The Dragon Ronin Astray Part V

Skirts are not just for the ladies

While thinking about how to do the other armor parts, I started working on the skirts.

At first, I thought of a fold-type articulation (which is more logical if you think about it), but, this is Gunpla after all. So, I thought of an expanding skirt instead.

I dug out my stash of runners and got a few T-sections. After assessing the situation (since i won't be making it foldable), I made C-joints by dado-jointing two T-sections and later cutting off the excess.

i simply estimated the pivot length i needed by matching the adjoining plates and slightly sliding them on the designated slide side. I cemented "guide" rails to keep the slide aligned.

Voila! It works just as imagined it.

 

Having customized the main skirt, I found it necessary to customize the red waist guard to allow maximum movement.

I used the red ABS runner of the Astray for this modification and pieces 0.4mm.1.0mm styrene sandwiched together. I noticed that most ABS runners melt and bond relatively slower than styrene, so I had to apply more pressure and allow a longer curing time than usual before I do any further adjustments.

I also made peg adapters for the skirt with white PS runners and sandwiched styrene plates. I could have simply cemented the peg adapters to the primary skirt, but I got another OC attack and made it removable with a soft slide-lock mechanism, just in case I do decide to make a smaller version of the skirt without the gimmick. The main skirt can actually stand alone (the parts are removable) once the top armor is placed.

Test fit: The waist guard mod, and the skirt peg adapter.

Test fit: The extending skirt. (edit: the x/— marks are identifiers)

 

I managed to squeeze building the waist guard. I'm running low on pla plates (gotta get me some soon), so I basically use the small scraps as economically as possible. Instead of sandwiching whole plates, I used 1mm beam instead. I used the same shape, the bottom slightly larger than the top part, and used a strip to fill the gap, beveled to the angle between the plates. Then I filed it smooth.

This is still not final, but I think I'm gonna leave that gap open.