Okay, so... when I left off I’d finished all the cannon elements, but it struck me I hadn’t shown off the assembled cannon.
The battle cannon barrel glued into place with no problem. I’d though about adding an internal brace, but with the detail wraps, it had a solid ring for the glue to grab. Also, the top edge of the barrel can glue to the underside of the hood, which means it’s held from two directions.
The heavy stubber was the same. The detail pieces gave it enough surface area
for the glue to adhere, and the top edge could press up against the base of the
battle cannon. Again, held in two
directions. It was very, very solid.
Helpful Hint—I glued each barrel so the seam
where it came together would be against the seam from the other barrel. If you look close, you can see the edges
between them. This only takes a little
work but makes everything look much cleaner.
For the reaper chainsword, I had a sudden realization. There are four layers of “teeth” on the
template. However, as I’ve noted a few times now, this template is designed off the idea that it’s being built just
with paper. Did I really need all four layers if I was building with
card?
In a bold move for me, I decided to test-fit some elements.
There are three components I’ll call the sides (2) and the
housing. I assembled all three, let them
dry, and then set just placed them together without any glue. Turns out the two sides fill the housing
pretty solidly, so more than one layer of teeth would probably be too much.
So I cut out one set of teeth. Because of the curves, this is very
slow-going, and I highly recommend going slow—no matter how comfortable and
confident you are with a hobby knife.
This is a weapon, so it’s going to be a high-attention area. Everything here needs to be sharp and slick.
Once the teeth were done, I assembled them with the sides,
and then put that piece into the housing.
I also added a pair of 1/4” discs from my hole punch for a little bit of
extra detail. This all fit together so
well that I just needed to hold it for a minute or two and then it was done.
Now I needed to assemble the back half of the reaper chainsword. The other big part —we’ll
call it the motor—is just a box. It goes
together in a very straightforward way.
No real problems there. But it
does get a lot of detail...
There’s a disc that matches the one on the cannon (we could
call it the elbow) and also another one on the back. I added a 1/4” disc to that, too, to layer
the detail a bit more. And then there’s
a large piece that wraps around half of the motor—I’m not sure if it’s a blocky
manifold or an oversized head block.
Either way, it adds to the look of the motor.
Once that was dry I glued the chainsword blade in
place. There’s a tiny gap at the
back—right between the housing and the motor—and it kind of gnaws at me. So I think I’ll need to cut another small
piece of card to cover that up. If I
layer it right, it should blend right in.
So... I have the body, the legs, and weapons for both
arms. Next time--the eleventh chapter in
this ongoing saga (only one more than the Baneblade/ Plaguereaper)—final
assembly and a last few detail bits.