Ronin 3D bust

Here is my review of the Ronin 3D bust by Hellbender Museum, printed and offered by El Greco.

Detail of the release

 

Title: Ronin 3D Bust

3D Printable STL file: Hellbender Museum

Scale: 1:9

Printed by: El Greco under licence from HM

Material & no. of pieces: 5 dark grey resins

Order from: EL Greco

The Ronin 3D bust from El Greco arrives in a brown sturdy cardboard box with parts housed in zip lock bags and bubble wrap pouches for protection. It consists of 5 dark grey resin printed parts: Body, 2 hands, sword and a plinth. The height including the plinth is approximate 140mm.

Here are the printed parts. 

Parts View

Head and upper body view

Hands arms and katana view

    The plinth view

Final thoughts:

 

The 3D printed bust by Hellbender Museum is superbly sculpted with great detail and likeness of Japanese actor Toshrio Mifune in the movie Yojimbo and Sanjuro. There are only a couple of inaccuracies in the sculpt. The left thumb should be on the side of the tsuba as shown in my reference photos and video otherwise the thumb will be sliced when drawing the blade as indicated in the bust and also the saya/scabbard is a bit too long.

The kit is excellent printed by El Greco. The parts are sharp, smooth, crisp and clean and are perfectly snug fit together and no moulding line to clean.

3D printed figure kits are hollow inside with small parts printed in solid. Since it is hollow the bust is light in weigh and feels like a styrene plastic kit. They are more brittle and fragile than casting parts. My kit arrived with a broken wakizash handle. While taking pictures for this review I accidentally snap off the katana tsuba in half. Personally I would not purchase any small scale 3D printed kits and prefer solid printed over hollow printed kits.

Overall a beautiful impressive looking kit and good value for the money. You can order the bust directly from El Greco.

My Rating Summary:

A short video of the 3D Bust

References:

How to draw the katana 

In order to illustrate the correct thumb position, I took some screen shots from the video and also I took some pictures with my katana to compare with the kit.

Screen shots from the video showing the thumb is on the side of the tsuba.

The first row of pictures are taken from the kit. When compare with the second row with my katana with same thumb position as the kit, the thumb will be sliced when the thumb push forward in order to unsheathe the katana.

The third row of pictures indicate the correct position of the thumb that is on the side of the tsuba. When the thumb push forward to unsheath the katana the thumb will not be sliced.

Thank you for looking!