Strangely, I'm a completer-finisher at work, and rubbish at it outside work...but we'll see how this goes (hopefully the fact that it cost ~£143 will add motivation....
)
(This is a combination of several posts, so sorry if it reads a bit funny, and was written for people generally less experienced than the denizens here, so apologies for any egg-sucking on display.)
Not sure how informative people reading this will find it, if you have any questions, fire away
Brass Scorpion
So, a surprisingly small package in comparison to the boxes
FW normally send me:
Warm (not hot, don't want any unintentional warping), soapy water to clean it in:
8" diameter cake tier for a base. May not be big enough on reflection, but Hobbycraft also do 9", 10" and 12" bases too, and at less than £2, not a big deal. The shiny side will be the bottom as it's more resilient than the paper-covered side, and PVA takes to the paper covering better:
Half the pieces washed (needed a cuppa):
All the pieces washed:
Once I've washed the pieces and patted them dry with kitchen paper, I use a hairdryer on a light setting, focussing on the detailed crevices, as there tends to be water pooled in them, and a lot of them will be places where you'll need to apply glue.
I then put all the pieces I don't immediately need in a padded box so I've got space to work in, leaving these bits out:
And set up my space to start cleaning them up:
Then I do something
extremely important: have lunch
The other side of the base, as I mentioned it:
The body and the tail, showing where there are tabs that need removing (already cut the small one off before I took the pic):
When doing this sort of work, I have a slightly damp cloth/kitchen paper to hand to wipe away the resin dust as it's not a good idea to blow it up into the air, mask or no mask. I also have the hoover near by for periodic dust suckage.
The body and tail "assembled" (not glued yet until I check it over for flash etc):
The instructions tell you to carefully clean the "sockets", on the one hand, I was lucky, 7 of the 8 were clean. The 8th one was an animal though, as it had some nice, solid lumps to cut out:
Then I glued it:
When using clippers on resin, unlike metal, you can't clip right up to where you want the break. Resin doesn't have a consistent reaction to the pressure, and sometimes it'll break off part of the model. So, always clip a bit further up, then use a knife and/or file to finish the job:
Boiling water to straighten the Scorpion Cannon, as one was a bit bent. Left in for about 90 seconds it goes really soft, takes about the same time to harden once out of the water:
Straight enough:
The Tail Blades have a slightly annoying mould line on the blade. As they're two copies of the same mould, it's on the same side, so I had the cleaner one facing upwards after much filing/knife work:
The Tail Blades and Gun Shield are dead easy to fit, the Gun Shield needed very little cleaning, bar two tabs. It attaches to the top of the Tail quite snugly:
The Maw Cannon Assembly has two tabs on the back, it had a slightly fiddly mould line on the bottom:
EDIT: sorry about the pic, my camera counter-compensated for the daylight bulb because of the angle I took it from.
The body and Maw Cannon Assembly fit together with these two central holes:
Unfortunately, mine showed no interest whatsoever in lining up, so I cut the tabs off (the surface is huge, so sticking shouldn't be a problem, I've also roughed it up with a file to get a good stick). Anyway, I'll just have to make sure that when I attach the Maw Cannon Assembly, it doesn't block the Maw Cannon Barrels that go into the slots where I've put the green circle.
Note: the other reason to clear up resin dust regularly and use the damp cloth is because it ends up stuck to your super-glue brush, which writes the whole thing off next time you open the bottle, as the bristles are all glued together (yes, bitter experience).
The Maw Cannon Assembly has 4 blades to go around it. Very straight forward to clean up:
Which gives you this:
Which attaches nicely to the front, with no hassle:
The Maw Cannon Barrels go on underneath, one has quite a hefty mould line, but it's under the raised piping, so pretty invisible:
And a "the story so far" shot, not stuck the Stinger on yet, as it's got a massive piece of cable that hangs off separately, which I need to clean and line up:
FW love cables, especially piped ones (the two Ogryn Zerks I have gave me a
lot of fun cleaning them). So, given the opportunity they could hardly resist a huge one (behave
). Requires care to snip away the tab without snapping it off the smaller cable (which I then cut with a knife):
As I found out on my Militia Champion (see sigged blog), thin piping is
very easy to break, and there can be thin flash, which needs cutting out with as little pressure as possible on the piping:
Cables often have mould misalignment ridges to file or knife down, this was no different, requires patience and a delicate hand with the tip of the knife and/or file ("and" in my case).
But once it's done, it fits together quite well, unglued shot, connecting points circled:
And today's lesson is don't speak too soon........
Fortunately, I noticed just as I pushed it into place that there are two cables to line up, otherwise things could have gotten......frustrating:
4 tabs to remove on the Claws:
However, they aren't straightforward. The two Pincers are a right angle, so at the very least will need a knife to thin the join before clipping. The Carapace tabs are at an angle, so needed to be very careful with the clippers to keep off the Carapace rim, before filing the excess down:
And a scale shot of the Claw Carapace...:
I've spent around 12 hours at the desk, although this includes periodic breaks for tea and Forum surfage.