mold is opaque and the resin is clear so it’s difficult to see how well it’s filling the mold, and whether air bubbles have been avoided. We did our best until it slightly overfilled.

Then you put a hilt on top and let it harden in light. The kit says 60 minutes is all that is needed but from experience – a near-failed model jelly kit – KLS decided to leave it for a day.

To be extra sure we put it under a UV lamp overnight!

The next day the blade slid out of the mold easily, but had an air bubble. Kristin did her best to fill it and we let it dry another day!

And after the second drying stage here it is! A tiny toothpick sized legendary blade with a missing tip 🙂

The blade bonded to the hilt well and took the detail of the mold nicely. It was a bit sticky so the final step was to rub it with some alcohol. While imperfect, I’d say overall it was a fair effort.

We attempted to make another one with the remaining material, but it was a fail and no photos were taken.

For an intro into resin molding I think these kits are pretty great, but they’re also messy and difficult and I can’t see the intended audience (children) having much success with them. It was fun for us though!

Robot Claw