The Grinder - review

The Grinder - awesome bust from Roberto Chaudon (here, on his blog, you can check other of his works out).


When I saw it frist time, on MassiveVoodo blog (known there as a Dark Elf Berserker, with altered ears) I knew I'm gonna buy it. Simply, love from the first sight:P


And now here it is. In my hands, waiting to be painted.
But first, few words of description. 

The bust is scale 1/9 and that means he's seriously huge, around 70mm.
Casted naturally in resin.

It came in a plastic bag, you can see below.

I wouldn't say that's the most secure packaging, especially when you take a look in how many fragile  parts the model comes. But I guess, I was lucky, because everything arrived in a perfect condition (I mean not damaged on the way).

 As you can see, there are four parts: torso with head, two swords and something, I think, I can call 'hair accessory'.

The torso itself is quite good quality cast. With few mold lines and imperfections, but they should be easy enough to get rid of. The only one that can cause me some problems is the mold line under his chin (some imperfections going on there aswell),  thorugh his neck, leather stripe and chest. Cleaning shoulders and hair on the back, should be easy.
The most important part - face is clean and with great details.

With the smaller parts it's not so great though. In my cast I can see few issues that will be quite time consuming to fix.

But maybe first the good sides:
All the thin and brittle ends are secured with a bit of resin (you can see it at the end of swords for example). The parts are really thin, especially the hair accessory and ends of swords,  so without this precautions, they would probably broke down in transport.
The details are also really good in general.
But every part has some faults, more or less serious.
With this hair thingy there are few small holes between strands of fabric, and some see through places closer to the ends.

Wepons have few air bubbles, one rather serious at the corner of the mount of the bigger sword, few delicate, and two serious, mold lines on the dagger.
I hope you can see it on the left picture, the misplaced line inside, between hilt and sheath.  For me it's gonna be a pain to get rid of, mostly because  it's quite detailed part and not easy to reach (and I'm not the biggest fan of the prep job;p).

But luckily for me resin, the bust was casted from, seems to be easy to work with. So hopefully, with a bit of patience,  I'll be able to fix all those problems, and enjoy painting this piece.

Overall pros and cons:
Pro:

• great concept,
• full of character and charisma,
• huge (dudes 70mm bust??:>),
• good details,
• resin nice to work with.

Con:

• mold lines in annoying, hard to get to, places,
• specks of resin in rather annoying places (but on the other hand, It's quite compliated mini...),
• few  seriously misplaced mold lines.

My personal opinion: 
Awesome bust, maybe not so awesome cast (at least the one I got in my hands), but hey, it happends sometimes.
And I'm still deeply in love with this piece.

Assembly:
Parts seems to fit quite well together. Hair thingy even has sculpted hair facture underneath to fit better. And swords are nicelly placed with a system of small insertions and matching holes (check the four holes on the leather strip on the left chest).


Where to buy:
You can contact Roberto via email posted on his blog, and buy directly from him,
or you can check El Greco store (but be carefull there... way too many awesome minis, to get out with just one in your basket!!
There are probably some other places, where you can buy this bust, but I wasn't really looking:D  Way to bussy being happy that I got mine:D


cheers

'eM