Robot Claw – Page 339 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Kit Bashing?

September 13, 2016

This is a Chaos Terminator Lord model kit by Games Workshop:

I bought this a few months ago. I’d always wanted to assemble and paint a Warhammer model, and this guy was inexpensive and looked good. Here’s what I found inside the box:

And here’s a close-up of the parts still on the runners:

As someone with a decent amount of experience assembling model kits from Bandai or Kotobukiya I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. For starters this is not a glueless kit. For seconders few – if any – of the connections have tabs or slots to strengthen them. For thirds the pieces are strongly attached to the runners and would need quite a bit of cleaning up after removal.

In short, it looked like a pain.

And that was before I saw the instructions:

These are the instructions to make a ‘Chaos Terminator Sorceror‘. If you want to assemble it as a (melee style) ‘Lord’, you’d use the other sheet of instructions. Both ways have multiple possibilities, and you can see that during assembly you can mix-and-match parts as you see fit. Unlike a Gundam (where the weapons and sometimes even armor is removable and replaceable) this kit is final once made due to the gluing.

Assembly took a while and was a fiddly as I had feared/expected. To be honest it wasn’t really much fun at all! But I think my final version looks fairly nice:

If you’re going to make a kit like this I strongly recommend using a low viscosity glue that can be applied with a brush since you’ll want to put tiny amounts in very specific locations.

Building the kit is only half the fun though, since it must be painted! Master painters can make these tiny kits absolutely come alive with their skilled paint jobs. For instance here’s an example of what someone did with this very model (remember it’s about 2 inches tall):

Looks great doesn’t it?

Here’s where I ran into a bit of trouble. In short: Warhammer paints are bloody expensive! The basic Warhammer 40k space marine paint set of only five colours is about $20, which was more than this kit. If I wanted to buy all the recommended colours for this particular guy, it would have cost about $65! That’s probably ok if you’re building an army to play with (since Warhammer is a miniatures wargame), but crazy just for one tiny kit. I needed another solution.

One option was to take it to a Warhammer store and paint it for free since they encourage that. This would be great were there any Warhammer stores around here. I went into one in England and was tempted to spent an hour painting one of their free miniatures just for fun but didn’t have the time.

But it was during our very same trip to England that the solution appeared in the form of a freebie attached to a very inexpensive Doctor Who kids magazine:

Most people will look at that and think “Oh free magnets!”. I looked at it and thought “Oh free paints!” And in vaguely Space Mariney colours as well! This was my salvation, and months after assembly I finally had the means to complete my Chaos Terminator Sorceror.

Here he is:

I think I’ve done him justice wouldn’t you agree?

Boldly Gone

September 3, 2016

Whilst in Bath, we swaggered into a weird hobby/toy/educational store (like National Geographic shops, for the Ozians reading) in which I found, for the princely sum of £3, this:

It’s appropriate the Olympics were on at the time, because I think I set a world record with the speed at which I purchased it!

It’s a guidebook to the (original series) Enterprise that also includes a cardboard punch-out model! The difficulty rating was the highest they used, but this didn’t sway me. I skimmed past the technical pages (with sections on space navigation or how the transporters work) and moved straight to the seemingly-endless instructions (over 150 steps!) and starting punching out the pieces:

Notice nothing is labeled by number, only coloured dots. This could have been designed a bit better…

Folding began! It wasn’t particularly difficult at first; certainly easier than the few ‘build a castle’ books I’d purchased in the past (for which you’d need to be a Cardboardmancer to successfully complete). Very quickly I had a piece of the saucer section complete:

Looks a bit iffy doesn’t it? I won’t take the time here to criticise the ensign who had come up with the idea of requiring the card to gently bend inwards with no actual support method and instead fast forward to the completed saucer:

It’s not bad! Everything more or less lines up, and incredibly stayed together without any tape or glue. What this picture doesn’t show though was the tension! Even at this point – only half built – it felt like a big compressed cardboard spring wanting to go off. I handled it with care, at least partially, because I didn’t hate it yet. I continued.

The engineering of this kit was, shall we say, ambitious. Take this photo showing the not-quite-semispherical Bussard Collector (and yes, they are referred as such in the instructions) on the front of a warp nacelle:

I swear I did the best I could there, but it still looks like it was assembled by a Gorn. You can ignore – or at least politely not refer to – the fact that the nacelle behind it is visibly not cylindrical as well.

I forged on, and after maybe 3 hours in total was complete. Here it is in drydock:

Beautiful! It resembles the actual ship quite a bit, and more or less holds together seamlessly. It was still a ball of tension though, and I had many pairs of kid gloves on as I delicately transported it. I confess two pieces of tape were required (one on each nacelle) and the dish on the lower front was a bit of a hack job since I had torn one of the tabs during assembly.

On it’s maiden voyage, as it often did, the Enterprise encountered a strange new life form:

Those of you that know the titanic size of Yossie can appreciate just how big this model is.

Then tragedy struck! Almost immediately after the above photo was taken, as the Enterprise took off for a further voyage, this happened:

Some say it was space debris! Some say the warp field collapsed! Yossie was heard whispering to Emi that she saw me violently tear it to pieces!

All I can say is the model that cost only 3 pounds and gave me 3 hours of entertainment was ruined utterly in only 3 seconds 🙂

In Brighton

August 27, 2016

A few weeks ago, when we were in Brighton, I visited a stamp shop. As in stamp collecting, a hobby so nerdy that even I hesitate to discuss my ‘collection’.

I bought these first day covers:

Several animal-themed ones and one each commemorating the marriages of Charles and Andrew.

The guy that ran the tiny hole-in-the-wall store was very friendly, almost a bit too much so, and went out of his way try to find stuff I wanted. Since I was there on a lark, and only purchasing decades-old 50p first-day covers I was bemused by this.

Once I decided what I wanted he told me to take them for free! This was a bit weird so I insisted he take at least £1 – which he did – before he then went into a tale.

He said when he was young someone did something nice for him without expectation of repayment or any other obligation and he wanted to do the same for us. He then gave us these:

They are (so-called) Cinderella stamps, issued by St Moritz in 1940 to commemorate the Helsinki Olympics. Cinderella means they’re not real stamps (never authorized or used for postage) but they are still of interest to collectors. There were four colours in total; he gave us two each of three of them.

He was proud of them, and gave the gift sincerely. We waited for the catch that never came, until we realized he was simply a friendly old man that probably was cheered up by us stopping in that day. He didn’t claim the stamps were worth much (on eBay right now the 6 are maybe $15 total) but said if we sold them when we are his age we may make some money 🙂

Of course I’ll keep them forever. And for just as long I’ll remember that friendly old guy in Brighton that gave me these curious 75+ year old ‘stamps’!