Similarly to the last few builds I decided to work on two 1/144 kits at the same time, this time being the Build Burning and the GM Cardigan high grades. As with all HG’s seamlines are always expected but with these two kits that came out at almost the same time there are vast differences in the clean up required.

The Build Burning is a completely new mold made for 2014 while the Cardigan is a modified mold of a kit that came out in 2006. So while the Burning needed some gap filling and some underskirt detailing almost no mods were necessary. The Cardigan was a whole other story with multiple mods used with the help of the Gundam Weapons book I reviewed.

The first step for the Cardigan was to give it a much needed longer waist and thighs.

Then went on to seal the large amount of parts needed as well as mod the knees, elbows, shoulders, ankle guards, and the head so the kit could be broken down for painting.

For the Burning the only real challenging part was filling the strangely large seamline gap in the forearms, the forgotten gaps in the ankles, and shaping the epoxied filled gaps in the foot so that the additional parts could later connect with it.

Besides adding detail to the shoulders and calf boosters with some pla plate I also detailed some plates for both kit’s front,back, and side skirts. But when I got to the back skirt of the Cardigan I noticed that in the Gundam Weapons book the modeler decided to modify the back skirt in order for it to be similar to modern HG waist joints instead. Considering the ease of this mod I gave it a try and the results looked great.

These two kits especially the Cardigan basically were the driving force behind the Gundam Weapons purchase and boy was it worth it.