Warbringer Nemesis #6 - Leg Daze

When building a multipart model kit it is best to do some test poses with it before you start building to make sure your intended pose works right. 

I have no the hell idea how to do this with something like a titan.  It has so many pieces and many of them are heavy.  You can use sticky putty, but to deal with something as big and heavy as a titan you need to use enough of it that its volume interferes with your sense of how a final pose will look.  A few millimeters of putty here and there can really throw off your visual test run when compared to the final product.  Additionally, the putty is not really strong enough to hold the weight of a titan even when generously applied.

The upshot of all this is that you need to do some dry fitting, but a lot of posing is a matter of eyeballing smaller parts of the assembly section by section. 

That is how I built up the legs of #168.

The pictures above are not in the best layout, but they show roughly how I started building the feet into the legs.

My first step was to score the ball joint on the calf/ankle piece and the well in the foot so that my bonding epoxy would have a better surface to grip to.  You can score pieces with a hobby knife or a scribing tool.  It will wear out the blade on a hobby knife pretty fast though.

If your surface is too smooth, then it is possible for an impact to create a clean separation between the glue and the piece it is adhered to.   

There are design reasons, namely multiple points of distributed contact, why this is not as much of a problem in the finished Warbringer design.  But I am not taking any chances.  Also while I am building and painting it, it will probable only be attached by the main ankle joint.

Once that was done I mixed up some JB Weld, applied it to the ball joint (the ball, not the well) and put it in place at roughly the angle I wanted.

This was tricky because it is hard to gauge the exact angle that will work best for the finished titan and because JB Weld takes a long time to set.  I would say in my experience the better part of 8 hours.

I did a few things to help me achieve what I was going for here.

First, I dry fit the pistons into the leg armor.

Oh... shoot.  This reminds there was a whole other step in here.  I had to glue the piston covers on the armor.  Which covered up the etched part notifications as to which piece of armor was for which leg and where on that leg it was intended to go.  So I scribed "RF" for Right Front and so forth for each armor piece so I would not mix them up later.

I did this on the back of each piece so that when they are glued on the marks will not be visible.

The pistons themselves are part agnostic, so I just shoved them in.

Then I gently laid them on the assembly to make sure I was not gluing at angle which would render me incapable of attaching these pieces later on.  A real challenge with any titan larger than a Warhound at any scale.  I swear the toe piston armor pieces on this, Reavers, and Warlords just exist to ruin the most dynamic poses.  This part of the assembly makes me miss the hell out of T'au suit ankles.  Oh Ta'Unar... how I remember the simplicity of glueing your foot on.
 
This also sort of supported the ankle piece during its long drying time.  But not very well.  Because I was gluing at an angle where the calf was leaning back and inward, I was able to prop my handy Citadel Mouldline Remover up  against the piece to stabilize it and make sure it did slide further back than I wanted.

When that finally set I glued the pistons into place with Gorilla Epoxy.  This stuff is significantly weaker than JB Weld, but notably stronger than super glue.  It also sets much faster than JB Weld, at an advertised five minutes. (Although I find it often takes just a bit longer than that to be strong enough to safely handle).

This makes it perfect for gluing pieces that are not going to bear a lot of weight necessarily, but which require a little bit more setting time than super glue to position properly.

Also, if you overdo it you can clean off excess with a toothpick for a few hours application.

Just be sure to properly mix this stuff.  It can be hard to get a good 50/50 mix out the syringe type applicator.  I usually dispense it onto the top of a surplus plastic condiment cup and mix it with a popsicle stick or a bamboo party fork.  Then I will apply it with said stick or fork, and use a toothpick when I need more fine application control.
 
When that was finished I pinned the foot to the ankle with 1/4" brass rod.  You want to use brass here because it is not magnetic, does not corrode, and can actually be cut with wire cutters without breaking your hands and sending steel missiles hurtling across your living room.

I mention all those things because I used to pin with steel rod for the strength, but it is totally overkill and causes problems with each of those things.

Sometimes I use 1/4" rod and sometimes I use 1/8" rod, depending on how big a piece is and how much strength I need.  Generally I will use the 1/4" rod whenever I can physically drill that size of hole without messing up the model. 

I used to drill pinning holes before I glued pieces, but I have found that then I was sort of locked into a position that was based more on how well I drilled holes than how I actually wanted my model to be posed.

The method I use now, which I believe I based on a Forgeworld guide somewhere (possibly the working with resin pamphlet that comes in Forgeworld kits), is that I glue pieces first.  Then, once the glue is set, I drill a hole through those pieces in as much of an angle as I can get without marring any surface detail.

You want to either pick a totally flat panel to do this or a surface that is eventually going to be covered up another piece glued on top of it.  If neither of these is available then just choose the least obtrusive and visible spot on the final model.

I drill holes with either a pinning vise or a battery operated power drill, depending on what I am working on.  The pinning vise is usually preferable because it offers more control and avoids heating up resin.  If you start to screw something up with a pinning vise you can stop very quickly because chances are you were already going fairly slow.  This mitigates damage.
 
Sometimes, though, you need to drill a fairly long hole through big, solid resin pieces.  For example, when you are building a Titan.  And a pinning vice just feels like torture for this kind of work. 

I did use a power drill for the pins on the legs. I had to be very careful when I did so, using a variable speed drill on fairly low speed (it was a manual trigger pull) and removing the bit from the resin frequently to pull resin shavings from it and to prevent the resin from overheating due to the friction from the bit.  Otherwise you can get the bit stuck in the resin.  Sometimes they come out after that.  Sometimes. 

I know I usually like to link to the tools I am using, but I cannot do so for either the pinning vise or the power drill.  I have many pinning vices, and they are at least 6 years old.  Many of them are more than a decade old.  So... you know... you can probably find something better now.  And what I have probably is not on the market anymore.

My power drill I actually bought fairly recently, but I bought in *gasp* a real physical store.  I was at Home Depot and we bought it for home repair kind of jobs, not as a hobby tool.  It was only later that I discovered its applicability for this work.

The only reason I bought this particular drill was because it was the second cheapest drill Home Depot had, and they could not find an undamaged box of their cheapest drill in store.  My spouse was very displeased with that.  I know it is a Ryobi, and that is about it.

Anyway, I usually use a bit that is just slightly larger than the rod I intend to use in order to drill the hole so that I can insert a cut rod to full depth when it is covered in super glue.  Which also covers my next stage in the process.  I use either gorilla glue cyanoacrylate or Bob Smith Industries Maxi-Cure for this.  Honestly, I recommend the latter.  Not that there is anything wrong with the gorilla glue.  Just, man.. that Maxi-Cure is really good.


After that I will cover the hole in green stuff.  Wait for that to set.  Then sand it flush with the resin.

I repeat this process as I move up the leg.  Using epoxy to set the knee joint, then pinning it.  I follow this with the thigh piece and the hip.  For the connections between the knee and the calf, and the thigh and the knee I do not need to cover up my pins with green stuff because when I glue the following piece in the sequence it covers up my pinning hole.



Where possible, I use my Irwin quick grips to put pressure on the epoxy bond as it sets in order to strengthen it.

I also dry fit the armor pieces on as I move up section by section to make sure that the pose I am getting with the superstructure still looks good fully armored.  The contours and lines of the armor versus the superstructure are sometimes different enough that what looks good for the "skeleton" does not work for the final armored piece.  It can be subtle, but noticeable enough to drive you nuts.

There is a picture of the completed right leg, next to some Imperial Knights from House Chesapeake and a little Death Guard assault marine for scale.

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.

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.