After my "rivetting" experience with the UNCLE Piranha (just one rivet!) I was dreading 007's Aston Martin -four tiny rivets driven into 50 year old vacuum metallised styrene!
1) I found the flat topped steel grinder worked much better as it didn't tend to wander off as the ball shape did. Even so, I was left with a few gouges in the plastic that would alert any expert examiners. Levering out the aged plastic with a butter knife was nerve wracking, but in the end the aged plastic stood up to this abuse...
2) After disassembly, I cleaned everything up. I was a bit disappointed that Mr Bond and his missing gunman were unpainted brown plastic, unlike Napoleon and Ilya. So James got a coat of Civil Service grey while his car was resprayed with silver auto lacquer.
3) Here's the bit where the purists shriek and cross me off their Christmas card list. The interior of the film car was black leather which wouldn't show up well at such a small scale. The larger Corgi version had a Crimson interior as did some Huskys, along with a lemon yellow version Ugh! I decided on a grey green interior to show up my driver. Notice the front grille? Half is the original vacuum metallised finish, the other is Green Stuff World Chrome, just to show you how really good it is!
4) Goldfinger's Goon was missing, so I sculpted up one in Kleenclay at about 1/16 scale, scanned it and 3D printed it. The photos on the monitor are eBay replacements and the multicoloured figure is three separate scans merged in my scan program.
5) It turns out the head was a little too large so I "fixed it in post" and went again. I ended up printing a lot of different sized figures to get one that looked right. So some paint in the Corgi style and after the chassis was glued back into place and the hubcaps painted chrome I could call this one done!
"Holy Government Sanctioned Killer, Batman! Whatever's next?"
"Funny. you. should. ask. that, Robin...
What do you think?
Looey
Oz Base
Beautiful job Looey - the blue figure on screen is actually from the large Bond car, as you say, the originals were a toffee colour brown. Looks even better than the original Husky now though! Bill
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bill! I love the blue tinted windows and the bright silver body really sets them off well. I resisted putting a 007 logo on it! I know Corgi did it with Bond's Lotus submarine, possibly because it looked kinda bland otherwise...
DeleteThat is another first-class restoration. Great work on the figures.
ReplyDelete