Robby the Robot
Comet Miniatures
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I bought this kit in the hurricane fund of the
Starship Modeler store. I wasn't looking for nothing in particular, but
when I saw the kit I knew it was there for me to buy. And I don't regret
the decission.
This is the famous robot who appear for the first time in the movie "Forbidden Planet" in the '50s. It is a classic of the science fiction. Additionally it will be my first non-starship model. It is done in vacuum formed styrene and, therefore, will be my very first vacuum formed kit. So a big challenge for me. |
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I started with the hip of the robot. Due to the
storing time or handling there were some wraps on that
piece. There was no way to put it correctly, so I took Aves Apoxy and
filled it. After 24 hours, when the apoxy mixture is completely hard a
session of wet sanding gave the correct shape to the piece again.
The next step is the legs. Since it is a vacuum formed kit, there are no pins to help two pieces to hold together, so I took styrene sheet (from the kit itself) and glued some tabs in the joints (in the inner side). In that way everything becomes strong. When dried, apoxy putty was applied on all the seams and when dry, wet sanding again. The join becomes smooth enough.
Not much done lately... The legs were glued together and Aves Apoxy was used as putty for the seams. It appears to be that it is not easy to glue parts together in vacuum formed pieces and, therefore, the apoxy will be much more useful than normal putty. It will help to achieve a strong joint. Next step forward was to cut off the arms and the other half of the hip and glue all them together. The apoxy was used once again to fill the large gaps.
A lot of progress this weekend. After gluing the arms together I, once again, used apoxy to fill the gaps. When ready I went forward and begun with the torso. It was cut off and the same process of the arms was carried out: Tabs, glue and apoxy. This time the apoxy was settled in the inner side and normal putty in the outside. In all the seams wet sanding with two different sand papers (two different sizes of the sand) was the perfect choice to achieve a perfectly smooth surface.
The next step is the feet. There are a pair of soles for the feet, although they were never shown in the screen. Those soles have the wrong size for the feet and they don't match. So I will use some styrene sheet and do my own customized soles. Once cut off, I add some tabs to achieve a strong gluing. Additionally I've used one pair of alternative lead hands and I fixed them in the inner side of the soles. That way the feet are very heavy and the robot will have much more stability.
Finally I began with the head. The two halves were cut off the sheet. There are two choices for detailing: styrene pieces and etched brass pieces. Obviously the brass pieces have much sharper detail, so I will use them. The styrene mouth which is already in the front half was cut off to prepare to glue the etched brass piece. Why to cut off the styrene? easy, that way I can make it strong in the inner side with apoxy. So the brass was fixed with 2-components epoxy glue and once it was dry, I add Aves apoxy in the inner side. A little bit of apoxy was also added in the perimeter of the etched brass in the outside, so that it will look pretty smooth. After gluing two additional etched brass pieces in the cheeks, I finally glued both halves together.... now is time to rest.
A lot of progress these last days ! First of all when I finished installing Robby's mouth, I realized that he has a kind of shape over the mouth which goes from one side to the other. So apoxy did the work once again. In the while time I also glued together Robby's legs and feet.
The biggest work was how the hell fix the hands. For whatever reason, the designers of the kit decided that lead is the best material to use. Well, in my opinion, it is not ! It is very difficult to fix the hands in the arms only with the resources on the kit. So instead I did a little bit of scratchbuilding.
The second nice problem is Robby's ears. They are also done with lead and they are very heavy. So I used a board marker which has the same diameter of the ears and I scratchbuild a new ones.
Once again one problem: How to glue the arms to the torso. As said before, the hands are very heavy and therefore it becomes difficult to glue the arms strongly enough to the torso. So I used spare parts to glue some joining pins to the arm (in the part which goes inside the torso). I made 4 in total, but the last one must be glued when the arm is in place. And so I fix the arm to the torso, using a lot of styrene bits to make a very strong bond. When everything is ready, I will have to use the lead ears of Robby and fix them inside the torso, right opposite to the hands, so the gravity centre falls in the middle of Robby.
Finally, I fixed some detail in the head. Some sensor accessories are also done in lead, but I cut a new ones from styrene and used them instead.
Some additional progress have been done. I finished the detailing of the head and now it looks pretty modern !
After finishing the head, I finished the torso. I glued the two lead pieces (which were supposed to be on the head) inside the torso, in order to equilibrate the weight. When done, the tools panel was glued to the belly and putty applied all around. So now it is only matter to fix head, torso and legs together. So it was done and after 24 hours the primer coat was sprayed and when dry, the base coat: dark grey metallic. It looks great now. Only some detailing is left.
The details were carried out without further complications. I used, as usual, Tamiya acrylics for the detailing. When everything was ready the gloss coat was applied all over the robot. At leas 3 layers of gloss coat gives a very nice look to Robby. The last thing to do was to glue the clear dome on the head, with 4 small drops of epoxy glue. And that was it.
Thanks for dropping by... ! |
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