PL-01 - Sprue Goo to the rescue

You know how you learn from your past mistakes, the hard way so to speak, but after so many years of doing the same thing you learn to avoid those? Well, *I* don't, at least not where scale models are concerned.

I know you're supposed to fit twice, glue once. I know when dry-fitting the 2 halves of the turret around the gun it needed some force to close the gap. But still I went ahead thinking I could do it.

I closed the rear of the turret, glued it and let harden.
Then I closed the right side with a lot of force and clamps, glued it and let harden.
And then there was no way to close the left side, not even close to it. There was a gap of at least 2 millimeter. By pushing extremely hard, I could get them to touch, but no amount of clamps, tape, whatever could hold it in place. It was also very awkwardly located to put a vice on it.

In hindsight, I know exactly what I should have done. I should have made the holes where the gun fits in just a little bigger, but it was too late.
(I increased the contract in the photo to make it more easy to see)

So I decided to #fixThatShit and put putty in the gap, but my tube of Tamiya Basic Putty had almost dried up. I thinned it with TET (Tamiya Extra Thin cement) and got it back to a working state. I then slathered it copiously over the gap.

I like to put tape alongside the gap I'm trying to fill. I remove it after about an hour, when the putty has had some time to set, but has not yet hardened. The tape prevents too much plastic from being affected, removing it early prevents the putty breaking off as opposed to removing the tape too late.

When fully cured, I gently started sanding the putty into shape, but because of the turret design it needed to end in a point and the putty was just too soft or something. It sands away too easily.

I also found that thinning the putty with TET has eaten away where the plastic was at it's thinnest, making a bad situation even worse.

In the past, I have read about people making their own filler (mostly referred to as "Sprue Goo"), by dissolving left-over sprue in TET, making a gooey plastic mess. Because it's the same plastic as the kit, it bonds really well, hardens perfectly and sands just as well as a normal plastic part would.

I put some TET in an empty glass(!) bottle and added strips of white styrene I had left over. Becasue the strips where extremely thin (0.13mm or 0.005") they dissolved fully within mere hours, instead of the recommended 24 hours if you chuck in sprue pieces of 0.5 cm or bigger.

I applied my home-made filler with a toothpick. It was a bit too thick for use with a brush, but thick means it's easy to put a blob and count on it to stay in place (more or less).
In any case, you have control over the thickness by adding more TET or more styrene. When not too thick and applied sparingly or in multiple layers, it levels perfectly, which is an added bonus.

After about 16 hours, I tried gently sanding the plastic, but it was still a little malleable. It was after all a 3-4 mm blob, so needed more time to cure. After 24 hours extra, it was rock hard.
It was then easily sanded into shape and after priming and painting, I was very happy with the result.

In close-up, you still see some trace of it, but I'm calling it a success anyway.