Warbringer Nemesis #5 - The game is a foot!

I know, I know.  I have been spending a lot more time building than blogging.  And so I am way behind.

Fortunately, I am such a slow builder that this has not really burned up a lot of important blog posts in terms of how a build works structurally.

That is because the way that I glue legs takes a long time.  I mean, I could probably do it faster, but I am gripped by a fear of ruining my model kit with a wonky looking leg pose.  The more expensive the kit, the worse my paranoia.  So a Titan was pretty much ground zero for me freaking out over a stilted or awkward leg pose.  (The other upshot of this is that I am almost painfully conservative in the poses I select, it is easier to screw up a bold or interesting pose.)

Today, I am going to focus on the very foundation of the leg pose, the mundane foot!

So first, I have to do a little housekeeping, and you should expect to do this on any resin model.  When you cut the gates off, you will leave marks on the piece where the gate used to be.  My multi-stage method which I detailed in post #4 does a pretty good job minimizing that, but there is usually something.

As you can see in the picture above, I am set up to sand rough spots off of #168's foot.  I have a respirator here to protect myself from the resin dust.  I know resin dust is dangerous and, I believe, carries some cancer risk.  Although I do not know anything about the specifics of that risk, or if my protection is adequate.  Generally people recommend a lot more basic dust masks for this, and the respirator is more robust by comparison.  I actually just use it because I find it tremendously more comfortable than a dust mask, and it does not fog up my glasses.

Next I have a cup of water.  Now, you may or may not have cups.  I really hope you do.  If you are building a titan and do not have a cup of any kind, then probably that should be your first priority.  Also, the water is tap water.

The small greyish rectangle partially hidden by respirator straps is a metal file.  Here is a set of files I  guess.  It is not what I use, but I have had these so long I cannot remember where I got them.  I have not found them to be a great tool, but they serve their purpose.  I use them to remove the roughest bits of gate remains and to smooth out really bad casting lines.  I like to wet the resin piece down before I begin sanding to limit the spread of resin dust. 

Haha, so the next thing I literally spent fifteen minutes trying to find a link for - the 240/240 grit hobby stix.  They are so stupid expensive for what they are, and I constantly try to find something to replace them that is more cost effective, but cosmetic nail files just do not work like these do.  I cannot work without them, and if I could I would.

These sand down the rough surfaces left behind by the hobby file, or deal with surface imperfections that are too fine to require the file in the first place.  Which honestly, is a lot.  Again, wet the resin down before using.

Anyway, once I was done sanding, I got to gluing.  You cannot glue resin with hobby cement (plastic glue).  The chemical reaction does not happen.  You can glue resin with super glue and that will probably work just fine.

However, I have had superglue crack on me more than once.  For a big, heavy model that is expensive to own and time consuming to build and paint I prefer the piece of mind that epoxy gives me.  There are several kinds of epoxies like JB Weld, and I will use several of them in the course of this build.  For the legs, though, I am looking for strength above all else, so I use original JB Weld.

Here is an interesting video from Project Farm testing the strength of several epoxies.  A lot of this is overkill for what we are doing, but it helped me understand this stuff a little better. 

This stuff smells pretty awful, is difficult to get out of the tubes in the right ratios and takes forever to set (although this has some benefits, like giving you time to make sure you get the correct pose).  But it dries hard as a rock and I have never been able to break a JB Weld bond when properly mixed and applied.

I applied it on the foot and toes of #168 here because the titan is going to spend a lot of time carrying weight on them, and wanted those joints to be strong.

After I applied the glue, I set the toes very gently between these Irwin Quick-Grip clamps.  In retrospect, I am not sure how I did this so effectively here, because when I tried the same thing with the other foot the clamps made the toes curl and I gave up on using them for that purpose.  They will come in handy for building the legs though.

Here is a picture of the bottom of the foot after it the JB weld set.  It is very sturdy (although this picture does not necessarily convey that).

And that is a foot!  I would show you the other foot, but I built it after I finished the right leg, and it pretty much looks the same as this foot.

For those of you in the know, Warbringer Titans come with a single bent front toe so that you can pose the titan in a more dynamic walking pose.  I declined to do this for several reasons.  First, I felt that the titans would be marginally more stable with two whole feet on the ground.  Second, I mocked up some leg poses and asked my wife what she thought, and she said she liked the foot on the ground better.  So I decided to go that way.

I am sure many people will make awesome Warbringers that look much more dynamic than mine, but the pose I unveil soon is the one I was comfortable with.

The Backlog

So I let really unacceptable ten days go without posting.  And today I do not have a "real" post either.

I have been letting the photo transfer process part of this bog me down.  Namely, I cannot get pictures from my phone to here as easily as I would like to.  It is a very trivial problem, and yet it persists.

I wanted to take some time today to discuss a very common hobby problem.  Namely:  the backlog.  I do not have any novel solutions to it, I think the ones that exist are fairly obvious, and yet I still get caught in it.  And so do many fellow hobbyists.

For those of you who are not hobbyists, or who do not play tabletop games, the backlog is when you buy more kits than you have time to paint.  For me, I find that I do this when a new release comes out that really excites me.  Even if I do not bake hobby time for that piece into my schedule.  It is, frankly, a waste of money and an inefficient use of time.  But I do it anyway.  Mostly because when I buy that new thing I always intend on making it my priority, then some future things comes along.

I started my tabletop wargaming hobby in early 2001 (I think it was 2001 anyway) with a single booster pack of Mage Knight figures.  Mage Knight, if you recall, was a click-base fantasy wargame (although, really more of a skirmish game) produce by the now Topps-consumed Wizkids.

Mage Knight figures came pre-painted, so I never had a "backlog."  Now, the quality of their paint jobs was just.... garbage.  But I was young and I did not really appreciate that.  They looked cool to me.  Some of them from that era still do, although that might just be nostalgia talking.

You could re-paint Mage knight figures.  I repainted some.  But anything you did not paint was not, by definition, unfinished.

I was introduced to Warhammer 40,000 by a friend in the fall of 2001.  He had just gotten into Blood Angels, and was easily able to interest me in playing.  I have always liked owning physical toys and representations of characters.

I wanted to play a very high-tech army, which in that era of 40k was not really a thing yet.  So I settled on Eldar, because although their theme was more "ancient," they at least had a polished look to them.  I bought a Phoenix Lord Fuegan (which is the same model today, except in "finecast" instead of metal) and primed him black.

I never progressed any further in painting Fuegan, because the next month the Tau came out.  And Tau were very much the army I was looking for.  High tech, optimistic and lots of battlesuits.  So I suppose then you could say that Fuegan was the beginning of my backlog.  But at least he was only one model.

During my teenage years I proceeded to collect four armies: Tau, Necrons, Space Marines and Bretonnians.  I had enough models for each of those forces, in theory, to field at least a basic army.

In practice, I only really painted enough Tau and Necrons to play.  And halfway through painting my Tau I switched paint schemes because I discovered that my initial black and yellow scheme was just too hard to do with my limited skills.  (Obviously, if you have read my other posts, you know by know that I have happily conquered black and yellow with my Legio Fureans Titans).

The Necrons got painted because the basic Necron scheme, especially in those days, was just unbelievably easy to paint.

Everything else I just... did not get around to before I quit playing late in high school to focus on attempting to date and applying to colleges.  So, while I think a lot of that backlog still exists in my parents' basement... I do not really count it as being a standing part of my current backlog.

That started when I re-entered the hobby in 2013 when I bought a Tau Riptide and Tau Commander the day of their release.  I mean, to be fair, those are both painted now.  Somehow I hammered out that commander in just under two months from start of build to finish while also working on the Riptide and relearning how to paint miniatures.

The Riptide took longer.  Much longer.  I would not finish it until March of 2017.  In the intervening years I worked on it and other projects.


Over that time my passions for different projects have waxed and waned.  I have some shining examples of completed work.  Apex Chelae (Acastus Knight Porphyrion) chief among them.  A healthy chunk of my Tau army is finished and my wife's (but you know... let's be honest... my) Adeptus Mechanicus Army is at a fieldable, if not finished state.

I am bound to complete the Warbringer Titan Romach Shel Raam.  Actually, I think this blog is a good piece of accountability for that.  And the same goes for my Titanicus Legios.

But for everything I am making progress on there is something that I built and never primed, or primed and never painted, or painted but never completed to a table ready state.  And when I buy something, that is never the intention.  But shiny objects capture my eye.

I think right now my solution is to be Titan focused this year.  To finish my Titans of all scales at the exclusion of nearly everything else.  (Although I would not mind closing out my extant Imperial Knight projects).

Hopefully one day everything will be painted, as it deserves to be.

Warbringer Nemesis #4 - Cut and Dry (but not in that order...)

After I give the old Titan pieces a bath, I give them a good long time to dry.  It will typically be days before I start cutting pieces off of their gates (the big blocks of resin used in the molding process).  Unless I cut a piece of its gate before the bath to make it fit my Ziploc tub.

Note, it does not really matter if you wait to cut pieces off of their gates.  A bit of moisture is not going to have any impact on that process.  However, it is important to let pieces thoroughly dry before priming, because moisture trapped in the resin can harm the paint job later on.  I do not know what constitutes a minimum safe time for drying, but I know that more than one week usually passes between when I bathe a piece and when I prime it.  That is less because I am waiting and more because I have a life and things to do and then on top of that I spend a fair amount of time in the building phase, especially if I have to pose multipart legs (as I have to with this project).

In order to cut pieces off of their gates I use a few tools, shown below.

First, I use a 3M respirator to protect myself from inhaling resin dust.  This stage is not as bad for dust as the sanding stage, but dust still gets in the air.  Especially during the first part.

 

I use a hobby saw to cut each pillar connecting the part to the resin gate.  I do this instead of going straight to my cutters because I do not want to pop any pieces off of the gate.  The resin pillars are less robust than the small pieces of plastic sprue that connect to plastic pieces.  Sometimes the slight pressure put on one pillar when another one one is clipped off is enough to crack it if they are both still connected to the gate.  Sometimes this is fine, sometimes it tears a chunk of the piece off as it goes. A hobby saw avoids this because instead of cutting and separating it chews through the resin.

You do not have to cut the gates off close to the part, in fact it is often better not to because the saw can leave nasty marks on a piece if you slip or judge your initial cut wrong.  Better to cut closer to the gate, then deal with the remaining bits of pillar in the next step.  

 

Next up are my hobby clippers.  These are the workhorse of my prep toolkit.  When working with plastic models I can often get by on these alone.  Here, I use them to cut the remaining pieces of cylinder off of the part.

Again, you want to be careful how close you cut.  These clippers are pretty good, but the can still leave marks.  I have another tool to get close (two, really), so I often leave about a millimeter or two of the gate pillar on the part.

 

My favorite tool in my kit, if not necessarily the most versatile.  My God Hands SPN 120 Ultimate Nipper.  This is not cheap, but it is the only tool that can do its job quickly and with low risk of injury to your fingers.  I actually picked mine up in a hobby store in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood.  I am glad I did because there is some risk of getting fake ones online.  The link I have here is to USA Gundam Store, which is a reliable supplier, but if you buy them on Amazon beware.  The fake ones are, reportedly, very prone to breaking.

What these do is cut very close to the surface of your model without leaving a mark.  You can cut the remaining gate bits off of a piece leaving almost no residue and saving yourself the trouble of slicing off that last bit with your hobby knife.  This leaves a smoother surface and keeps you from slipping with the knife and cutting up your fingers.  My hobby sessions are much less painful now.

If these are so great, you might wonder why I use the normal hobby clippers before them.  Well, here is why: the God Hands are an expensive precision instrument and their blades are so fine that there is a risk that they can crack if you are too rough with them.  Also, they are honed to have an extremely sharp edge, but any edge can dull with use.  Therefore, I try to minimize stress on them by only bringing them in when they are necessary and not cutting through pieces where other clippers would do.  I would much rather replace $20 clippers than $50 clippers.  And by the way, thank god you can reliably get these for $50.  I remember when they easily ran close to $100 on the internet. 

Also, the separation between the blades is pretty small, so on a big kit like this there are some gate pillars that are just too big for them to get around.  For these pieces I use the saw, the xuron clippers if able, and then I do shave down any remainder with my hobby knife.  Sometimes there is just no avoiding it. 

Warbringer Nemesis #3 - Time for a Bath

If you have worked with resin model kits before, then you know that you need to wash them to remove any mold-release agent still present on resin pieces.

I am currently in the process of giving #168 its bath.  And what a bath it is.  With so many pieces I have had to divide up my wash in batches because I use a Ziploc tub to wash things, and it is only so big.

I have heard lots of opinions on how to properly clean resin.  A recent post on the Titan Owners Club Public Group on Facebook wherein the poster asked for advice on primer was immediately met by a deluge of different opinions of how to prime and wash (not in that order) Titans (or other resin kits, for that matter).

My process has been, for a few years now, as follows:

• I fill a container, in this case a rectanguloid Ziploc (Reserved - S.C. Johnson - used without permission) container and fill it with some hot water from the tap.
• After filling it part way, I start adding Dawn dish soap to the water.  I add until I feel the water is soapy enough, then I stir a little.  I want the water to be a vibrant blue color.  There is no science to how much Dawn I add, so I am open to any researched recommendations.  I tend to use Dawn over store brand soap which I usually use for dishes because I have been told that it has the best de-greasing power.  I do not have any hard evidence to support that, but it feels right.  Open to evidence here too.
• At this point the water has usually cooled to be just warmer than room temperature.  This is very important.  Do not put resin pieces into hot water because heat makes them malleable and they can bend and warp.  Sometimes you actually want to bend them, but this is not the time for that.  I only start with hot water because my tap water does not get very hot to start with and I tend to be pretty slow to actually get resin into my mixture.
• Place the pieces I want to clean in the mixture.  
• If necessary, fill the container with more tap water.  Cooler than before.  You are looking for warm but not hot.  Err on the cooler side here though.
• Leave the pieces in the mixture and wait.  Depending on how much release agent I think is on the piece this will be shorter... or longer.  Often I let things sit between three and six hours.  Mostly just because I get distracted and do other things.  One hour is probably fine if you have pieces that do not have a pronounced release agent sheen and really want to get cracking.  Leaving them in longer does not hurt though.  I once left some very stubborn Acastus Knight pieces in my brew for over a week.  I cannot say that it helped.  It did not hurt though.
• When I am done waiting, I take a toothbrush (not a used toothbrush) and scrub the pieces in the mixture one by one.  After each scrub I rinse that piece in room temperature tap water.
• Once I have finished scrubbing, I dry the pieces with a paper towel.  Then I leave them out to air dry.

There are times when I am not convinced that I am happy with this method.  A prolific Titan builder who blogs on T I T A N O M A N C Y (hereinafter Titanomancy) has made some waves with a Diet Coke based wash which some claim chemically reacts with the release agent.  I am not a chemist, so I do not know if it is true.  I tested washing a piece of resin gate in diet coke in a solo cup the other night and I was not blown away by the results.  But maybe I am missing something?  For one thing, I am missing a nice big steamer to wash pieces in and the space to store said steamer.  If Titanomancy's author ever stumbles upon this blog, I would love to talk about this method.  As it is I cannot figure out how to contact him or her on Tumblr.

For smaller pieces I recently received an ultrasonic cleaner as a holiday gift.  For this I fill the chamber below the MAX line with water, add 5 to 10 ml of Dawn, mix with my finger, places pieces in the chamber, set the timer for 480 seconds and press go.

That is my ultrasonic cleaner prepped for washing.  I removed the plastic tray because it dampens the effects of the cleaner.

And that is my cleaner running.

Oh!  And that Acastus Knight Porphyrion whose pieces I washed for near on a fortnight?  It won Gold in Capital Palette's Journeyman Division for Vehicles and Large Models at NOVA Open 2018.

Here is Apex Chelae in all of its glory.  Quite proud of this one.

Funny story, its banner and its missiles were and remain unfinished.  I meant to paint the missiles red and to give the banner a dark border and some "text," but I ran out of time before the event and just had to go with it as is.  Once it won an award, I did not have the heart to change it.  Maybe some day.

Actually, I only entered it into the competition to have a safe place to store it after I got booted from my room because check-out time happened before the end of my last event.

Goes to show that you should always take a crack at entering your models because they might do better than you think!