by Vetinari » Thu Oct 29, 2015 1:32 pm
Thanks
Trethowan!
It's nice to have the time/means again.
Hrmm I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the kits despite the gates thing, being honest I suspect you'd be able to get away with just assembling one of these guys straight out of the box if you don't mind the slightly rough around the edges finish.
Unfortunately I didn't think to take any photos pre-sanding, but there's one gate left that I simply forgot to remove on the back of his head - with a nicely visible gouge that goes at least a mm into his head (though it was far from the worst example) and I'll try to show up the problem areas in the cast with some photos. (Sorry you know how terrible I am at remembering to take photos!)
Being fair for the most part the gates were cleverly positioned in areas that usually aren't too visible when the doll is assembled - either within or near the joints, and the casting itself was nicely done. The resin has a lovely tooth to it and even pre-sanding the finish for the most part was excellent. And this is all from a "straight from the mould" product with no finishing - however I really really wish he hadn't bothered to remove the gates!
Unfortunately the gates in my particular kit with the deepest gouges were positioned in a relatively visible area, and in an area that I'm really unhappy with the thinness of the resin - his ankles. In fact one of his ankles was one of the two areas where air bubbles appeared in once the jagged spurs from the casting were removed, I have to say the bubbles are really not Donn's fault since he wasn't to know they were there - I'm going to strengthen the inside of both of them with epoxy before reassembling him at full tension, since the bubbly ankle looks suspiciously like it might spall at any moment. Hell I stopped sanding before the gouge was actually removed there, and the resin is worryingly only a couple of mm thin! I realise that this is my own damned fault for sanding so much out - but I didn't expect the gouge to go nearly all the way through the plastic.
I'll post my opinions on the Mirodoll 70cm body once it arrives if you'd like - I really hope it's a good fit for that particular floating head.
(Ooh thanks for the name
oniakki - hemostat! Of course!)
Edit: Here's the photos of the one remaining gate and the dodgy ankle with the air bubbles and sadly aggressive sanding needed to remove the indented gate.
https://flic.kr/p/A81S1shttps://flic.kr/p/zsAsC5It's hard to see in the photo but the entire top half of the gate is concave in the head with a rather deeper gouge at the very top edge of the imperfection, so the entire back of his head would need to be sanded down to flatten it out!
https://flic.kr/p/A81QC7https://flic.kr/p/A81QrqCrazy Mulitverse Crew: Drax, Jareth, Jerome, Elrana Milenkova, The Thin White Duke, Vasily Lupandin, Ramin Aiphos, Theta Sigma, Aiko Koyame, Lord Havelock Vetinari, Dr Nicholas Rush, Anon., Nyta Kinall, Otto Kreiner, That Demon, Sasu, Yaya, Ombre
...reshelling Szesil Markowski and Garan Idasson
