I’ve got to working on my Core Works EX-S ver. 2 conversion kit quite a bit over the weekend while watching Heroes season 1 on DVD. My goal is to have in finished by the end of May for the Conversion Kit contest over at MechaModelComp. For my first conversion kit I don’t believe I have bitten off more than I can chew at all but I have run into a couple of fitting issues with the kit, which is normal for a conversion I am told. One particularly pain in the ass piece has been the pelvic armor, the resin piece refused to fit properly so I cut off the top of the original piece from the MG kit and attached to the actually changed part of the resin piece with some two part epoxy resin. It doesn’t look like much now but when it is primed you won’t even be able to tell they were separate pieces.

I have also added magnets into the feet, thanks to seeing Mr. Greeds WIP and giving me the idea to do the same. They are a little large but they work great on the foot. I ordered some half the size (1/8th”) for the shoulder armor and a few other pieces, but they haven’t come in yet.

Other than that construction is going smoothly and I have been removing seem lines where needed, noticeably on the back pack. I started using Tamiya extra thin cement in the little glass bottle. I like it so much better than any of the Testor’s crap I have used. The giant blue shoulder things (wtf are those anyways? propellant tanks or something?) are going to be a pain to remove the seem lines, my plan so far is to paint the insides of them as separate pieces then glue them together, remove the seem, mask and paint the outside. In case anyone is wondering I am going with the pretty standard ver. Ka color scheme (mostly blue and white) but I am going to do smallish digi-camo squares on the blue instead of the larger box pattern you normally see on the ver. Ka.

This is certainly the largest model I have built yet, it easily towers over my GM custom even when not on its base.

He is a little sneak peak at the project my roommate is working on, can you guess what it is?

Our first attempt at casting a mold is the dark blue one, the silicone mixture wasn’t correctly proportioned… oops. But the pieces turned out pretty good after making correct molds.

There are a spots on this kit that lack some detail or leave very noticeable holes because something went in its place on the original MG. For example a part that really bothers me is this spot in his chest. You can clearly see when you look down it the pegs that hold it in place.

So I added a thin sheet of pla-plate to cover up the hole.

Then added a Kotobukiya nozzle option part to add some detail to the blank spot.

What it looks like in place:

I also didn’t like this exposed polycap on his shoulder joint:

So I added some minus mold that I sanded down to make it thinner to the shoulder to cover it up.

I also added some 1/16th” magnets to the shoulder armor to make painting easier.

Everything in place:

The gun is also lacking some detail, which I am not quite done with. This particular spot is on the front of the gun, originally the part had a cable coming into the back of it, but the conversion doesn’t use it.

So I covered up the hole with some plate. I will probably add some minus mold or something to give it some detail.

This part is also extremely flat and boring:

So I drilled some holes to match the look of the front of the barrel:

That is all for now.