Someone, somewhere is a genius

That picture, above, is a vision of my modeling future, and here’s why:

I’m relatively new to scale modeling, and I’ve really only started doing things “the right way” in the last year or so. I ruined a lovely model in my modeling infancy, and I’ve been gradually getting better over time. It’s a lot of fun. Not quite as fun for the model kits, who are terrified of me.

But I fully recognize that I still suck at scale modeling, so I’ve limited my purchases to pretty cheap kits; I have a couple nicer ones, and they are waiting in the wings till I can bust out the cheapies with ease. And even though they’re simpler builds than some more complicated kits, I try to give them the full treatment–glue, paint, decals, panel line washes…the whole thing.

One thing about “easier” kits, though, is that they’re catering to an audience that is not supposed to give a flying crap about seam lines, unblemished paint jobs, or professional grade awesomeness, so they don’t give a crap (flying or non) either. If you want nice results, you will suffer more on these small kits than on the $75 beauty you special ordered from Hobbylink. The nicer kits are just engineered to hide those seam lines and joints better, generally speaking*.

Take the last two paragraphs and you get me struggling pretty much all the time.

The problems change kit to kit, but a very common one I have is with nested parts; typically joints on mecha kits. There will be an area, like an upper arm, and while you can assemble it and paint it by itself, it’s eventually going to be “nested” in the shoulder armor where it meets the pivot point, and the shoulder itself is another two pieces that meet in the middle around the upper arm. That means you have one of two horrible choices:

1) Assemble it together and try to paint the two parts as a single unit, probably with a horrendous amount of masking/swearing

2) Complete the nested piece 100% (paint and all), then wrap the enclosure around it and carefully mask the nested piece you worked so hard on while you glue, prime, and paint the enclosure

I’ve done both, and they both suck. I’ve searched for alternate methods, and largely ended up feeling like I was the only one with this problem. Then I stumbled upon a build thread on the Plamo site where this was addressed with exactly zero fanfare:

So yes, I am the only one with this problem, because everyone else said “hell with that!” and solved it on their own. Has everyone else been doing something like this for a while? Probably. But kite posted a picture of it, so he’s my new hero. This completely changes the way I’ve been approaching mecha builds, and it makes life so much easier.

If it’s not clear, you basically cut out the plastic that completes the loop in the joint so that you can paint the sub-assemblies separately and just “snap” the joints together when you’re done:

I tried it on my HG Mr Bushido’s Ahead, and it worked like a charm. One thing: if you’re doing this on a kit with flexible rubber washers in the joints, leave the gap in them a bit smaller than required for the joint axle. It’ll still snap in fine, and you won’t end up with a loose joint (like the first leg I did this on. Insert cough here).

Anyway, major thanks to the excellent modelers on PLAMO (a good site if you like awesome), and extra super squishy thanks to “kite” for posting a pic of something that everyone except me knew how to do.

UPDATE: Turns out this is called a c-joint, or c-joint mod. Of course. Now that I know how to do it, I can’t stop finding information on it everywhere.

^{*Having said that, I’m sure there is a kit out there that will cost you $400, never look good no matter how hard you work on it, and still run off with your wife.}