A few of the ork models I've picked up are an older style, and have both metal and plastic parts. The bodies and giant rocket booster packs are metal, and the arms, legs, and heads are plastic. (I also have a couple of all-metal character figures, but those suckers are staying safely unassembled until I get a good bit better at this!)

The problem with these models is that good ol' plastic glue doesn't work on them. (Plastic glue actually dissolves some of the plastic on each side of the join, making for a fairly strong connection.) For the metal/plastic or metal-metal joins, you have to use plain ol' superglue, which works great if you have a nice smooth connection between the two parts, and something less than great otherwise. Guess which kind of fit these models have?

It took quite a bit of work with files to get the rocket packs flush against the ork bodies, but now that that's done, the joins are extremely strong. (I don't mean to say that they'd hold up against intentional efforts to lever the things off, but they're not going to come off with casual handling.) The joins between the arms and the torso aren't that sturdy. I'm not terribly sure why - it looks like a fairly flat join - but obviously it's not working like one; out of my 16 stormboyz, 4 have lost arms and one his head, just traveling between my living room and bedroom. I definitely don't want to have that happen after I get them painted up!

So I picked up a pin drill. With it, I can drill a small hole in the arm, and another in the torso, and then put a short length of metal rod in to reinforce the joint. (This is the technique they use to fix the broken Gundam model's leg in Genshiken, incidentally.) I was worried that drilling into the metal parts might take a lot of force, requiring some sort of clamp, but as it turns out, the drilling is really easy.

With the metal rods reinforcing the joints, I can prime up the stormboyz without fear of unplanned amputation. This is a good thing overall - while they're not the best unit in the Ork army, they're quite fun (partially because they're quick - they can get halfway across the table to get "stuck in" in a single turn - and partially because the idea of a malfunction causing an Ork to corkscrew across the battlefield and faceplant into a wall is pretty funny.)

Next batch of boyz just got their blue shirts and gloves issued, and after a bit of touch-up, they'll be ready for the metal basecoat. Definitely looking sharper so far.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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