Imperial Knights, Part XI

So, I was getting ready to attach the arms when I realized my Knight needed another heavy stubber on the left side to bring it up to current GW specs.  Not really a problem.  I had a spare template that I’d printed up at the start (on the off possibility this project went very fast, ha-ha).  I just re-built the stubber that attaches to the cannon.

The way I’d assembled the upper body, there’s a slight difference between the shoulders and the torso.  It gave me a nice groove to set the heavy stubber barrel in so it could make a solid contact.  I also set it back a bit so only the front half was sticking out.  Once it was in place, I also added a small 3/8" square of cardstock on the back to block that end of the barrel.

Helpful Hint—Again, I made a point of keeping the seams down.  Half of it’s hidden, but I made sure the seam at the front of the barrel was as low-profile as possible.

With that done, it was time to assemble everything.  And unlike most of the big projects I’ve done here, that meant I actually had to take a moment to think about posing the Knight.  It’s much more a character than a vehicle, after all.

With some of the tweaks that happened during assembly, the Knight’s head does have a slight angle to the left.  I decided to use this and position the torso on the legs as if the Knight was moving forward and its body was shifting accordingly.  So I set the right shoulder back a bit until the had was facing straight forward.  This ended up working very well with the pose I’d set the legs in (with the right leg forward), but I have to admit that was more dumb luck than any planning on my part.

So... time to glue the torso to the legs.  I put a circle of glue on the hip/pelvic section and lined up the torso as described above.  And then I held it for about, oh, ten minutes.   Maybe even a little more than that.  I checked it every minute or so to make sure nothing had slid or shifted.  This needed to be really, really solid, and it was not a point in the project where I wanted to stop and rebuild something.  So... at least ten patient minutes. Which I spent watching Pacific Rim.  A deliberate choice.

Once that join was solid, I turned to the cannon. 

First things first—both the cannon and the chainsword have upper arm sections on this template.  I decided not to use them, because once I’d taken out the wasp-waist on this model (and shrunk it’s height by about an inch) extending the arms would give it very ape-like proportions.  And I didn’t want that.

I wanted to give the model a good pose, but I also didn’t want the cannon aiming off in some random direction.  I played with it for a few minutes and found a position that worked well, in my opinion.  It also set the cannon base slightly against the hip cylinder.  I decided to add glue there, too, and add to the overall stability/ solidity of the whole model.

Again, I waited over ten minutes for this to dry.  Extended weapons like this will always get tapped and bumped, so they need to be solid.  Patience (and a firm grip) is a must here.

Now the reaper chainsword. Thing is, I didn’t want it to be flush up against the shoulderpad.  I think that right-angle look works with ranged weapons, but a melee weapon is going to have a much bigger range of motion if it’s going to be useful, and I think that needs to show.  But, as mentioned, I also didn’t want to add on an inch of upper arm.

I decided to build a small piece that would let me give the chainsword an angle without adding any real length to the arm.  Maybe a 40 degree angle, tops.  I worried about how to make this practical but still look ornate and smooth, but then I took another look at the GW Knight and realized its upper arms are pretty mechanical-looking.

As it would happen, your classic 3-4-5 right triangle has a small angle that measures just under 40 degrees (about 36.9).  That means it’s easy to design a triangular block to fit the Knight’s chainsword. Yes, folks, it’s finally here-- today’s the day high school geometry finally pays off.

I attached the triangle block to the to the chainsword.  Then, for detail, I added four bamboo pistons around block.  One went on either side and two directly in the front.

Helpful Hint—Make sure none of the pistons stick out past the top of the block.  They can be flush, but they can’t stick out at all or they’ll mess up the seal when I glue the chainsword to the shoulder.

I gave all of this a good twenty minutes to dry.  Then I glued the whole assembly up under the shoulder.  I angled it in just a little bit to add to the dynamic look

So...main body assembled.

There’s also a tabard-banner in this template, and it’s a nice detail piece.   It’s made to be doubled up, under the assumption of all paper, so I cut off the back section and just used the front.  I bent this back and forth against my hobby knife to put a bunch of curves in it so it would look more like heavy fabric and less like... well, a piece of cardstock.  I even curled the bottom corners a bit to give it a little more “motion.”

That’s all the basics covered in the template itself.  Pretty damned impressive, really.

However, at the risk of making this project even longer...  I want to talk about some extras.

Next time.