Crafts – Page 22 – Robot Claw

I Made This!

September 12, 2017

It’s been a while since a craft post, so here we go!

BFS sent me this. He’s always sending me these metal kits since he knows they’re a chore to put together and he uses me as his proxy! There seems to be two companies making them, the ‘metal miniatures’ guys (that you see in stores everywhere) and these less common Chinese models, which are more difficult and have slightly lower quality control.

To put it bluntly, this thing was excruciatingly frustrating to assemble. The pieces were miniature and mostly black or very reflective gold – both colours seemingly chosen to make it impossible to see the sub-millimeter tabs and slots with the naked eye! Furthermore the instructions left a lot to be desired.

I struggled on though, cut myself more than once on sharp edges and made two critical structural errors that essentially doomed the thing. But I was able to pose it in a more or less finished state regardless:

Verdict: way way too fiddly. Save this one for when you’ve built all 500 other similar kits 🙂

I bought the above in Japan. It was a new release and as you can see quite cheap for what it is. Which is a Gundam? A girl kit? A girl Gundam?!? Who knows!

I love the colouring and the pearlescent plastic and the soft parts and the fact the manual is – for the first time that I’d seen – printed in both Japanese and English! Look at all those eyes though…

She was an easy build because Bandai has long since mastered these sorts of things. As a bonus she comes with a stand!

She’s a little creepy isn’t she? Maybe it’s just the lack of a pose. She’s got joints everywhere and her wings can spread out fully behind her so I suppose I should make her a little more dynamic. Overall a great kit for under US$20 and a lot of fun to assemble.

We also purchased the above in Japan, and it even cost more than the Gundam! As you can see it’s a ‘Real Scale’ plastic bonsai kit, which seems a bit of a lie since it’s actually quite small.

The instructions are very cute but also very short since the kit itself was only 5 pieces! I was a bit mystified by the manufacturing though: how did they get the tufts of green into the brown plastic like that?

Assembly was trivial and I skipped the painting advice in the instructions. Even so, I think it looks pretty good assembled:

That’s a normal sized Lego guy next to it for scale. See what I mean about small?! This was expensive for what it is but I suspect it may have been partially ‘garage’ built (i.e. handmade) and it’ll look good in our curio so I’m glad I bought it.

I think the next one of these posts may focus on electronic crafts. Look for it in a month or two 🙂

Bucket Wheel Excavator

July 16, 2017

‘Twas mayhaps ten moons since I be purchasin’ this one:

Bigger’n any before methinks. A kings ransom it cost too! Me hews burned with the lifting:

The innards are here fer ye to assess. The manual itself be breaking a titan with its weight!

Makin’ the thing was the devils work! I be capable of some smarts meself, but this was summin’ else! It took hours and days and me fingers were worn to the bone during.

Horribly, the act got tougher as it went. “The things too big!” I says to old mate Yossie, as she mewed from unner the table! How was I gonna gets the pieces into one thing?

But I never give up! And in the end, with a bit of sweat, a bit of blood and even a sprinkle of forbidden magick, it all cames together! Here she is:

I dunno how because it’s much too complex for an old dog like meself, but the beast even works when the dials are turned and the switches switched! It’s slow as a legless horse though, and clicks and vibrates like it’s gonna blow! I think I’ll be keeping the magic far away from it for this reason.

It’s too, too big too. Too big! Why they make summin’ this big?

And who’s the fool like meself who be buyin it?

Lego Bridge

May 7, 2017

I got two similar-but-different kits for Christmas last year. I made them both today. First was this one:

I’d never made one of these miniature scale Lego architecture kits before and to be honest had dismissed them as an ‘executive toy’.

But it was a fun build and looks pretty good once made, especially considering the small size. It was easy and took only a half hour or so to make. But is Centerpoint Tower really black?

The other kit was this one:

I’ve got a bit of a love-hate relationship with nanoblocks. I like the tiny size of the blocks themselves, but feel the engineering needs some tweaking to increase the adhesion between individual blocks when assembled. In other words, these can be too fragile!

They’re also a bit fiddly to assemble. The bridge here in particular was trickier than it should have been and when I accidentally dropped and it exploded I had to start again almost from scratch! Eventually though, I got it done and here it is:

That’s a normal sized Lego minifig for scale.

I like how both kits felt the need to include boats on Sydney Harbour and the nanoblocks kit even went one step further to use the right colours for the ferry. These were quick and simple fun, but here’s hoping my next Lego Harbour Bridge will be some massive technic model 🙂