HDM-02 Schnabelgun - 1/144 Resin Kit

This is the first build of two Schnabelgun kits I own. These little behemoths are full resin kit / garage kits from the mind and studio of Luca Zampriolo (www.kallamity.com). They are mastered by hand using various scratch-building techniques and he casts them in small batches periodically. I picked this particular kit up in February of 2019. The “Schnab” was pinned, primed and painted on my Twitch.TV stream over the course of about 2 months if I recall correctly. My viewers often joke about me being a slow builder. The truth is, these are rare and complex kits. They are not “straight builds” as you often hear Gunpla aficionados ascribe to the practice of simply cutting parts out of the sprues, sanding and polishing down nubs, and snap-fitting together. Such a practice is simply impossible with resin kits. You start with quite literally big chunks of single colour resin. Each part needs to have pour tags and mold lines removed; then, they need to be pinned together with brass rods. Next comes the priming, painting, weathering, finishing and everything else you see. It’s a lot of work. Work that I don’t rush as I’d prefer to see meticulous perfection on my shelf.

During this particular build, I had suggested to my Twitch Chat that the stock fuel tanks were a bit insipid compared to the rest of the beautiful design Luca had imagined. I took it upon myself to scratch-build new fuel tank design using styrene, epoxy clay, electronics solder and a ball bearing. Regretfully, I did this off stream one night, not thinking about how my viewers would have appreciated seeing this be made. Oh well, next time. What did happen on stream was the creation of a silicone mold of the master tank. Vacuum degassed and poured all on stream. Then the following evening, again on stream, we pressure cast six duplicates of the master. I think the new tanks look amazing and much better compliment the overall look. Additionally, considering this is a jump-mech which moves using jets under it’s feet, the added size and quantity of tanks better fit the cannon in my opinion. In addition to the tanks, some minor other scratch work was done on the large springs on the pelvis and the very back fuel tank of the gun.

I hope you enjoy the final product. I’m very happy with how it turned out!

- Corvus Oculum