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.
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