HMM Zoids 1/72 Red Horn Part 2

So much excess gates to take care of
A bit of progress update on Kotobukiya's HMM Zoids 1/72 Red Horn after the introduction in a few days ago. ^^

Normally, Part 2 of my plamo reviews would be about painting and detailing of selected parts, with the work usually being pretty extensive as well. For Red Horn however, the immediate first work after the removal of the parts from their runners is indeed quite intensive, but it's not related to any painting or detailing, yet. ^^

Instead, just removing all the excess gates from the parts took me two nights. ^^;


With the kit having 469 parts in total, the huge amount of excess gates that needs to be taken care of is to be expected. ^^;




For most of the gates but especially those that are larger and thicker, I use nippers to remove them first, ...




... before cleaning off the remaining residues using a knife.




The cut marks would then be painted over using normal pen/marker of the same/very similar colors.
Sometimes when I'm lazier (XD), I would do this when working on the parts' detailing and painting instead.




The cut marks become less visible after the pen/marker paint has been rubbed off.







Smaller gates can be trimmed off directly using a knife.



On lucky occasions, the excess gates can be removed from the parts so cleanly that no additional paint treatment would be needed to address the "wounds". ^^




There are parts whereby the cut marks are very obvious, but aren't treated at all. They are areas that are going to be concealed beneath other parts, rendering any paint on them rather pointless. ^^


Then again, checking the manual carefully is important to make sure all the parts are being dealt with properly, with or without painting.


Applying Tamiya's Panel Line Accent Color (Black) on the parts for their panel lining usually come after this I'm done removing all the excess gates, but with Red Horn, the panel lining serves as a nice "break" in between all the nippers and knife work. ^^


I also used a large piece of wet cloth to hold all the removed excess gate materials, to prevent them from creating a mess in my room. ^^



All done (the second time ^^) for the work on this HMM Zoids kit before the start of detailing and painting. ^^