Ed-209 vinyl

[Kasparov]

41 minutes ago, The Chief Smeg said:

 I thank you for your views and welcome you to this part of the forum (never seen any of your threads here, but I am a recent member). 

 

 

Thanks for the kind response, just wait for a little while more. There should be a quite detailed 1/100 MG Sinanju Stein Ver-Ka. come out from me here in a few more weeks, if the modelling gods allow me.

 

19 hours ago, S5 modeller said:

Thank you for your eloquently put monologue kasparov.

It's nice to hear your passionate respone to my build.

I am in no way condoning the industry of pirated models, although I have purchased one.

I could have purchased an original kit off of a well known auction site, at a highly inflated price, but it would in no way support the original manufacturer,  as you have kindly pointed out, is no longer in business and hasn't been for quite a few years. So I'm hardly to blame for single handedly ruining them.

All I would have done is to line the pockets of an unscrupulous collector that has held onto the kit, hoping to make a big fat profit in the process. Very rarely are the originals sold by individuals, who purchased them to build, but by people engaged in the trade of obsolete collectables.

 

I am more than happy to remove this build thread, if it offends the moral sensibilities of the modeeators.

 

Matt

 

I agree Matt. I think you're right and not to blame at all, I'm just as eager to see this mess get built properly by you as any other! However I did want to make my point because when building a kit like this I think it is very important to also adres that side and keep new and young modellers up-to-date about the state of the industry and its pitfalls. Happy building!!

[S5 modeller]

Thank you leigh, and kasparov for your responses.  It is refreshing to see we can discuss this in an adult manner, without plumbing the depths that trolls sink to.

All your points are valid, and welcome. I like your suggestion of making young modellers aware of the pitfalls and tribulations of the hobby. There is a dark side to the hobby, and piracy seems to be part of it. These recast kits are not exactly promoted as originals, but on the flip side, they are not promoted as copies either. I presumed, when I purchased my kit, that as it was a higher priced product than a recast that it might be more authentic. I thought maybe the company in question might have obtained the original moulds.

He should really make people aware he is just pedalling cheap recast kits from Thailand. He also claimed they were uk stock, but mine arrived direct from Thailand, and should havd set alarm bells ringing.

At least if I ordered direct from Thailand, I would know what I was getting.

A very devious and misleading seller.

 

I notice also, that there are genuine companies peddling copy kits as originals. I have a kitech kit, and it is a direct, and inferior, copy of the academy f-111 aardvark. All the sprues are identical and layed out the same as the academy kit. I don't know how they get away with it!

 

Kasparov, I look forward to seeing your build, when you start it. Welcome to the world of sci-fi modelling. 

 

No updates at the moment, been awfully busy these last few days.

 

Matt

[Kasparov]

2 hours ago, S5 modeller said:

 

A very devious and misleading seller.

 

It is indeed a shame sellers like these still do their thing. I think many of us have had one or more experiences that are similar.

 

I once bought a humidor for my cigars, marketed as top quality sandelwood and genuine wood veneer. It came in very obviously made out of cheap pressed board and plastic "veneer". The seller when contacted actually at first tried to convince me the product was real wood, you'd have to be blind to believe him. When he saw I wouldn't be fooled he insisted that he mentioned the true nature of the product on his site which he didn't, when I politely called him out on that in a second conversation he instigated he literally started insulting me, on the phone and by mail afterwards. I made a short and polite mention of his company on the local cigar-forum, they had a blacklist for untrue companies because quite a few sold counterfeit Cubans back in the day when they were still exclusive, which led to quite a few similar experiences popping up there and the seller actually taking that particular product off his site to republish it much cheaper, with the correct information.

 

Usually there is very little you can do as a consumer though, especially on the internet.

[S5 modeller]

Too true. We are only 1 voice of dissent amongst a thousand of "yes" men, who chose to either ignore the problem, or convince themselves it's ok.

[S5 modeller]

Hello all.

Decided to have a break from fiddling with brass tube, and decided to start some of the huge amounts of filling required. 

 

First off, tackled the back of his head. The huge sink hole all along the central section where it had sagged down has been filled. Mostly with white superfine milliput, and squadron green stuff. Created a mountain of dust. Think it's just about there now, after 4 rounds of filling and sanding.

 

Tackled ghis area too, for want of a better word, I'll call it his chin.

There's also a good 4 rounds of filling and sanding here. Perfectly illustrating the quality of this kit, you can see how deformed it is in places, plus a nice smattering of pin holes and bubbles in the vinyl. Still more work required here.

 

Started fixing this section, on the underside of the head.

Still got loads more sanding and filling to do yet. The lower legs are a right mess.

 

Matt

[Will Vale]

That's probably the best discussion on recasting that I've seen on here - well done all you level-headed sensible people.

 

ED-209 looks to be coming along well too. Sorry to hear about the worktop! I'm a bit scared of expanding foam, this isn't giving me confidence to try it

 

Will

[S5 modeller]

To be honest Will, the expanding foam fiasco was one of my own making.

Should really have made allowances for compressed air and displaced air with a vent hole, the straw nozzle on the can was quite a good fit in the elbow hole.

Won't make the same mistake next time.

To be honest, the foam didn't expand as much as I thought it would, could be that most of it was expelled onto the work top.

 

Matt

[Mike]

Well that all made interesting reading.  I hadn't noticed it was a copy of something, if I'm honest.  The term "recast" seems a bit disingenuous to me with that knowledge in hand.  I suspect most people won't know what a recast is unless they're told.  Calling it an "illegal copy" would be more appropriate, but I guess they wouldn't sell as many.   As the company is out of business now however, and Matt bought the model in good faith, it will stand as a good introduction to the pitfalls of illegal vinyl recasts, and might stop people from taking a punt.  It should also give folks a few tips on how to deal with tricksy vinyl models too.

[Hunter Rose]

Arghhh filling! Im getting the shakes thinking of my spidey build! Making good progress now it seems Matt

 

 

[S5 modeller]

Thanks Hunter.  I was getting up steam on this, but the filling, especially the bubbles, is slowing me down again.

Gonna give it a blast of primer later, to see where I stand. 

Sorry for dredging up old memories of your epic filling and sanding sessions. 

I'd have the heeby geebies too, if I had to deal with that spiderman build.

 

Matt

[ElectricLightAndy]

Fantastic work here, I have a soft spot for vinyl kits and have too bought several 're-casts' (Original manufacturers went out of business looooooong ago) I also in some cases have the 'Original' kits, I use the cheap n' nasty ones as practice for the real deal as 99.9% of the time they are hugely inflated in price by some neerdoweller's on evilbay, and as they usually are a bit naff in quality they hone your patience (Skill) levels a bit, if you do mess them up you've only lost time and a little money instead of messing up a £100+ kit  I would really like to see vinyl kits making a resurgence, I think there is a growing market for them now and a lot of movies that would be ideal for tie-in's (marvel, DC etc) I do like Moebius's classic Batman range in styrene though, amazing what they can achieve detail wise now days.

 

I look forward to seeing what you do with this one,

 

Cheers,

 

Andy.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Keep going Matt.....I'm enjoying both your build and the discussion it's generated. 

 

I've looked at vinyl kits a few times and then thought better of it.....Problems like these have been one of the major reasons for that. 

[Kasparov]

Haha if anything this topic will function as a deterrent! It's amazing what you're putting up with Matt, I would've thrown in the towel long ago, probably already when unpacking it for the first time. But then again I'm a spoiled builder and consider a ten year old Italeri kit already close to "can't be bothered". With all the sanding and filling I'm getting more curious with every post how it'll turn out.

 

Is there any reason to use casted vinyl over injected PS besides the obvious spatial advantages any casting method has over the inherently 2,5 dimensional nature of injection molding? Does vinyl hold detail better or does it have some other inherent advantage over PS or resin? I've worked al lot with polymers during my first research job and vinyl was generally lowest on the list as the polymer of choice. I particularly dislike the feel it has, it reminds me of nails on a blackboard for some reason, but then again cheap/thin styrene also has a distinct "low-end" feel. I've always found it a shame resin is such a chore to work with and ABS is almost never used for injection molded kits, besides a few Bandai kits I know of, I think a few of the MG Gundam are partially molded from ABS.

 

Sorry I'm straying off topic, just interested  

[Will Vale]

I always assumed it was a tooling cost thing - vinyl melts at a lower temp so I don't think you need steel moulds and it can be cast by hand. It must be something like that otherwise garage kits wouldn't be vinyl.

 

I suspect the flexibility is a pro too as (unlike resin and styrene) you don't need two piece moulds - I'm sure I've seen a film of someone removing the hot piece from the mould while it was flexible. I think maybe one of those Pathe clips about doll-making.

 

It's a weird material but I quite like it - and the price-per-size for vinyl models is very very good, even for the vintage originals on eBay.

 

Will

[S5 modeller]

I think the main draw, in my mind, is the sheer size of kits you get in vinyl. Don't think injection moulding would lend itself to large kits like this. Also the diverse range of subjects you can get in vinyl just can't be beat by other media, except maybe resin.

As promised,  I threw a quick coat of primer on his head...

 

 

 

 

 

All in all I'm pretty happy with the results. Although the last 2 pics do show up a couple of areas that need a bit more attention. 

[Hunter Rose]

Well considering how it started I'd say its looking pretty damn spiffy with the primer

[ElectricLightAndy]

34 minutes ago, Hunter Rose said:

Well considering how it started I'd say its looking pretty damn spiffy with the primer

 

I agree, that'll clean up nicely

 

[Mike]

It'll take a bit of effort to get that looking right, but it's doable.  Just make sure you buy shares in Milliput first   What're you going to do about the mesh "face"?  If you could get some fine mesh you could wrap it like the real thing, as the texture is a bit variable, isn't it?

[S5 modeller]

Thanks chaps. Glad you like my work so far. Plenty more to do yet.

Mike, I need to do something about the mesh "face". If you look at this picture, an over the shoulder shot, of mister kinney about get " both barrels ", you can see the mesh is very pronounced. It is visibly raised up. 

 

Now, if you compare it to a shot roughly from the same angle, you can see my kit face is visibly lower than the rest of the head, even to a point of there being a raised ridge around it.

 

My thoughts, and please feel free to add any you have, is to crash mould a piece of plasticard over the head to raise the meshed section level with the ridge, then stretch some suitable fabric over it.

Thinking maybe some speaker cloth.

 

Also need to ask if anyone has any input of what colour to use for ed?

 

Thanks for looking in.

 

Matt 

[Mike]

I'd consider either sanding back that frame if it were resin, or filling the mesh panel up to the level of the frame, but you also need to find some kind of material that's going to fit round all those compound curves.  Not a simple task.  A chunk of tights material maybe?  A very fine, flexible mesh of some sort?  You'd have to fold the edges over to get that smooth look, so it's going to be tricky whatever you do.  Spray it black/grey after application, then dry-brushed to get that mesh look?   I think a few test runs might be in order to see what works best.

[The Chief Smeg]

How about the mesh from a cheap plastic sieve or from one of those nets you use to catch aquarium fish. You could probably paint glue on to hold it in place and build up a couple of layers to be even with the frame? The technique is rather like applying resin to chopped strand mat when laying up fibreglass. 

[S5 modeller]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll be certain to look into them.

Can't believe it's been a week, and I haven't posted any more updates! 

I've not been idle though, I've been tackling the lower legs/feet.

 

As you can see, a wee bit of filler was required. Plenty of odd sink marks here and there, plus plenty of air bubbles. 

The surface of the legs was rather rough, so I started sanding it smooth, but this just opened up more pin holes. 

Think I've got most of them now.

 

The other leg wasn't much better. I've done most of the major filling with Squadron green stuff, and have started going over it with perfect plastic putty. Hope to get a better surface finish with this, as it tends to sand to a better finish.

 

There's a major sink mark on the side of his toe, still needs more filler.

The two square patches at the top are supposed to be flat plates, but as with a lot of these parts, they needed some major reworking. 

 

I've also decided to plate the top of the leg holes with sheet stock. I hope this is going to give me a bigger surface area to bond the mid leg sections to.

 

Well that's it for now, back to sanding. Getting a nice pile of green dust on my bench, and that filler won't sand itself. 

 

Matt

[ElectricLightAndy]

Good to see some progress

 

Andy.

[S5 modeller]

Thanks Andy. I'm trying to keep going with this. Trouble is, as I start to encounter a problem area, I tend to drop that part and swap over to another piece. All the bouncing around makes it look like I'm not making much progress. 

 

Matt

[Kasparov]

3 hours ago, S5 modeller said:

Thanks Andy. I'm trying to keep going with this. Trouble is, as I start to encounter a problem area, I tend to drop that part and swap over to another piece. All the bouncing around makes it look like I'm not making much progress. 

 

Matt

 

Haha I bet we all recognise that!