Templar Kit Project - Part 2

Assembly:
There's a good guide in No Quarter #24 for assembling the Bastion kit which I made sure to refer to beforehand. Really there's nothing amazing to note except for using regular superglue instead of that nasty plastic-melting bonding agent that a lot of other kits need.

In terms of pinning, there wasn't much needed. Being lighter, the plastics are a lot more resilient to popping apart. However, being neurotic like I am, I decided to pin a couple spots. The dremel makes very quick work of this step so pinning effort is almost zero. The biggest risk is not accidentally drilling all the way through the piece since the plastic is so much softer.

For this kit, there are 3 heads. I thought briefly about magnetizing the heads so that I could swap them out, however that just sounded like way too much work for so little benefit. To that end, I opted to just use the Templar's head, since that's the model I bought the kit for. I think it is nice that they included all 3 heads.

Magnets:
Now it's time to talk about magnets. This was a pretty tricky proposition for me since I'd never magnetized parts of a model before so I knew this was going to be an adventure. I made sure to pick parts from the Crusader and Vanquisher to do first in case I trashed something in the process. Fortunately I already had some magnets left over from previous orders, so I got drill bits that matched the diameter of the magnets. Then I broke out the power drill. Not the dremel. The power drill. Talk about scary! I hand-drilled a pilot hole with my pin-vise drill and then proceeded to use the big drill. It worked out pretty well overall. In a couple situations I had to green-stuff things back together, but for the most part it worked well.

It took me a couple hours of messing around and carefully drilling and assembling, I got magnets into all the places I needed. Everything holds together quite well, especially since the magnets I used were probably more powerful than I really needed. There were a couple of key challenges:

First, the shield was a real pain in the ass to get on there. I ended up pinning paperclips into the hand (since they are ferrous) and then putting 2 magnets on the back of the shield. It sort of works, but the shield doesn't hold in an angle that looks good.

Second, the left arm (that holds the shield) has a tendency to swivel a bit. It's a result of the way the magnets are in place and their polarities.

So, given those two issues, I'm thinking that probably my solution will be to put a pin in to keep the pieces straight with just one end of the pin glued in.

Well, that's the progres so far. Here's a picture of the Templar configuration assembled. Next step will be to add those final stabilizing pins and then get him primed. He's definitely not going to be ready for the Resurgence tournament at my LGS this weekend. Overall I'm fairly happy with how the magnetizing is working out. I'd like the model pieces to fit together a little tighter, but given this was my first attempt at it I can't complain too much. If there are questions out there about the plastic kit in general feel free to post comments and I'll respond.

Templar Kit Project - Part 1

Ah... Sunday Afternoon! Time to sit down at the painting desk, put on a WM podcast episode, and start a new project. This last week I bought my first PP plastic kit: the Protectorate Heavy Warjack kit. There's a lot of controversy about PP going with plastics, and I figured I'd provide my own perspective by actually walking through my assembly and painting of this kit. My goal here is to review the benefits and drawbacks of plastics. I should note that long ago I played Warhammer 40k (15+ years ago), and so I'm familiar with old plastic kit bashing, so I'm not a neophyte in this arena. However I also have a certain preference for metal models.

Please note that I'll be writing these posts as I'm actually doing the steps I'm writing about, so it may be a little disjointed.

The Product:
My first impression of the kit is pretty favorable. It includes all the parts to build a Vanquisher, Crusader, or Templar. It also includes the cards for all three. The plastic parts are all in a series of connected plastic bags. Everything is packaged so that it's easy to review that all the parts are there. As you can see from the picture, it's mostly the same parts for all 3 jacks with the exception of the arms/hands and heads. It didn't take me more than about a minute to decide to magnetize the arms. It should be pretty easy to do it and it's a project I've wanted to try for quite a while now.

Detail-wise, I was a bit concerned about the pieces. I grabbed my Crusader and Vanquisher from the display case to compare parts. Overall, I can't say the detail level is noticeably lower. There's pieces that seem less detailed, and others that seem more detailed. The plastic pieces definitely have the option of sharper edges, whereas metals don't seem to support that. My impression on this kit is that any reduced detail level is more a reflection of the sculpting and not the material or casting method. I'll be curious to see other kits.

Trimming:
Trimming the plastic parts is pretty easy. As opposed to metals where I almost entirely use micro-files, for these I entirely used a hobby knife. In general these seem to be relatively few mold lines, but that's typical for a new kit. I definitely found that it was harder for my eye to pick out the mold lines on these plastic pieces, primarily due to it being a material I'm not used to. However the hobby knife definitely makes quick work of mold lines and trimming went pretty fast. I will say that the mess factor of plastics is different. With metals, there are lots of little flakes and filing which have their own challenge to clean up. Plastics tend to create little strips and being light, their static electricity makes them stick to things.

I also used this opportunity to try the hair-dryer trick. Sho'nuff, it works like a charm. I took the Vanquisher flail hand attachment and held the chain under a hair dryer. After a few seconds I could see it bend by gravity alone. At that point I turned off the hair dryer and held it in the position I wanted it to stay in. I blew lightly on it to cool it back down and viola! Very easy I must say.

Well, that's enough for today. Next time I'll cover the assembly, since that will turn into a pretty large step. I'm include the magnetizing as well most likely.