Hello Everyone!
This will be a super quick post just to fill you all in on where I’m at on the Reaver Titan. So after I finished putting the body together I moved onto masking it all up ready for paint. This is always a fiddly aspect of a kit build and needs to be done very carefully and thoroughly using the right materials otherwise you’ll get over spray on your nicely painted work, or when you remove the mask the paint will come off with it. So as tedious as it is, I spent a fair bit of time on this part of the build. As you can see from the pics, there is a lot of work done here.
So now that most of the heavy lifting has been done in respect to the body, its now time to move onto assembling all of the main sub-assemblies for preparing to paint. As will the body, structural integrity is a very important aspect of this build for me. I take a lot of time considering how the kit will stand up when its complete and remain that way for a long time. Thats why I use 2mm steel rod, 2 part epoxy resin and drill shallow holes in the male and female parts of a joint to increase surface tension and provide something for the glue to grab. Finally, when I set the joints, I always use a large clamp to hold the parts together so that the bond is set firm with minimal gap between the two parts. As I’d already spent a fair bit of time getting the pose of the Titan correct, this process was mostly straight forward. Just time consuming waiting for the epoxy resin to harden enough so that I could handle the parts…
Although the toes are not structural I do want them to be firmly fixed to the foot. So I still drilled 2 x 2mm holes in the male and female knuckle and also had a 1mm brass rod joiner. You’ll see why in a minute.
To ensure the toes are flat I clamped down the foot while the resin was setting… yes, thats my coffee table. The grand final was on so I had to move locations so I could watch it…
The legs now fully assembled and standing on their own two feet. So to speak..
So lastly, I started with getting the base sorted out. I wanted to get the positioning of the feet right before it was painted.
So I simply traced around each foot then marked out where I wanted each screw to be positioned then drilled a hole. The base is a 300mm dia 3mm thick piece of clear acrylic. The same size I used for the Warhounds. I originally had a 450mm dia one made for the Reaver, however it turns out thats too big. Perhaps I’ll save it for the Warlord….
As you can see from the picture below, I am using 4 x 20mm screws for the toes, and 1 x 40mm screw for the foot. This will ensure that the foot and ankle joint are joined even more.
And this is a dodgy as photo just to give you an indication of the size of the Reaver. Its massive. That is a Baneblade super heavy tank and one of the Reaver’s weapon systems laying beside it…. Remember too that the Reaver has a carapace weapon mounted on it too…
Just to tie of this post, thanks to everyone who offered to get me some Iayden Darksun paint! really appreciate everyones offers! However much respect goes out to Cal who got me a nice new pot of it today. So I’ll now be able to get on with business. I also spoke to Tegan today from Maybe Jane about some stencils I’m getting made for this bad boy. I’m not going to let on too much about what I’ve got planned here, but its going to be pretty awesome if I can get my idea to work. It’ll be tricky but its worth trying so stay tuned for that one. I should know in the next 48hrs or so if Tegan can produce what I’m after.
Ok, got packing to do now.
Comments always welcome, and thanks for looking.
John
The Painting Bunkerc y 