Hey all,
I received a ELILAY K's blaster the other week.
Nice guys to deal with I must say. Nicely done ELILAY
On receipt of he kit there were a couple of issues.
The finish is excellent, nice and smooth with minimal clean up before paint etc. The barrels however had collapsed in the center as the resin had cured, making them point towards each other, which looked a bit Mr Magoo.
So I removed them and drilled out new holes, made some metal barrels in my lathe and glued them in using a guide to make them parallel.
The other main issue was the gun was bent by about 3mm to the right. I tried heating it up and slowly applying pressure to straighten it out, whist doing this it split along the rear of the barrel assembly,, which worked out great as I could then straighten it up by removing material and clamping before gluing together.
Most of these issues arnt really an issue if you want to leave them, but I handle my blasters all the time and the bend would have driven me crazy.
So all straight, It was time for sanding and prep. Most of he print lines were nonexistent which is a credit to whoever cleaned up the print before molding. So after some hours sanding I then gave it about 5 coats of gloss back automotive paint, wet sanding between each coat to get rid of any small print lines.
Then a Two Pack wet look basecoat ready for the Hydrochrome treatment. I had some chemicals hanging about from a Terminator Endoskeleton I fixed up earlier this year but it was close to its use by date which left a few marks here and there as well as the spray head freaking out after the first few sprays which concentrated the flow of the silver nitrate and overdid it in some areas. This makes it a little like a nickle finish which wouldn’t do for a true chrome look, but as this blaster will be close to black I don’t think it will be an issue.
So here it is after the chrome application.
Now after some latex masking and a coat of Tamia gun metal followed by a gloss black thin pass it looks like this. Obviously there is a lot more to do, but I think its looking great, as it has the same shine on the surfaces when the light hits it but looks almost black. The barrel is done in gloss black and is waiting for a couple of small scratches before the “vent/mesh” is painted. I’m looking forward to detailing the camera lens type mechanism next.
I received a ELILAY K's blaster the other week.
Nice guys to deal with I must say. Nicely done ELILAY
On receipt of he kit there were a couple of issues.
The finish is excellent, nice and smooth with minimal clean up before paint etc. The barrels however had collapsed in the center as the resin had cured, making them point towards each other, which looked a bit Mr Magoo.
So I removed them and drilled out new holes, made some metal barrels in my lathe and glued them in using a guide to make them parallel.
The other main issue was the gun was bent by about 3mm to the right. I tried heating it up and slowly applying pressure to straighten it out, whist doing this it split along the rear of the barrel assembly,, which worked out great as I could then straighten it up by removing material and clamping before gluing together.
Most of these issues arnt really an issue if you want to leave them, but I handle my blasters all the time and the bend would have driven me crazy.
So all straight, It was time for sanding and prep. Most of he print lines were nonexistent which is a credit to whoever cleaned up the print before molding. So after some hours sanding I then gave it about 5 coats of gloss back automotive paint, wet sanding between each coat to get rid of any small print lines.
Then a Two Pack wet look basecoat ready for the Hydrochrome treatment. I had some chemicals hanging about from a Terminator Endoskeleton I fixed up earlier this year but it was close to its use by date which left a few marks here and there as well as the spray head freaking out after the first few sprays which concentrated the flow of the silver nitrate and overdid it in some areas. This makes it a little like a nickle finish which wouldn’t do for a true chrome look, but as this blaster will be close to black I don’t think it will be an issue.
So here it is after the chrome application.
Now after some latex masking and a coat of Tamia gun metal followed by a gloss black thin pass it looks like this. Obviously there is a lot more to do, but I think its looking great, as it has the same shine on the surfaces when the light hits it but looks almost black. The barrel is done in gloss black and is waiting for a couple of small scratches before the “vent/mesh” is painted. I’m looking forward to detailing the camera lens type mechanism next.
