Gunpla Tools for Beginner

Theses are the essential tools needed if you plan to start building an amazing Gunpla. Stop using your nail clipper and penknife now and equipped yourself with the tools that a true Gunpla Builders use.

Let's get started.

• Side Cutter

The most important tool in Gunpla. The main purpose of using this side cutter is to have a clean cut when you are cutting off the parts from a runner. There are few types of hobby side cutter, but all of them have the same purpose of separating the parts from its runner. If you're still new to this hobby, it's not advisable to buy an expensive side cutter. Just start off with a cheap ones and slowly upgrade your tools.

picture credit: http://www.gunpla101.com/essential-tools-for-gunpla-building/

• Design Knife

After removing the parts from its runner, the next thing you need to do is to clear the nub mark. In order to do so, you need to use design knife or a filer. Both can do the job fine.

picture credit: http://www.gunplamalaysia.com/

• Filer

Use it to remove nub marks and to even out the surface after you apply cement or putty. You also can use sand paper as an alternative.

picture credit: http://www.gunplamalaysia.com/

• Part Opener

In case you need to separate the parts that you've already connected. DO NOT try to separate your parts using design knife because it might leave a mark at your parts and the tip of the blade will break and it might go into your eyes!!

• Gundam Marker

Be it panel line marker, color marker or real touch marker, you need these markers to make your Gunpla look amazing. For beginner, just get the panel line marker first.

 

Gunpla History

• The first Gunpla, released in July 1980, cost just 300 yen, or about $3. Obviously, it was a kit for making the very first Mobile Suit Gundam model.

• The earliest Gunpla kits, released between 1980 and 1989, are nothing like the Gunpla we build today. Instead of snapping together, you had to glue them together with cement. Even trickier, they were all one color, and you’d need to paint them first! You’d get a rigid, hardly pose-able model for your reward. Today these are called FG (First Grade) kits.

• The first High Grade was released in 1990 and cost 1000 yen, or about $10. As would become a tradition, the first model of any grade was the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Today High Grade is synonymous with “cheap and easy,” but in 1990 it was considered a more detailed, pose-able grade of Gunpla. Many new terms of high grade now depend on the series,era or gimmick such as HGUC(universal century), HGBF(build fighter), HG REVIVE(rebuilt old design high grade to make it more detail) and many more

• The first Master Grade was released in 1995 and cost 2500 yen, or about $25. It is the first time the original Mobile Suit Gundam was named correctly, as the RX-78-2. The grade was originally designed to be used for a select number of models to commemorate Gundam’s 15th anniversary, but the popularity of these more accurate models is why they’re still being manufactured to this day.

• The first Perfect Grade Gunpla appeared in 1998 and cost 12,000 yen or about $120. Today’s Perfect Grades make this look cheap, often topping $200 or more. Perfect grades come in 1/60 scale and include so much detail that they can take weeks to build. They may even come with wiring for LEDs or other electronic features.

• In July 2009, Bandai built a 1/1 scale RX-78-2 to commemorate Gundam’s 30th anniversary . This true-to-scale Gunpla now stands tall in Odaiba, Tokyo.

• Mega Size Model, or MSM, is a line of 1/48 scale Gunpla kits of Mobile Suits from the Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam AGE TV series. Despite being the largest scale Gunpla line, Mega Size Model is priced lower than the 1/60 scale Perfect Grade due to a smaller parts count. Detail and articulation are equal to High Grade kits. As this line is geared toward beginners, the sprue gates are thin enough to separate from the parts without the need of a nipper; a plastic parts separator is supplied with each kit.

• The first Real Grade showed up just recently, in 2010. It was designed to be a step up from High Grade in terms of realism, without being as complicated as a Master Grade. In terms of difficulty, we consider them to be somewhere in between the two.

• Reborn-One Hundred (RE/100) is a line of Gunpla established in 2014. It is the continuation of the 1/100 No Grade model kits that featured many releases from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, SEED Destiny and 00. Unlike their Master Grade counterparts of the same scale, these kits do not feature inner frames. Instead they opt for High Grade complexity in a larger scale. The only scale that didnt start for granpa gundam RX-78, maybe because it is basically HG with more detail and bigger size

credit :

gundam.wikia

What is Gunpla?

Gundam models are model kits depicting the vehicles and characters of the fictional Gundam universe by Bandai. These kits have become popular among mecha anime fans and model enthusiasts in Japan and in other nearby Asian countries since the 1980s.

Gundam modeling spread in the 1990s with North America and Europe being exposed to Gundam through television and manga. Gundam models, as well as the hobby of assembling and painting them, is known in Japan as Gunpla (ガンプラ Gunpura), a portmanteau of "Gundam plastic model"

credits:
wiki
gundamplanet