My repair work isn't limited to models. I've had to fix a few paintings when they get damaged, and I recently repaired a nice print that a friend of mine received in the mail damaged.
It was a pretty straightforward process to fix it. The tear wasn't too bad, most of the actual printed image was still there. I started by stabilizing the tear with a new piece of foam board from the back.
I then used a heavy acrylic gel medium to level out the dented and torn part of the print. This went on white but dried to a matte clear so it didn't cover any more of the existing image.
I leveled the medium as much as possible with palette knives while it was wet to minimize any sanding. This was a textured print so I wanted to avoid any sanding if possible.
Once the filler was dry, I started the touchups by matching and painting the trees in the damaged area.
The sky was a little trickier, as some of the colors are a challenge to match. It took a couple of tries before I got a result I was happy with.
Once I had everything repainted, I rolled on a new coat of heavy gel clear to match the texture of the repair to that of the rest of the picture. Then it was just back in the frame and back to the customer.
I have a lot of models that have been built for years, and many have suffered minor damage from moves, accidents and the like. However last night my Aoshima Models Terminator T-800 had an unfortunate encounter with a rather heavy book. :(
Before....
Photo courtesy of Hobbysearch
After.
It didn't shatter quite this much....the model is quite old and a little worn so I decided a restoration was in order as well. I started taking the model apart so I could strip the chrome and paint. Fortunately only a few pieces actually broke, and the damage was minor.
As you can see from the pictures, the plastic of this kit is a translucent white. Chrome parts can be a variety of colors of plastic...I've come across tan, white, gray, black and even clear before. A few parts of the kit are molded in black as well.
Almost all the chrome was removed, and except for a few areas that still had paint on them the rest of the parts came out well too. I am still working on groups of parts, some are awaiting bleaching and more still need to be stripped of paint and old glue. I'm using a neat little set of interlocking boxes I found at Office Depot to keep all the parts sorted.
Once all the parts are clean, I will begin repair and reassembly. I will have to do some scratchbuilding to fix the broken hands and fingers on the figure.
The second round of bleaching wasn't as effective for some reason, a lot of chrome was left behind on the next batch of parts. I had to do a lot of sanding and re-bleaching to get them clean. I'll have more pics once all the parts are ready for paint.
Much later.....
I finally have most of the Terminator stripped and prepped for reassembly, and I started putting it back together. Since I wanted to re-pose the figure for a more dynamic display, I had to adjust the lengths of some of the actuators to make the pose work. I used brass tubing and round styrene stock
to make new actuators or adjust the lengths of kit ones when necessary.
I also started a nicer base to display the model that will give the figure an environment. It will be a lot more interesting than the black slab of plastic it was on before.
At this point, all the major repairs are complete. I just have a couple of leg actuators to modify and rebuild the hands, which I started on over the weekend. Rather than trying to reassemble the broken fingers, I opted to build new ones from styrene round stock. I used small sections of .064, .040 and .020 round stock to rebuild the individual fingers and glued them to the hands in the positions I wanted. this will look a lot better than the kit hands, which had all the fingers molded together in one piece.
It's a little time consuming, but the results will be worth it.
While working on the hands, I also started basecoating the figure to get it ready for painting. I'm using
Vallejo standard black as a primer. This will help bring out the details and block light from coming through the translucent plastic.
Just to get an idea of how the painting will look, I started adding different shades of metallic finish to the skull. Much like the Battlestar kits, I will be using five or six shades of metallics and blacks to give the Terminator some variation in the different metal parts. I will probably use a little Bare Metal Foil as well. This is just two colors so far, and it's a little on the light side. I'm thinking of going a little darker with the overall finish to make it look a little meaner. Once all the painting is finished I will clearcoat the whole endoskeleton to protect the finish and add additional gloss.
