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The following photos show an initial dry fit of a recast model of Naru from Love Hina, ordered through E-Bay from a company in Thailand. If you look closely you can see problems. There are casting issues and fit issues. The most serious problem is the fit of the skirt as discussed below, but there are other problems, too. |
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The hair castings are brittle and in many cases have unclean lines. Now, most of the defects don't matter and sanding with 200 grit paper will clean them up. However, observe how the hair bangs sit high above the face. I have seen this on other pictures of this model and believe this to be the way the model was cast by the sculptor. |
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Fixing this problem with the hair will not be difficult. The gaps will be filled and sanded. Fortunately, hair has lots of lines and surface variation. |
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First, I partly assembled the resin model so that I could work with it as a unit. The photo shows a dry fit of the parts. I later glued the body and leg parts together. I wanted to have the body in one piece so that I could accurately fit the skirt pieces. |
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The upper body casting is not realistic. Tight shirts do not wrinkle as cast in the model and the distance between the navel and the underwear and the hip bones is not at all correct! However, is this not the appeal? |
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The cold cast resin for the skirt pieces was quite thick. So, I ground the pieces down on the inside as much as I could, trying to get the pieces to fit closer to the body. I checked for the high spots where it touched the body and tried not to risk the integrity of the piece. In other words, I did not take any chance of grinding through to the other side. I probably thinned the pieces by about a half. I used a 1/4 inch drum sander accessory on my drill. |
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When the pieces were thinner I tried to form them to fit tight to the model. This required heating them up and working with the softer resin. To heat, I dropped the pieces in a pot of rapidly boiling water and left them for a minute. This softened the resin slightly but I could only work with the resin for a few seconds before it cooled and hardened. I found that boiling water was not really hot enough to soften this resin sufficiently. |
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Nevertheless, I would take the heated pieces, fit them to the body, and press and hold in place as the resin cooled. I had to do this a number of times as the resin was fussy and hard. I was able to reform the pieces a little each time. In the end the waistband more accurately tracked the body surface and the skirt side seams would touch. If you try this, be very careful as the boiling water is hot and the resin pieces will be near that temperature. You will burn your fingers working with the softened resin. |
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I then put the skirt on the body and tack glued it together with super glue on the seams. Now, the seams didn't fit together well, but they did touch and this was sufficient. The skirt is actually loose on the body and can be moved up and down a little to position it. There was about 1/8 to 1/16 inch gap between the waistband and the body at both the front and back. I thought about leaving it this way, but then I decided to try and do better. For another look, see here. |
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So, rather than just gluing the skirt to the body, I filled the gap around the waist with Tamiya Putty. This is liquid plastic and comes out of a tube. I used a toothpick to press the putty into the gap between the body and the skirt. Of course, this made a mess all around the top part of the model and the belly had to be re-sanded and re-worked. |
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The waistband was then sanded and ground down to a nice, thin band. I was fortunate to receive a Dremel tool for my birthday so I used a small cutter and grinder attachment to shape the waistband. I am now at the point where removing any more material becomes risky. |
