Hasegawa Battroid/Arii Armored Kitbash

[Grayson72]

The part that's attached to it is the upper part of the Hasegawa leg, it fits inside the covered intake of the model which then fits inside of the armored portion of the upper leg. I'll have to cut away most of the intake section to make it fit properly.

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the back of the lower torso. The gray center is the putty I stuffed the section full of earlier. The rear of this lower torso stuck out so much it hit the folded wings of the Hase battroid when it's mated with the chest armor. I had to cut about a quarter inch of the back just to get it to fit. You won't be able to tell it's been cut away though since the folded wings on the Hase kit are so long they cover it up.

Also in this shot you'll notice I've got the mid section of the leg attached to the armored leg now, I cut the very top off the Hasegawa leg so close that all that was left on each side of the mid-section of the leg was two little triangles. To get it to sit inside the armored leg I stuff the inside of the top of the armored leg with the two part epoxy putty and then jambed the Hase mid secion with the two triangles in the space I wanted it. I let it dry overnight and the next morning it pulled out of the top of the armored leg. I was hoping it would stick in there but at least I had to hard casts that were the shape of the inside of that armored leg. So I just took some gap filling superglue and glued the whole thing back in. I can clean up the gobs of putty later.

[Grayson72]

At the same time I was working on the legs and waiting for the leg stuff to dry I started on the chest section.

I actually started with the back, most of which I had to cut off and discard. The front piece by itself doesn' extend back far enough to mate up nicely with the main body of the Hase battroid.

I drilled a bunch of holes at the corners to assist me with cutting away the back.

Edited August 7, 2004 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

Here's the back cut away, I used a cutoff wheel on my dremel tool to do it. Made quick work of the job.

[Grayson72]

Here's a side shot of the front part of the chest, I had to cut off a blocky part on the side of the chest that would have originally connected to the shoulder missile launcher.

[Grayson72]

The main body of the Hase fit amazingly well inside the chest armor, I only had to cut away some of the plastic in the corners to get a snug fit.

The plastic on this old battroid kit is unbelievably thick.

[Grayson72]

Of course I had to cut off the chest plate off of the Hase battroid to get it in there. I would have never glued it on in the first place if I'd know I was going to do a kit bash.

[Grayson72]

Here's the chest piece before I added the back pieces

[Grayson72]

Here's a side shot before I added the back pieces

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the top before the back pieces were added. Also note in this shot the groove hasn't been cut to allow the top of the Hase fuselage to fit. The original hole for the original head is still there.

[Grayson72]

To cut the notch for the fuselage I made a template out of paper by simply tracing the outline of the fuselage and cutting it out. It was a lot more simple to use the template to then trace the general outline on the chest piece.

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the top with the notch cut out and a test fit of the fuselage. I roughly cut out the notch with my dremel tool again and the sanded it into a better round shape by wrapping my exacto knife in some sand paper.

[Grayson72]

Here's a side shot of the side with the back pieces added on. The back pieces actually had to be cut into 6 small pieces (two on top and two on each side, above and below the arm socket) in order to sufficiently extend the chest piece to mate with the main body of the Hase kit.

Edited April 16, 2005 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the top with the back pieces.

[Grayson72]

The side pieces below the arm socket had to be notched as well to fit snugly into the back of the Hase body.

[Grayson72]

Here's a better shot from underneath

[Grayson72]

Next I started working on the upper arms and shoulder missile launchers. I immediately ran into problems (of course!)

The shoulder missiles were way to big to sit on the battroid shoulders. It would have been one thing to just plug up the gaps around the shoulder but it also left me with a dilema of how to attach the missile launchers and still have the shoulder stub reach the polycap shoulder socket on the main body.

I had two choices, one was to cut the shoulder in half fill in the holes in the missile launchers and glue the stubb to the inside of the launcer, or I could extend the length of the stubs on the shoulders to reach all the way through the missile launcher and into the polycap socket on the main body.

I decided to go with option two since the first option I decided would have looked too weird.

I started by filling in the large gaps on one side of the the missile launchers with sheet styrene.

Edited April 16, 2005 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

Next I cut more sheet styrene to fit around the shoulder on the other side of the launchers. I've still got more gap filling to go.

Edited August 7, 2004 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

I measured the fatest part of the shoulder stub with my dial calipers and picked an appropriate sized drill bit to make a whole through the styrene to allow the stub to extend through to the arm socket in the main body.

[Grayson72]

Next I figured the best way to make that stub longer would be to use some extra sprue that came with the kit which happened to be the same diameter. In order to mate the two together I thought it best to reinforce the mated stubs. So I found the smalled finish nails I could find and measured those with my calipers and found an appropriate sized bit. I then proceeded to drill out the centers of both the shoulder stub and the extra sprue, I drilled all the way through both pieces.

The nail fit perfectly and I fed it through the inside back of the shoulder through the hole in the polycap and out through the end of the stub so that the head of the nail prevented it from being pulled out. I then just super glued the extra sprue piece onto the end of the nail after I had cut the nail to the correct length.

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the two pieces joined together.

[Grayson72]

Ok last update for tonight, I cut off the armored fastpack from the lame backpack center piece that comes with the kit, I plan to attach them somehow to the backpack of the hase kit. Cutting off these parts left big holes on each of the fastpacks. I filled in the holes with the two part putty. I considered using styrene but the shapes were odd and it would have been difficult to trace the shapes with a pen. Anyways this was the easier way to go, I let the putty dry overnight, I sanded it down as much as possible and then filled in the remaining gaps with Tamiya putty.

Edited August 20, 2004 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

Ok I took a step backwards today. After looking at the arm armor I decided it was too bulky and didn't look right on the model. So I cut the finished arm in half and sanded the two sides down

I think it's going to look much better this way and besides now he can hold the gunpod

[Grayson72]

Here's a shot of the back of the modified and original for size comparison

Edited August 7, 2004 by Grayson72

[Grayson72]

Here's the inside of one side with modified Hase arm. Because the new sides are now more narrow I had to cut away some of the putty I filled the insides with. I think it actually looks like a better customized fit like this

[007-vf1]

it looks like you won't make the armor detachable?

in that case it is a lot easy to deal with. One thing you'll realize once is done is that the legs armor looks quite stubby and big. I had to do several cuts to make it look proportional to the rest of the battroid...

[Grayson72]

Yeah I said it wasn't gonna be removable in the very first post. I'm not planning on doing any mods really to the legs though. I'm using the mid and upper leg sections of the Hasegawa so it might make it longer.

[Phadeout]

007-vf1 do you have any pics of your completed one? (or mostly completed one).

[Grayson72]

It's coming together pretty well, couldn't resist this shot.

[Hikuro]

You're starting to scare me here man lol god I hope for great success with this kit bash wish I could do something like that but I have no patients!

[Grayson72]

Thanks man, I think it's gonna be great!

Hey anyone got any tips for making tiny hinges? I want the shoulder missile hatches to open.

[fernarias]

The C-pipe idea might work.

F.

[Grayson72]

Ok after a very long hiatus I'm back working on this sucker. Good lesson with this kit, if you do a part that you dreading (I'm talking about the arm sections here) make sure you do both sides at the same time or you'll never get back to the other side .

Anyway, I finally am finishing up the other arm and was trying to figure out how to make the 3 missiles that fit into the arms. The original ones were too wide since I reduced the widths of the arms.

I mocked up some new missiles and thought I would try my hand and recasting the original. For a first try they came out pretty good.

Edited April 16, 2005 by Grayson72

[Gabe Q]

I'm glad you're back to work on this sucker. I'm impressed with those missiles.

Great work.

[HWR MKII]

I thought you had finished it and it was the one on the front page of the site.