Scale Model Workbench: War Machine

Introduction

This project started life after watching the film Pacific Rim. Its a completely far fetched science fiction film that is full of plot holes and will I'm sure be berated in the very near future if not already, however I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was after finishing my last project and I was suffering from "modellers block" on the next project to start on that I cam across a Maschinen Krieger 120 mm resin kit that I had bought from Ebay a few years ago. It was sadly a reproduction and not a good one. I had put it into the "stash" with no real intention of tackling such a terrible copy. With fresh eyes however I soon saw the potential for a kit bash.

The concept

For this model I am going to use the 120 mm (1/16) based kit and depict it in a 1/35 scale setting. The basic concept is a large futuristic "war machine" that is undergoing heavy maintenance in a workshop. This should hopefully give me the opportunity to use up a lot of spare parts and figures left over from my various model builds. The kit will be placed in a upright position on a spare base that I have lying around. Around the figure I intend to construct some scaffolding and a high level winch to which I will suspend one the machines arms. I will also leave some of the other machines parts lying around the workshop. I'm hoping that this idea will resurrect a kit which would have probably been thrown away in my next model kit sort out.

The build

As always I will describe only the key moments of the kits manufacture leaving the rest of the build description to the images that are shown below. The first round of images show the kit, the base and a handful of spare parts from various other completed kits that I think I may be able to use for this dio. You will also notice from the shots, the shear amount of filler that I had to use to try and get the poor quality casting to look OK. Sadly I realised that the majority of the surface was almost beyond repair including the lid for the figure which in some places was irredeemable. I made the decision to glue to lid closed and fill the damaged areas. I also employed a trick that I have done in the past to replicate a rough cast iron finish. I use 500 grade Mr Surfacer liquid filler and stipple it onto the surface with an old brush. This stippled affect is very subtle and when sprayed with the top coat colour gives a really nice effect. The other bonus with this technique is that is has served to cover up almost all of the surface imperfections for this kit: