antampatz

With the weapon retention modifications now complete, I turned my attention to another well-known feature of this kit: seam lines.

As noted earlier in the project, the weapons are among the biggest seam-line offenders in the entire kit. Unlike many of the armour and frame components where seams could be incorporated into the design, the majority of the weapon seams run directly through otherwise continuous surfaces and are difficult to justify as panel lines.

Because of this, the decision was made to remove them.

The first step involved bonding the weapon halves together using plastic cement. This was carried out on the beam rifle, machine gun, bazooka, and the three machine-gun ammunition drums.

As the cement softens the plastic, pressure can be applied to force a small amount of molten plastic out of the seam. Once cured, this squeezed-out material effectively becomes a filler made from the kit's own plastic, helping eliminate the join without introducing additional materials.

To achieve this, the parts were carefully clamped together after cementing. Depending on the shape of the component, a combination of clips and a modelling vice was used to maintain even pressure along the seam while the cement cured.

The bazooka was by far the largest undertaking. Because it is designed to be dismantled and stored within the original equipment container, it consists of multiple sections, each split into two halves. As a result, there were considerably more seams to address than on the other weapons.

The beam rifle and machine gun were more straightforward, although both still contained several prominent seam lines running through highly visible areas.

The three ammunition drums for the machine gun also required seam removal, but their geometry made them comparatively easy to deal with. Their predominantly flat surfaces allowed pressure to be applied more evenly during curing, resulting in good squeeze-out along the joins.

At this stage, the goal was not to remove the seams themselves, but rather to prepare them for the next stage. Once the cement had fully cured and the plastic had hardened again, the excess material could be removed and the surfaces refined.

The result may not look particularly dramatic yet, but this step lays the foundation for achieving much cleaner-looking weapons later in the build.