I went ahead and stickered up Keroro so he’s a little more entertaining to have watch me build. Then I finished up snapping my Sumo together and test fitted it. Glued a few of the pieces together on the sumo. And broke a few more spokes off of pieces by accident. Wow are those things fragile. Now for a lot of cleanup work to try and remove the seam lines and fix up badly matching pieces.
So my coworker B.C. was nice enough to give me a pair of air brushes he found on ebay for $5. Yes, $5. Neither one of us had our hopes up that high. Honestly I think his woman just wanted them out of the closet. It was especially fun when I found a post about them on the Internet that says their lifespan is usually measured in days. That was an optimistic assumption I believe. Anyway, I got some paint, and air can, thinner, etc, and hooked it up. 
Gamera and I were having fun with Skype (if you can call two guys watching each other build gundams “fun”) and he suggested I put the air can in hot water. Apparently this helps air flow. Apparently too much as the hose escaped it’s threads and wizzed around my head and legs until I managed to shut off the air. Using a trusty clamp, i solved that. I was however unprepared for the sheer inadequacy of this air brush to do it’s job. Gravity feed from the top is so much nicer as the bottom feed uses more paint, requires me to make more paint, and barely works at all in this case. The airflow was totally all over the place, and I couldn’t increase it or risk losing an eye from the hose. I managed to kinda whiten up about 6 pieces before I just gave up. 
I didn’t bother cleaning the brush since I’m going to keep the satisfaction of throwing it away so it can’t cause anyone elses hopes to be dashed against the rocks of crappyness. I’m going to save the other one to give to someone I don’t like and feel like discouraging. I had a bunch of pieces on skewers ready to go, heh, how silly of me. I have to wait a week of drying for the few pieces I did, against all odds, get paint onto. Maybe I can somehow get myself a real airbrush before then. The coating was horrible so maybe I’ll just strip them and try over.
So the pieces that had the primer peeling off I threw in the simple green after sanding them down to clean off any oil from my skin. I learned today that Simple Green will EAT the primer. Was pretty cool. I wasn’t expecting that but useful to know. The pieces are fine so it doesn’t matter, I was going to reprime them anyway. Left them out to dry and hopefully I can spray them tomorrow.
I was late this morning (which isn’t exactly a rare thing) but it was for an unusual reason. I was driving along the country backroads that I normally take to avoid traffic when I saw something that took a moment to register.
There was an emu in the middle of the road.
I really need to start carrying a camera around with me. The thing was as big as I am, and I have no experience with emus so I wasn’t getting out of the truck to shepherd it to the farm nearby that I assume it escaped from. I knocked on the door of the house but noone was home. Their neighbor laughed when I told them about it and said “Don’t worry they won’t go far. They have two that get out all the time.” The neighbor didn’t have their phone number. I felt bad leaving it because I was afraid it would get hit by a car but there’s no way with all the trees that I could use my truck to shoo it into their yard.
I’ve stopped to help animals a number of times, like turtles, and a young cow once, but an emu was a new one for me.
If they’re home tomorrow I’ll stop by and make sure it was okay and maybe ask for some ’emu-wranglin’ techniques should I ever counter gigantic birds in the middle of the road again.
I attended Otakon this weekend with GameraBaenre. It was a good time as usual. I didn’t even bring a camera so no pictures from me, but my coworker Ciprian went and is a camera nut so I’ll try to update this post with links to his pictures at some point.
Gamera’s pictures are here.
Official Otakon pictures are here.
Ciprian’s pictures are here
Gamera managed to take two awards at the model competition and gave me his “Best In Show” prize. A Perfect Grade W-Gundam Zero Custom. This thing is massive. I’m scared to even start working on it. I’m not even going to open the box until after I’ve finished my Gouf at least.
Thank you Gamera. I think. You know, you’re a real ass for getting me started on this modeling stuff.
At the show I was going to get some Code Geass models for a diorama idea I had but they sold out of the kit before I could pick it up on Saturday. Probably just as well since they’re some of the first ones out and they weren’t that good looking.