IT. IS. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. NO. JOKE. AND. IT. IS. HUMUNGOUS.

[bucketfoot-al]

Paging Joe Heil! Paging Joe Heil!

This is a BASH that is SO BIG that it rates its own thread - separate from my other 'Dinobashes' thread - which will remain active for smaller ongoing projects.

Tonight - finally a chance for a breather from work and some thinking. So recently I picked up a second Mattel Dreadnaughtus (a 5.5 FOOT long sauropod toy), and a second Mattel Brachiosaurus (nearly as big as the Dreadnaughtus, but, ALAS, NOT BIG ENOUGH!!!!) What to do?

Then. Tonight. I remembered. The Kaiyodo Brachiosaurus. Yes - THAT Kaiyodo Brachiosaurus vinyl kit from 1991. THE BIGGEST vinyl dinosaur kit of ALL TIME!!!! I had one!!! [I had built one of these 20 years ago, painstakingly lengthened and straightened the impossibly bent neck and tail and then, in 2014 ... sold it. But I picked up ANOTHER one for about $300 in 2016 because I felt the GUILT!! P.S. If you can find one on yahoo.jp today, it will start at $700. Expensive. And YUUUGE.]

So Joe - you are not alone anymore in the "Club of Insane Bashers Who Tear Apart $$$$$ Kits To Make Something Else". Make way.

The engineering on this project will be VERY complicated and will take some time to plan out. The quantities of wire, putty, and plaster to strengthen the body of the Brach will be PRODIGIOUS. But I am not in a rush. Now - you must see what I saw tonight when, in front of my wife, I "gamed" the idea and exclaimed in excitement: "Honey! Can you SEE it??? CAN YOU SEE IT?!?!?!

I will let the photos below speak for themselves. The last photo depicts the "Can You SEE IT???" moment.

[llricmc]

That is a BIG project! I am keeping an eye on it.

[bucketfoot-al]

Well Joe, the time has come. I hope you don't mind me letting our little "secret" out. I know all of these visitors to our threads have long been thinking: "WTHeck do they mean when they say 'Bashing?? WTHeck is 'BASHING anyway?!?!" Here I go Joe - I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag!

Folks - THIS is what we mean by 'Bashing!! THIS!!! And THIS!!! And THIS!!!!!!!!!!! (see collage below)

[bucketfoot-al]

Well. Now that's over, what did we learn?

1. Those D****d Mattel toys are built TOUGH!;

2. Since the neck and tail are solidly built, modifying them further without doing major damage is not practical, so;

3. I will need to cut into the Brach body to align the new neck into it - *BUT*;

4. This will require MAJOR reinforcement of the interior of the Brach with wire and a coating of putty, plus areas where the neck can the "hooked" into place before puttying to even out the area where the "graft" has been made. I will put hooks into the solid plastic of the neck, then hook the other end into the coupling joints I have designed inside the Brach body. A major pain in the arse operation to be sure;

5. The tail presents its own set of problems as the shape of the base is different (round instead of longish); The early idea is to insert the ball of the new tail into the anchoring vinyl tail piece of the original kit - which you can see on the table next to the model. Again, I will need to insert a hook and pin that inside to the new support structure that I will build - hollow vinyl, no matter how sturdy, ain't up to the task by itself!!!

Well. Enough for tonight. Will reexamine tomorrow. Anyone having any suggestions - they will be most welcome, as this is a couple of orders of magnitude more complex than anything I've attempted in many, many years.

[barad_dur]

WOW!!!
Way to proceed with no fear !!
Can’t wait to see what you do you do with these huge kits…..

[bucketfoot-al]

WOW!!!
Way to proceed with no fear !!
Can’t wait to see what you do you do with these huge kits…..

Hah, well at least I don't have to winch it up with a chain off the ceiling like you had to do with that Dragon ...

[tay666]

Wow!
This IS really big.

Gonna be fun to watch.

[bucketfoot-al]

Well, it was earlier than I thought - so back into the garage I went. What follows is a little *successful* "balancing test".

The tail will extend farther after I have cut a larger hole in the rear end, and parts of the vinyl kit tail will be used to "close the gaps" with the body ... then I inserted an extra rod (left over from the Kong Up Top 3.0 kit - used another one for the plane) just to see if the thing will balance without the need to drop lots of weights into the feet.

Surprise - it does balance! I will cut back the front opening of the kit and widen it so that the base of the neck will line up with the body. Once I have the 'sweet spot' I will remove the neck and putty and strengthen the interior of the kit. I am thinking that a rod inserted into the tail, secured inside the body, and then going into the neck is the way to go. There will also be several smaller wires inserted into the sides of the neck and then into the body, then puttied over to hold it firmly in place. (That neck is heavy!)

In the photo below, the 'Jack Ternec' figure is 2.5" tall, and if we say he is about 6'2" tall, that works the Sauroposeidon Proteles (yes, THAT Texas monster is what I am going for) to be about 85 feet long and 35 feet tall at the head.

I will re-sculpt the head by adding a crest to the top and thickening the lower jaw to make it vaguely more "Brachiosaurish-looking". But truthfully no one really knows what Sauroposeidon's head looked like because none have been found to date. We do know that is was enormous and had longer front than rear limbs (a trademark of the mush earlier Jurassic Brachiosaurus), but since Sauroposeidon lived in the Early Cretaceous period, it might not have resembled it that much, except for the general design. So any reconstruction of the head is going to be plausible.

[barad_dur]

Awesome

[bucketfoot-al]

BTW - This is what my first Kaiyodo Brach kitbash wound up looking like - the impossibly crooked neck and tail were made nice and straight with over 10 cuts, gaps, wires and putty in between. What a nightmare! (Oh, and - the vinyl Kaiyodo neck left over from the current 'bash ain't gonna be wasted - have no fear. But - that is ANOTHER bashing plan that is too early to talk about just now. )

[scuzzfink85]

You better have enough food for it. They grow very fast............

[bucketfoot-al]

You better have enough food for it. They grow very fast............

Oh, Scuzz ...

[bucketfoot-al]

Been busy MODELING this morning and afternoon!! (What a concept!!! )

1. Ordered me up a big tub of DAP Plaster of Paris;

2. Went back to engineering this 'bash - noticed a couple of things:

a. There was plastic that needed removing from the inside of the neck to allow for a closer fit with the body; Solution: use a DRILL to make a ton of holes, and only THEN a pair of pliers to remove the pieces - worked like a charm;

b. One of the feet would always be off the ground as the vinyl had warped, and - the attachment area for the neck on the body was a little too "up and down" instead of wider sideways as I needed it to be;

c. Solution: Block off the tail opening with a board while inserting a raging hair dryer into the neck opening til the body/legs heated up enough to soften. BUT - WTHeck do you put that soft body and hold it while pouring cold water on it? Its WAY too big for the kitchen sink!!!

Solution: Take the entire assembly into the master shower, get on your knees, hold down the body into position with left hand while spraying cold water with the right. Also filled the body til both ends started leaking water!

The result is VERY pleasing. All four feet now stand firmly on the ground - once the connection points on the legs are puttied from the inside and the bottom of the feet filled with Plaster of Paris there will be no more worry about warping. A thinner coat of putty will also be applied to the entire interior of the body so it will hold its shape. I think I have enough Quickplastik and Quikwood for the job - fun! (I use a mixture of the two as you may know).

As you can see from the test fit photos, the gap between the body and neck that will need to be puttied is greatly reduced, and I will be able to attach short wires from the neck to the body at strategic points, then putty over them. A "backbone" rod, puttied to the upper back on the inside will secure both the new tail and neck from the inside.

BTW - The projected length of the finished 'bash, measured down the spine, is looking to be in the 62" range. 5.2 feet(!) Yikes!)

Its coming together. Now the (obligatory) collage - or else it didn't happen!

[barad_dur]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of how you are engineering this bash.
Necessity is the mother of innovative engineering in bashing

[bucketfoot-al]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of how you are engineering this bash.
Necessity is the mother of innovative engineering in bashing

Yes it indeed is.

Glad you are enjoying the "how to" - its a painless way to give a few tips to other modelers (and solicit some in the process, for that matter ), and ... I treat my "build" threads as "performance art". I try to be entertaining and funny.

BTW, Can you now "See It?"

"THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG. REALLY, REALLY BIG." - Wm. Shatner

[scuzzfink85]

Hmm.. so Hal, ends hospital for hernia or the dinosaur falls on him.. dino's revenge....
Or the dinosaur has poop issues...

[bucketfoot-al]

Hmm.. so Hal, ends hospital for hernia or the dinosaur falls on him.. dino's revenge....
Or the dinosaur has poop issues...

[bucketfoot-al]

No project of this size goes off without a hitch (if it did we'd feel like we cheated, wouldn't we? )

I finished puttying up the connecting points for the legs (body still remains to puttied on the inside).

Then, I re-analyzed the tail situation. After much thought, I decided I could not use the Mattel toy tail as it is much too wide and round. I DID decide to use the rubbery tip of that tail and graft it onto the vinyl kit tail. So far, so good. *BUT*

The vinyl tail needs a lot of cutting/repositioning/puttying to straighten out. (Did I mention that the last time I did this surgery on this kit was almost 20 years ago? And that I didn't keep notes? )

After hours of trying techniques that were failing I finally stumbled onto the solution and started in on it ... then glanced at the time - 1120 PM... Ooops!

My wife was very gracious about me being an hour late to bed. And that's all I'll say about that.

The obligatory collage follows. It will be a few days before the next update due to upcoming $$$ workload.

[barad_dur]

It is amazing how fast time goes by when you are bashing away !

[scuzzfink85]

Hal wakes up in land where dinosaurs ruled.. sadly mostly had to be assembled giant pieces scattered every where.
And not enough glue.. the real nightmare begins..