Things have been starting to get real this week with me only having three more updates before I head off across the pond for Adepticon. That’s mainly because I’m having some time in Chicago before making the short trip up to Schaumburg for the event. But when it comes to getting things done ahead of time that jolly effectively robs me of a week of scratch build joy. Although to be fair I would rather be having a week in Chicago than sitting at my desk in a damp grey cotton town in the north west of England. But I do still have a few weeks to wait and I’ve been working hard to try and get things squared away before I go so once again it has been full steam ahead with work on the grot bots.
The things that has been causing me the most concern this week has been trying to make enough nuts and bolts to add the details to the bots. On the mark one I just used small pieces of plastic rod to try and give the effect of rivets, but on the mark II I wanted to step things up a bit and decided to replace the rivets with bots. The process itself is quite simple, I have a mould that I picked up from Green Stuff World and with a little bit of Mili Put it lets me make a selection of bots. Nice and easy to do but once again it’s the scale that is causing me the issue. If I take the feet as an example, each foot has ten of the small bolts on it and I tend to get about seventy of the smaller ones I want to use out of each casting. So seven feet per casting and with the time it takes to set I’m getting about three casts per day. I’ve not even thought about how many more I will need to finish everything off otherwise I may end up crying. For now, I’m just keeping the process going and will see how many I end up with and make that number work. What I think I will end up doing is using a mixture of sizes to give me more bolts to work with and I it will probably give it a more rage tag feel which is more orky. So it could end up being a win win situation.
I know that all sounds a bit glum but I’m in a positive mood and do think I can get everything finished in time. It’s just a case of reminding myself that when I initially think I can do something in ten minutes the reality is that will probably take an hour and ten minutes. Then actually plan for this. A case in question is adding the bolts once I’ve cast them. It’s a really easy process and one that is made even easier with the aid of the box fresh craft knife blade. A dab of super glue on the part and then use the tip of the blade to gently pick up the bolt and lay it on the glue. Leave it for a couple of seconds for the glue to take hold and then onto the next one. If you want to be even neater you can use an applicator to apply the glue. I’ve not done that here but I have a homemade applicator that is simply a sawing needle that I took a Dremill to and then put in a pin vice. It works well and in conjunction with the blade give you a lot of control.
With the feet being finished off last week this week I’ve been working on the decided to add a little bit more interest into the arms by using a technique I had used a test on the lower leg, just with a thinner bit of wire, for the gun arms. My thinking was that it looks like a way of dealing with some of the recoil from firing the slugga. Not that it’s really needed but I do like to add things that sort of look like they could work. Or if not actually work at least not look out of place. These then fit to the elbow joint in the same way with the wider top section just being filled a little to allow for flush surface to glue the two pieces together. A simple approach but one I think works nicely. Time permitting, I may also add some cables to link the whole thing to the body when I do the final detailing.
For the sluggas themselves I’ve used the same approach I started with the close combat weapons which is just a piece of plastic tube to act as a wrist joint held in place by a couple of plates. From a build perspective the process is nice and simple it’s just a case of rinse and repeat until everything is finished. Then glue all the bits together, add a few bolts and you get something that I think works quite well. In keeping with the fact that they are robots and in my head can pack a bit more of punch than a normal boy I’ve made the sluggas from cut down shoota’s. Basically I’ve just taken a shoota and cut a section out of the barrel to give a heavier duty looking slugga. This look worked well on the mark I so I didn’t see a need to change things here.
Having added that bit of extra bit of detail to the gun arms I was looking for a way to do something similar for the close combat arms and springs just would look right for that. So I decided to keep it simple and just add a groove, like I did for the elbow, to make it look like the whole fore arm could be spun round if needed. Getting the choppa into all sorts of interesting places, just ready to pop the gooey out of a tin marine. Granted it doesn’t look like much in plane white plastic but with a lick of paint I think will give it just that extra bit of detail.
The final piece of the puzzle for the arms are the shoulder joints and that is just a cut down piece of box section mounted on a small piece of round tubing. The tubing is only there to allow the joint to slot into the mount that I have already built on the body and won’t actually be visible in the finished model. A little bit of battle damage and a few bolts finishes thing off. Although there is a lot of fiddly work to get this simple part finished and my finger tips are being to disapper with all the sanding and filing involved. No finger prints for me for a while.
When you put everything together you end up with a couple of arms that have a lot more detail on them than the mark I but are still very much come from the mind of the same grot rigger. I’ve only actually finished two of them at the moment so still a way to go to get the other finished but with design clear it’s just a case of plodding through the work.
That’s it for this week and I’ve now got a couple of weeks to finish everything else off. I’ve already done a test piece for the lower leg so I’m happy with that and I’ve also got a good idea of how I want to do the thighs so I’m hoping those two pieces will progress reasonably quickly this week. Then it’s the heads and final details. Not complicated but time consuming so I think this build is going to go right up to the wire. The rest of the weekend for me will be spent watching rugby and then going out for a few drinks, followed by a day of recovery. Then back to work on these in earnest on Monday. Hope you all enjoy whatever you have planned and hope to catch you all again next week
