Oh,yesterday was the birthday of their Weibo.

 

General question team - what do you do to rid your bots of dust that gathers on them? A domestic feather duster? a damp cloth? a clean paint brush?

I was having a close look at my Troublemaker and MAN does he need a good dusting. Especially all the intricate details of the face courtesy of Split. I plan on attaching both legs and the left arm over the next few days y'see. Have any/many of you performed the changeover part surgery for the hips on Compresor? I've been sitting on the fence wondering if I should just get it over with or leave as-is until/if it breaks....

 

This thing finally arrived earlier after being lost for a few days last Wednesday.

I painted the eyes similar to how @Shmoptimus Prime did, it looks so much better now!

It looks a bit shiny here because the paint is still to wet.

Class picture of the set so far:


Building the combiner:

Just the torso and the legs.


I think displaying him like this really needs the help of the stand, there's way too much mass on the front for the legs to support the thing.


Crawling with SS Roadbuster for comparison.

 

I found a plain ol' toothbrush to be surprisingly effective at dusting intricate molding.

 

OK so my first full-body repaint is done! It looks great and I'm pleased with that but also....the paint is already starting to chip off in several places, revealing yellow underneath. I'm not sure what to do. I just sprayed another clear coating but it's upsetting that he might not be playable now. What do you guys think of the repaint?

I use a small paint brush. Works great, although with bigger figures like these maybe a large makeup brush would be better.

The black on the face looks great! Can't wait to finally get my compresor so this guy can stand finally.

 

The repaint looks fantastic! Very nice job.


But where on earth does the very tip of his tale come from? I'm literally looking at mine right now trying to see what I missed and I don't see it.

 

Thank you! If you look back a few pages you’ll see that I used SS rampage to make a custom tail extension piece. It partsforms but it makes the bot mode look much more accurate.

 

Did you try a lacquer clear coat? I've applied several coats to my MPM Ratchet custom and its the first figure that I've painted where I don't feel like I can't handle it normally for fear of chipping the paint.

 

I'll admit I had my doubts when you were talking about repainting the whole figure, but your result is impressive! Do you plan to paint over the yellow on the arms?

 

I personally use compressed air to dust my figures (as well as my PC).
I haven't done the replacement surgery on mine since my Overload's hips didn't break, but if you do the surgery I'd recommend squirting some silicone oil on the ratchets.

 

Nicely done, especially since it appears to hold his weight!

 

Thanks! And no, it’s actually accurate that there are some yellow parts that are mostly visible in vehicle mode so I was gonna leave some of it in the arms as well. The outer fingers had to stay mostly yellow for this reason too.

Thanks! It mostly does. You can even use the built-in stand if you put his tail at an angle. If I had 3D printing skills I’d make one that’s even better.

 

Magnificent repainting ... need to see the images of the Buldozer mode, have you painted the front shovel in metallic?

 

If you just painted straight onto the figure as it was out of the box, then that's the issue. The paint is chipping off because all you did (presumably) was add new layers of paint on top of pre-sealed layers of paint. That's fine if you don't intend to handle the figure after, but once you start handling it the oils on your skin start to wear off the new paint because there wasn't anything for the paint to bond to.

To prevent this, you needed to either prime or sand down the entire figure before painting.

 

Thank you! I masked off the silver part of the shovel so it's the same as before. I just added a decepticon symbol.

FML. Well, I know a lot more for next time! For now though paint chipping aside I feel happy that I'm the only person who has a Devil Saviour Rampage  

EDIT: Unsupported pose time!

 

Can't believe I forgot to upload these pics for you guys, DS Skipjack and Legends Skipjack for your enoyment.

 

Just take a deep breath and blow. No, this is not a joke.

the remainder can usually be dealt with using a swiffer duster.

 

The connector on my compresor does not slide completely into sweeping and the hinged cover piece cannot close fully. Does anyone have this problem too? Any solution other than using brute force?

 

Had this problem only the first time I tried combining sweeping/compressor. The hinge piece on sweeping refused to close. Upon closer inspection, I determined that the issue (at least on my figure) was there seemed to be a layer or two of excess paint on the hinge piece which prevented it from wrapping around the peg. Took an exacto knife and trimmed down the paint a little then was able to force it closed (which also rubbed off the remainder of excess paint). Haven't had any issues since.