Kampfer Part2: Thruster and Fuel Tanks

My work continued this week with the casting of the fuel tank parts and the creation of the main thruster that will be mounted on the back of the Kampfer.

The first part of my adventure started with the duplication of my initial fuel tank. I made a two part RTV mold in order to make some resin copies. I've been casting for a while and have casted some pretty complex objects before, but this little tank proved to be quite a little pain in the rear. First of all, I two halves of the mold got stuck together on the sides. This sometimes happens to me and I can usually pull them apart with little damage. This time the two halves stuck together so bad that I had to cut into the mold about a cm around the outside before I got to the part where the mold release had kept the two parts separate. In the end, I salvaged the mold so, no harm done.

The next hurtle came when I poured my first cast of the tank. I don't know if it was because I was up to late or what, but the first cast was horribly deformed. I have never had a cast that was so lumpy and pitted as this first tank. The picture below right to left: the original, the junk cast, and an example of a good cast.


The next day, I cast the four tanks with no real problem. It is not my best casting work, but I am pretty satisfied with the results. I am excited to see how they look when they are all painted and installed on the kit.


I also had some time to start to work on the shoulders. I didn't want to have the big shoulder pads, so it was important to do something to make the Kampfer look complete. I remembered seeing Toymaker do something on the Kampfer that he did a while ago, so I hit up his site at http://toymakerinc.blogspot.com/. I pretty much used the same technique that he did. I'm not sure what type of putty that he used, but I tried Aves out for the first time. So far I like the putty and so far the shoulders look pretty good. Now all I need to do is smooth them out and add some details.


The best fun that I had this week was making the main thruster. I stayed up late one night and worked it while I watched the final season of BSG. I started out with one of the thruster from the Bandai AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra kit. I really like the shape of these thrusters, but they are so boring. After playing around with some spare parts, I came up with a great way to spice it up. I used a road wheel from a Tamiya tank and one of the Kampfer spikes to make some internal parts. In addition, I had a stroke of good fortune when I found a part to make the wall appear thicker. This part is the outer edge of a Wave thruster that I turned around backwards. It worked great and after some glue and sand paper I was super happy with the result.



Lastly, I have been toying with the idea of using the lower half of a Zaku leg for the thruster housing. I figure that it would be a good idea since the thruster was intended to be a one-shot deal, the Zeon engineers would try to use something that was already on hand. I like the idea, but I will have to flesh it out more before I make a decision.

Kampfer Revival Part1: Ground Work

This week marks my modeling come back. After nearly a year off, I've decided to tackle an old busted kit that I have had laying around for years. I bought this bad boy when it was first released and have taken a couple of cracks at it over the years with absolutely no success. So, now that I have some time on my hands, I have decided to try to do something with this kit once and for all. For the most part this kit represents two challenges to me. First of all its a time challenge. I only have about 45 days to finish this kit because I want to complete it before my family trip this April. Also, this kit is going to challenge my determination because I've not completed a Gundam kit in years and really have never completed a MG kit. So, I am trying to keep my nose to the grindstone and work on it every day to meet my goal.


This past week was spent laying down the ground work for the project. Really, this kit was completely in parts and I had to go through all my model boxes to collect everything I needed to bring her back together again. Here is an example of one of my parts boxes. I do have some kits squirreled away in baggies in a drawer, but the rest are in boxes like this. My Kampfer was mostly assembled, but I searched out the rest of the existing parts just in case.



The concept for this model is pretty simple. I want to create a version of the Kampfer that is as stripped down as possible. I'm thinking that it would be like a mass production model that would be used for close assault. It would be for combat in the close quarter so colonies or other space structures. To achieve this, I am doing away with the big shoulder pads and removing a lot of the extra detail throughout the model. I am trying to smooth out the panels as much as possible while still maintaining a tough military feel.

In addition to this, I will be making two major changes to the model. First I will be replacing the three thrusters on the back for one big thruster that will be incorporated into a sort of detachable backpack. And second, I will be replacing the two thrusters on each hip with fuel tanks. The concept is that the main thruster and the fuel tanks are a temporary one-use type meant to get the Kampfer into an area fast and then break off to give it better mobility.







Here is the fuel tank that I fashioned to replace the hip thrusters. It is made from a part of a technical pen and detail spare parts. I plan to duplicate this one to create the four tanks.



Here is a view of my tank mock up to show how the tank should look in its final position. I really think this tank thing is a good idea, but I'm not sure how it's going to look in the long run.