Modified Hasegawa Battroid Shoulder

[tetsujin]

Hey,

Since I first got the Hasegawa Battroid, I've generally acknowledged it as the greatest injection-molded mecha kit ever. I love the thing, it's gorgeous, and (apart from some fragility) very well engineered. But lately one thing has come to bother me about the kit: the shoulders. They're very boxy and large compared to the forearms, and apart from the fact that, in principle, they should be the same thickness as the forearm (for transformation reasons) I also think that it doesn't fit the style of the kit to have them that thick. So I reduced the shoulders from 14mm front-to-back thickness down to 12mm:

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje.../1_72_Battroid/

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...shoulder1a.jpeg

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...shoulder1b.jpeg

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Proje...comparison.jpeg

I've been working on this refinement for a while, and just this week I finished making the molds for casting copies of the shoulders. I think they're gonna look nice, and correct one of the vanishingly few problems I have with the kit.

[Gerwalker]

Nice Battroid model!! The shoulder mod is very good idea!! I didn't do that with my Hase Batt but I scribed the shoulder panel lines and details that are absent from the Hase kit (I wonder why such a detailed kit has no details in the shoulders when they are really obvious and are even shown in a pic from the box)

[tetsujin]

Well, it would have been tough for them to mold-in the scribed lines on the shoulder, because of draft angle issues. I tried adding the lines to the parts before casting them, but I think they were mostly lost through all the sanding sometime between when I scribed the lines and when I made the molds. I think there's still enough of the lines left to use as a guide for rescribing them. I suck at scribing, though.

[Grayson72]

Well, it would have been tough for them to mold-in the scribed lines on the shoulder, because of draft angle issues. I tried adding the lines to the parts before casting them, but I think they were mostly lost through all the sanding sometime between when I scribed the lines and when I made the molds. I think there's still enough of the lines left to use as a guide for rescribing them. I suck at scribing, though.

Rememer to use label maker tape as a guide, your scribing will never be the same.