RX-78-1 Ankle Guards

[Kane82]

Hey Guys -

I'm re-doing my PG RX-78-1 (Technically its 2, but I painted it as the Prototype Gundam) - repainting using my new Airbrush and adding detailed parts. But I also wanted to correct a few things, one of the biggest being the ankle guards.  On the Prototype Gundam, it has slots in the front and side guards, unlike the Gundam and G3, which are solid.

I've tried drilling multiple holes into front panel of the guard, then breaking out the remaining bits and sanding down, but this ended up not working very well, and after putty-ing the mistakes I'm forced to go back to the drawing board.  I was hoping I could get some ideas here.  My current ideas are:

1.) reverse styrene plate the part, so add add the slots as an "over panel" to the original piece - this won't be easy to pull off though.

2.) Sand down the slotted sections - but I don't think that will work either.

3.) Give up/Decal it.  While its a trivial aspect to the design, it does tend to stick out when looking at the 1,2 and 3 all together.  It might not be worth it in the long run.  Or try to make slot "decals" out of my custom decal maker, but this idea seems rife with failure as well.

So...does anybody have any suggestions?  I would appreciate any feedback you might have!

[clee-cm]

if you have any thin sheet styrene, you can cover up the slots by cutting a strip of styrene to size and glue it on to the surface of the ankle armor.

[Kane82]

Thanks Cm, you know the more I think about it..I think that's going to be my best bet. 

[tetsujin]

For the drilling option - personally I suck at precision drilling, so when I need to drill holes in specific places and have them line up nicely, I use my drill press along with the guides to position the drill bit just where I need it relative to the part.  (The drill press has a horizontal guide, so I could put one side of the part against that, and that would get me the correct spacing from that edge of the plate - and then to get the correct spacing laterally, I'd carefully position the plate and measure its position relative to the side of the drill press with calipers...  I did this with my Zaku Kai - there's these plates on the chest block with 10 or 12 holes drilled in 'em on a grid...  I never would have got those looking decent without the drill press!)  For this kind of approach with Gundam ankle armor, I would cut off the front plate of the ankle armor, drill the holes, then bridge the holes to make the slits, and then finally reattach the front plate.  (Or you could do the detail as an add-on plate as you described...  Might be easier, actually...)

Another option would be to create the slots in negative (get a styrene plate, glue three styrene strips to it) - and then use poly putty to recreate the recessed slots.  (Gouge out the front of the ankle armor plate, goop it full of poly putty, goop some onto the negative plate, squish 'em together...  Wait until it's firmed up a bit and then pull the negative plate off.)

Another option would be to construct the slot shapes out of multiple pieces of styrene.  Rectangular slots are easy - just align strip styrene at right angles to create the overall shape.  You can use more strips as spacers to help get the alignment right...  You could stick with rectangular slots or turn rectangular slots into rounded slots by taking a piece of styrene rod with diameter the same as the width of the slot - stick a bit of epoxy putty into the end of the slot and squish the rod into it (perpendicular to the surface of the plate) to get the rounded corners for the slot - then once the putty's cured you can sand it flush.

[Kane82]

Thanks for the tips man!  But unfortunately I'm rubbish at all three ideas (already tried them, except for the drill press, don't own one) - I went with an easier idea - ditch the RX-78-1 and go with the RX-78-3.  So far its working wonderfully!