Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 05

Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 04 (2)

Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 04

There are a couple of things of note to discuss. In the last paint session I dropped the right shoulder shield and it messed up the primer work- so I sanded the affected area and re-primered it tonight, along with the connection plate for the torso and the beads for the head unit.

I've abandoned the leg unit beads because I dropped them all over the floor and I don't have the patience for it. I can get away with the excuse of "those are modular connection points for the future aerial pack". Or something like that. Only die hard Zaku zealots would be fuming at me. Ah well. My project.

Everything is looking good. I need to seal the bottom color down but I want to do it when the kit is one entire enchilada- which means I have to finish painting the primered parts later and then paint the stock of the rifle. I was holding onto it during the painting process- so all it is is primer.

I'd like the project done by the end of the week. I switched to Elmer's contact cement for the guillie suit and we'll see if that works. If not I will try Elmer's white glue. I have a feeling that guillie suit, regardless of what is attached or not may cause a mess on my shelf- and since I don't move my kits around much anyways so long as someone doesn't bump into it I think it will be ok. Vacuum can fix any falling debris. It should look awesome when it is done. Contemplating stealing Zaku sniper's rifle.

Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 03

So I kinda broke the connection tubes from the backpack to the core. Sh***y, brittle plastic. So I noticed a spring connects the two points from the leg connections and figured I could do the same for these two. Then I thought "ok, if I am going to replace this stuff I'll need a maleable yet firm material that will fit through the beads and into the holes".

16 gauge wire. Fixed the problem. Everything should be primered by later tonight. I figured my day couldn't get any worse. Then my airbrush fell with the needle unguarded and now I have a bent fucking needle. That's a $10 maintenance fee. I won't be able to work on the project until I replace the needle. Count on that to take one or two weeks. My only hobby that remotely brings my blood to a simmer and now I can't paint s***. A fine day this has been.

Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 02

Hell- I was bored this afternoon after assembling a pool pump for my family and I went down into the shop and checked the real grade Zaku II. It was in pieces and I couldn't find the manual- so I brought my mom's laptop down into the shop, used dalong.net's scans (thanks for the translations on colors, too!) and re-assembled the kit. I have a new strategy for painting.

There are a couple of basic colors I will be using. Primer Gray, Panzer Gray and a mix of colors for the camou that I will determine on site at the hobby store tomorrow. Instead of masking the joints and doing the camou, I am going to paint like this.

The entire kit will be primered as one enchilada. Then I will paint the underlying coat for the camou everywhere. Then I will do a good job and clear coat the underlying work. Then I am going to use non-hardening clay to mask the underlying work and pray (to the paint gods) that the clay doesn't bring the paint up.

I've also heard of people using cotton balls to do camou, but my problem is that this real grade is too small and using cotton balls would be difficult- so I will try the clay method. If the clay doesn't work, I'll see if I have some liquid mask lying around somewhere- but good god if I don't put that on right it will be a pain in the ass to clean up.

I will then paint the second color and let it dry. At that point I can either clear coat over that paint, or take the clay up and then clear coat over everything. I may do the latter just to be consistent. Then I will paint the gun camou too. To make it look consistent I would want to paint the gun along with the kit. HOWEVER, in reality they probably would have painted it separately. So what I will do is camou the rifle separately in the same camou pattern. It will look like it belongs, but it won't.... how can I say this... it won't look like they camou'd the entire robot including the gun in one pass.

The kit looks... bigger than I remembered. I could have swore it was 1-2 inches shorter. Regardless- it looks really good; the detail is fantastic- and quite honestly I'm thinking about a Yonem Kirks/RG Zaku II kit bash in the future.

The lease on our potential apartment doesn't begin until September 1st, so I figure I have some time to get this RG in, and possibly. POSSIBLY- Sandrock.

Shouldn't You Have Had a Kit or Two Done By Now?

I know I know... at my pace I should have had at least one or two Real Grade kits done by now. I've hit a kind of hiatus ever since I began getting ready to move. That process is foggier than hell- I can't see very far into the future because of the unpredictability of the situation. One day you're excited at a new opportunity, then disappointed the next day when a deal falls through.

I last worked on the RG Zaku II about 45 days ago. At the moment the frame sits primered in the shop, and after trying to mask the joints I noticed that the paint came right up. My solution will be to paint the joints along with the armor. Because the kit is smaller in scale I can get away with carefully painting the joints with a brush.

I'm going to need a few things though to get started again- primarily new tape and two colors- a jungle green and a swampy tan. I'll see what I have in the stockpile of colors and make a purchase from there.

With the fight to get our gun rights restored in Illinois over for now, I don't have to monitor the situation and distribute information out anymore, freeing up time to do other things. I'd like to get back into model building, but with "builder's block' because of this move it's been difficult to get motivated.

Real Grade Zaku II Work In Progress 01

Real Grade Zaku II Parts

Real Grade Zaku II Unbox and Introduction