It is still not finished, but I just noticed that I handn't really said anthing about it so far on the blog. I started out by carving the massive amounts of sprue from the parts that appear to be typical for Forgeworld kits.
Then I connected the tail to the main body part using two pairs of 6mm x 6mm round neo-dym magnets. The tail makes the model a good four inches taller, so I figured it would be good to make this removable for transport. I also connected the maw cannon with magnets for easier painting access.
Next I had a look at the missing parts. I found a picture of all parts laid out in sufficient resolution from some completely unrelated eBay auction. I cut and pasted together the parts that I was missing and the center piece for the tail gun which was included. Then I used BigPrint, a software made by the awesome woodworker Matthias Wandel to print a picture of the parts to scale. That gave me an idea of what I needed to make. I'm told that Forgeworld is very helpful regarding missing parts, but since I didn't have an order number, I didn't want to be cheeky and ask their customer service.
Then I tried to get an idea of the position the model would stand in. At this point I got quite dishearted. The legs end in balls that are supposed to fit into quarter inch wide C-shapes, similar to the Soul Grinder and Defiler models. However, both parts were only approximately fitting here and there wasn't as much material around and behind the C shapes. Also, the main body is solid resin and is quite heavy. I didn't like the odds of glue holding the legs in position against all that weight, in particular if the surfaces don't mesh well.
To allow me to look at the model with armor while working on it and not have the armor plates in the way while working on the model, I attached them with magnets. Did I mention I like magnets? ;-]
I cut a small cartboard box to size to support the main body while I tried out leg positions.
After leaving the project aside for two weeks or so, I decided to go medieval on it. I clipped the head and point of a 2mm thick nail, which left it about an inch and a quarter long. I drilled holes into the ball and into the C-shape at the thorso and put about a third of the nail into the leg's ball joint and the other two thirds into the body. That nail transfers the weight quite nicely to the upper leg and leaves the glue's strength free to deal with just unwanted rotation.
Since the leg's knee joint is very loose it wasn't very convincing either. I drilled right through it sideways and used a small machine screw with a nut to compress the joint. That holds it in position even without glue, so doing this with glue should be fine and solid after the glue sets.
For the first leg I put the nail into the leg first, then I swapped to putting it into the body first. Actually, that is more logical, since it needs to go in further there and more friction may need to be overcome - for which a solid grip on the nail with pliers is really handy! This also allowed me to bend the part of the nail for the leg into place for the front claws, where there isn't enough material for the pin to bite into directly in the line with the orientation of the joint.
It stands! Yay! Happy dance! You can see four parts cut out of two different gauges of plasticard in the picture below. That is part of making up for missing bits from the set.
Talking about missing parts. The picture below shows my scale pintout with the missing parts and the central tail gun part for reference together with the replacement parts I made for the tail gun, it's armor plate and the cut off original central gun barrel.
The gun barrels are made from Q-tips (orange) and ABS plastic rods meant to be melted in place as seal between tiles. I drilled holes for the thin Q-tip rods into the solid black rods to have more glue surface. A piece of plasticard connects each barrel pair. The black stuff I also used as joints for the hydraulics, while a thin plasticard rod fits exactly into the Q-tip pipe to make a nice looking and solid cylinder.
I drilled a bunch of small holes into the thinner piece of plasticard that acts as banding for the blade part. I didn't want to make bad looking rivets, so I figured recesses that fill with shade are the next best thing.
And here is the model fully assembled. Standing strong, unlikely to collapse. Phase 1 successful.
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