With all parts painted and recessed details washed with Humbrol black enamel wash, time has come for dry run of assembly. I did say before Dragon has done great job about frame joints, now I have to add to this opinion general fitting of parts. It is so good, I had some problems to take torso apart after dry fitting! Paint on the skeleton does not help as well, looks like every millimeter matters, at certain areas I had to scrape some paint off, should not have painted everything in the first place. Never mind that now, will have to carry on as it is. Box information does not say if it was supposed to be snap fit kit, imagine it could be put together easily without any adhesive.
Instructions do not specify exactly in what order certain sub assemblies should be carried out, seems it's been designed to minimize number of diagrams down to 12. Really nice feature are corresponding numbers of components going together, not much chances to mess anything here. Main assembly started with the torso, which is a complex build on it's own. I started with pelvis section which is to be 'bolted' onto the lowest part of skeleton as first, stomach section went on second & flanks as last. Skeleton itself looks rather weird at first, I was convinced it may be visible through clear parts of the Arc Reactor, as it it pretty well detailed! All components of the torso are overlapping each other, what made the whole thing little bit tricky, especially if not planning the build from the very beginning or dry fitting parts first.
Next step was preparing the arc reactor, which is located at the central part of the armor. I had to figure out how to paint it, as it is the most noticeable part of the whole model. Paintbrush seemed not right tool for this job, smooth and most delicate finish was required for such component without any evident paintbrush strokes. Even blending oils did not do the trick, result was far from acceptable, hence whole oil paint was completely removed and acrylics airbrushed instead. First I used Tamiya flat white, than mixed it with clear blue X23. That mix was used to paint outer edges of clear disc, without obscuring any details & when dry, fixed to chest piece. It was blanked off with cap inside (after much consideration & difficulties with achieving smooth transition of white to light blue, I left the cap painted only in flat white) and whole part fitted to the torso.
Assembly of main part of the model is finished, it still requires some detailing, remaining components are to be airbrushed in silver, I am trying not to use airbrush for small areas and do whatever possible in one go to save paint & time required for cleanup even having low-maintenance airbrush. Lower limbs are broken into 14 (!) components each, all snap-fit together and hold pretty well even without any glue. For now it is only dry fitting run to check how it all goes together, and again great job done by Dragon - majority of joints are hidden beneath armor plates and general fitting (even with my profound painting of joining areas) is excellent. When model stood on it's own, I measured it with the base and it is of impressive size of 10 inches! It may be little bit taller yet, as I plan to build a holding pod as seen in Tony Stark's workshop (will see how it turns out though, plans are usually failing) lit up from below - quit the idea of putting LED lamps into thrusters, arc reactor & helmet, as it would require large amount of time and more experience than I currently have...
With all parts painted and recessed details washed with Humbrol black enamel wash, time has come for dry run of assembly. I did say before Dragon has done great job about frame joints, now I have to add to this opinion general fitting of parts. It is so good, I had some problems to take torso apart after dry fitting! Paint on the skeleton does not help as well, looks like every millimeter matters, at certain areas I had to scrape some paint off, should not have painted everything in the first place. Never mind that now, will have to carry on as it is. Box information does not say if it was supposed to be snap fit kit, imagine it could be put together easily without any adhesive. 
Instructions do not specify exactly in what order certain sub assemblies should be carried out, seems it's been designed to minimize number of diagrams down to 12. Really nice feature are corresponding numbers of components going together, not much chances to mess anything here. Main assembly started with the torso, which is a complex build on it's own. I started with pelvis section which is to be 'bolted' onto the lowest part of skeleton as first, stomach section went on second & flanks as last. Skeleton itself looks rather weird at first, I was convinced it may be visible through clear parts of the Arc Reactor, as it it pretty well detailed! All components of the torso are overlapping each other, what made the whole thing little bit tricky, especially if not planning the build from the very beginning or dry fitting parts first. 
Next step was preparing the arc reactor, which is located at the central part of the armor. I had to figure out how to paint it, as it is the most noticeable part of the whole model. Paintbrush seemed not right tool for this job, smooth and most delicate finish was required for such component without any evident paintbrush strokes. Even blending oils did not do the trick, result was far from acceptable, hence whole oil paint was completely removed and acrylics airbrushed instead. First I used Tamiya flat white, than mixed it with clear blue X23. That mix was used to paint outer edges of clear disc, without obscuring any details & when dry, fixed to chest piece. It was blanked off with cap inside (after much consideration & difficulties with achieving smooth transition of white to light blue, I left the cap painted only in flat white) and whole part fitted to the torso.
Assembly of main part of the model is finished, it still requires some detailing, remaining components are to be airbrushed in silver, I am trying not to use airbrush for small areas and do whatever possible in one go to save paint & time required for cleanup even having low-maintenance airbrush. Lower limbs are broken into 14 (!) components each, all snap-fit together and hold pretty well even without any glue. For now it is only dry fitting run to check how it all goes together, and again great job done by Dragon - majority of joints are hidden beneath armor plates and general fitting (even with my profound painting of joining areas) is excellent. When model stood on it's own, I measured it with the base and it is of impressive size of 10 inches! It may be little bit taller yet, as I plan to build a holding pod as seen in Tony Stark's workshop (will see how it turns out though, plans are usually failing) lit up from below - quit the idea of putting LED lamps into thrusters, arc reactor & helmet, as it would require large amount of time and more experience than I currently have...
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