ASSEMBLY PLANT -

          Once the parts began rolling in, the actual painting and assembly began. Each part needed to be removed from its tree, cleaned of flash, and washed in soap and water to eliminate any oils still present from the casting process. After a few false starts, Joe discovered more efficient means to wash and dry the parts. Some of the parts required less work than others.

The torsos, for example, only needed purple paint apps from the waist down to the crotch. The lower legs, on the other hand, needed purple paint apps plus silver for the feet and black for the tires. Joe made the decision to paint the parts assembly-line style, working on a couple of hundred of the same part before moving on to the next. Admittedly, this was a dull, exceedingly dull, mind-numbingly dull process, but infinitely more time-efficient than working on complete figures one at a time. Oh yeah, by the way, it was pretty dull.

There were trays of unassembled and half-painted parts strewn around Joe's workshop. It's difficult to gauge exactly how long each figure took to paint, but about an hour per figure is a good estimate. As the project got down to the wire Joe would trim out (basically outlining the area of color to be painted) areas to be painted, which left the larger areas to be painted later. Doing this allowed Joe's steady hand to handle the details and fine lines, then the larger areas of paint could be done later (and faster) with a much larger brush. It was about that time that the "BotConvicts" came into play.

It was a Saturday afternoon in Joe's basement when the good folks from his nine-to-five job came over to pitch in. Through cajoling, begging, and bribery, Joe managed to get people to come over and lend a hand with painting and assembly. What he didn't anticipate was the fact that these volunteers got done in a few hours what Joe assumed would take all day. By the evening, the group affectionately known as the "BotConvicts" were already asking, "What's next?" So Joe set them onto assembly. Again, their speed was amazing. While they inserted T-hooks and began placing screws, Joe would power-drill each screw into its final position. At some points, leg assemblies were being finished two or three per minute. Astounding! The team was so far ahead for the night that Joe actually allowed them to go outside for air! (Don't go calling OSHA, please. The workers were fed, kept cool, and seemed generally happy except for that one picketing incident where we needed to turn the hoses on them.) At a follow-up session, even more folks came over to help in the final assembly. Joe's family even got into the act (after a few overly melodramatic moments).

As is the Custom Masters tradition, below are the paints used to bring G2 Breakdown to life:

· Purple (Tamiya) ·
· Chrome Silver (Tamiya) ·
· Red (Tamiya) ·
· Chaos Black (Games Workshop Citadel Color) ·