Plasticandplasters.com blog page: March 2017

Only these small sections to go now.

The side skirt armour was primed & painted with the lighter UK Azure Blue to match the front & rear armour.

1/48 Zaku 2 skirt armour primed

The hands for the Zaku 2 come in two designs to use with or without the rifle. At this stage, I had not decided which to have, so cleaned up & primed all the parts for the hand & the protective armour.

1/48 Zaku 2 hands primed in grey

Completed hand ready for top coats

The hand armour were painted in the darker blue to blend with the arm armour & the actual fingers sprayed with Gun Metal.

The rifle comes in various sections, so these were glued& sanded, but not put together at this stage. To give some subtle shading effects for the rifle instead of doing all the priming in Gloss Black I did the handle, magazine & targeting sight in grey.

Gun parts primed in various colours to give different effects

Primed in various colours to give different effects when metal coats added

The handle, magazine & targeting sight were sprayed with Exhaust Manifold & the body & barrel in Gun Metal Grey.

Gradients of metallic shade now show through

The lens for the sight was given some Ammo Of Mig clear Orange on the inside & when dry pushed into place.

Clear Orange painted inside sight lens

The gun now just fits together & the 2-tone shading now comes into its own.

The 2 parts for the right hand clip over the trigger & grip, then the back armour clip on the outside. The rifle is now ready to go on the Zaku 2.

1/48 Zaku 2 hand fixed to rifle handle

All that is now left to do is to push the pre made arms, legs & head onto the torso & connect up the gun & there you have it, one vary large & blue Zaku II.

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.2

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.3

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.4

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.

Completed 1/48 Zaku 2 picture No.6

Fitting the rear trim bars (Stages 34 & 35)
These were primed then painted to match the rest of the bike. The best way I found to set them up was to at first only glue the top set to the rear support (see diagram below), then just using H12 to keep the correct space, fix the rear of P3 & P4 just the same. A bit of super glue at the front four points holds it with the correct spacing for the bars.

This may seem long winded, but it allowed each stage to dry as the support pins at the rear are very small & if you try to glue both ends at once they may come loose. It also gives the correct distance between the bars.

First fixing position of side bars

Second fixing position of side bars

1/6 Harley Davidson side bars now set

The side boxes were then glued into place & left to set fully.

Fitting exhausts (Stages 33 to 35)
I removed all the chrome from the exhausts, then painted them in gold and matt black. I thought it better to fit the pipe in stage 35 first as it gave a solid fixing for the pipe in stage 34. I carefully fed the assembly in at a slight angle to get close to the outlet then turned it level into the outlet holes. I then screwed the rear pipe in place & left to set.

When you fit the exhaust to the pipe put a small amount of glue at the junction of the pipe & exhaust to fix, screw it into place.

Left side exhaust fitted

Completed right side exhaust fitted

Here are two more photos showing the exhausts & side boxes in place ready for the next stage of building.

View of completed rear section of 1/6 Harley Davidson

View of rear section of 1/6 Harley Davidson

Fitting the top box ( Stage 46 )
No trouble with this. The box needs no glue at all as it clips into place on the support bars.

Completed top box

1/6 harley Davidson top box clipped into place

Making the fuel tanks (Stage 38)
These needed a lot of filler at the seams, which were sanded down, primed & sprayed in "Canyon Red" The parts G20, N22 & N23 were sanded, painted in the gold colour & glued into place ready to be fitted to the bike later.

Large seam gaps in 1/6 Harley fuel tank

Finished and painted 1/6 Harley fuel tank

Seat build & fitting
I followed the instructions for making the rear seat, but using the colour scheme of the bike. The seat padding was painted satin black.

Seat for Harley Davidson now finished

Air intake fitting
The air intake was painted in copper to match the bike colours. First I fitted the connection pipe to the engine, let it set, then connected the piping & finally fitted the intake using superglue so it would not "sag" or move.

Painted air intake on 1/6 Harley Davidson

Fitting the throttle controls
One very large gripe here!! The controls are made with a rubbery plastic, so no glue I have will hold them together, married with the way of holding them with the mirror stalk/clip does not work.

I had to devise a way to keep them connected so I came up with a "wire" system. It worked for me so here's how I did it.
I made two 0.5mm holes in both of the parts that hold the levers and fed a thin wire between them. I also drilled 4 holes in the small part which connects to them to receive the wires. The controls were painted & fitted ready for the next stage.
I fed the wires through the connecting piece and bent the wires over ready to fit to the handlebars. I pushed the units onto the handlebars, followed by the grips to get the correct position, then twisted the wires till they were tight, cut the ends off & painted them black to disguise the copper wire.

Fine fixing wires on hand grips

Wire now holds the 1/6 grips together

Brake handles now fitted to handlebars

Close up of 1/6 Harley brake handles

Fitting the fuel tanks (Stage 38)
OH NO!! that dreaded rubbery plastic again & no glue I had will stick it so I followed the throttle plan by drilling four holes in one of the tanks, fed wire through & fastened underneath. This way no wire will show on the top of the tanks & as you can see fits fine on the model. See the series of photo's below to how it was done.

Small holes drilled in 1/6 Harley tank

Fine wire goes through 1/6 Harley tank

Wire fitted through rubber cover

Rubber cover now secure on 1/6 Harley Davidson tank

I then glued this half of the tank in place & allowed to set.

Making & fitting the gauges
No trouble with this stage and they just clip into place on the handlebars.

Completed 1/6 Harley Davidson gauges

Completed gauges on the handlebars

Lights & front fairing
I sprayed the front lights outer parts, then built them up with the clear & coloured lenses. Superglue was best to fix them to the fairing supports. I used superglue as normal plastic would take a while to set & you need to get the angle correct.

Harley Davidson front lights and indicators

The windshield screws into the fairing supports as shown in the diagram, but give it a clean beforehand.. The fairing should then push into the support, but mine looked out of postion as there was a gap between the top of the headlight & the bottom of the fairing, so I cut the lugs off the fairing & glued the base to the headlight. As you can see this, to me, looks better & is how it should look on a real bike.

Wind shield and screen fitted to 1/6 Harley Davidson

Finishing the fuel tanks
I fitted the spark plugs & connected the ignition wiring. I then glued the other side of the tank on with the rubber resting between the two. I also fitted the clutch pedels after they were painted copper & black. The central guage unit was painted copper, the transfer & other parts added. This was then fitted to the top of the tanks.

Finished fuel tanks on frame of 1/6 Harley Davidson

Finishing off

All that needs to be done now is to fit the fragile items like the mirrors & put the fuel caps on. I looked at putting the decals on the tanks & boxes, but they were offline, had white lines when lifted off the backing paper so they were left off. So at last there it is in all its glory to go on the display shelf.