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Started on the Perfect Grade GAT X105 Strike Gundam
last night. Always wanted to do a progress thingy just for my friends and aquaintences to see what building a model kit is like. I must admit its time consuming and money consuming too but hey, who doesn’t have vices like this?

So anyway, i managed to procure one of these at no cost to myself. Building and painting it for my brother’s colleague. Kit is his, paint, thinner, primer and more or less whatever i need is sponsored while hardware like the airbrush, compressor, dremel tool, skewers(satay sticks), brain, hands and time is mine. Must say, I’ve never done a perfect grade or will ever be willing to spend the money on one because i’m more a fan of the smaller ones. This one’s a 1/60 scale, i usually do 1/144 or 1/100 because they are smaller and are not as high quality and need more fixing, increasing the challenge of painting and making a crappy kit look good. I’ve been through only 5 kits, not much experience. Michael Fichtenmayer says it takes about 10 or so models before you really get something you are happy with, so far he’s been right. Haha… but i’m getting close! That guy has great models, you should check them out.

Here’s the rundown of what i did:

Doesn’t look like much here but trust me, there are zillions of parts compared to the regular model.

Pretty feet it has. foot can bend in the middle because of numerous
joints and parts. Regular foot just doesn’t do that. Improves the
poseability of the model by leaps and bounds.

The “skeleton” or internals of the calf and thigh, grey and having many
MANY parts, it moves really well. But sometimes too stiff because there
are just too many moving parts.

Okay, here they are connected together… the knee is really cool, must see it to know what i mean.

Groin and hips

If you’ve seen a strike before, you’ll notice that the armour on the side of the calf just below the knee are missing. No.. i didn’t lose them, they uh… broke… due to very lousy design that really can’t be helped. It was terrible, the way it moved caused undue stress on the clip like part and one side snapped, prompting me not to try to test fit the rest of the armour plates. Glued it back after with super glue. With some sanding and paining, nobody would ever know the diff! guess the assembled unit has to be fixed or else you’ll have other parts breaking on you.

See why it needs paint? Goodness, the white on two different sprues were like so diferent. One was bright white and the other was almost yellowed. Anyway these armour plates easy to fix the really hard parts are…

THE SEAMS! Man, i thought a $180USD kit would be so well made and have little of these to fix.. but there ya go, can’t really escape from these. Going to be filled with putty and sanded smooth but sadly this head needs to be left as it is because it contains a battery and LED to light up the eyes. The back plate removed, there is a small switch to turn on the light inside. Worse than seams are something called “nasty-ass-stubs-from-cutting-the-parts-out-of-the-sprue” as seen below.

These things take ages to get rid off. Why don’t i cut nearer to the plastic? Because that would leave a hole or a gouge in the plastic,which is worse. Needs to be puttied AND sanded. Oh well… now to show some pictures of my prebuild. I’m going to take it all apart to paint, a test fit this helps me see where i need to paint and which parts i don’t need to bother with if they are covered by other parts.

The fingers are individualy articulated. Each having 3 ball joints for super poseability! See how cool it looks! yeah right.. Also possible are “Gundam digging nose pose” and “Gundam scratching butt when nobody is looking pose”. Notice that it can KNEEL. Properly at least. Might not mean much for people who don’t realise how unposeable normal kits are.This one’s an ease to pose. Only trouble is its so stiff i don’t know whether i’m moving the joint or breaking it.

They have a nice big oversized mean looking sword included that never appeared in the anime, some sorta bonus.

Okay, i was just tempted to push it abit far, this is “gundam breakdancing pose”. This thing has got endless possibilities, here i could easily position the CG over the arms so that it stays there by itself. the hands were about to fall apart though, due to the metal weights in the legs added to stabilise.

I’ll have to take it apart before i start to sand and paint. So far i’ve spent about 10 hours assembling. Yesterday night for 2 hours and today about 8 hours in total. Assembly usually is much quicker once i’ve see it put together once, can take it apart and put it together without consulting the instructions. Well, here’s the last picture for today’s entry. I’ve begun disassembling it!

I’m not very impressed by this perfect grade so far, too heavy, stiff, and doesn’t assemble quickly (duh…) Going to try out a master grade next, a grade below this one. But no time till next year for that.

Seeya in the near future! Be away at children’s and youth camp for my church so won’t be touching this model for quite a while. Heading to Taiwan on christmas all the way to new year. On the 16th and 17th is the Christmas Cantata that has been put up by my church. Its at ACS Barker near newton mrt. Come down to have a look if you’re free. You can find me in the sound room. Until then!