Saturday 16 July 2016

Forgeworld's latest Legion Heavy Weapons Kits

I don't know about you, but when I am shopping for a Lascannon and faced with the choice of one that I can mount on my shoulder, and one that I can carry low-slung like that nutter off of predator - I'm a low-slung kind of buyer!

So when I saw the new kits coming out recently I put all the Lascannons I had on ebay and sent Forgeworld some more of my cash. When they arrived I was a little surprised that building them would require some serious resin bending as the long cables attaching the back-pack to the weapon are completely straight. I must admit to feeling a little fazed at seeing this, but after Dave's affirmations on the power of the hairdryer (yes I mean a real one, not the thing guardsmen shoot with) I thought I'd give it a go and take a few pics along the way to share my technique.

So armed with: pin drill, glue, thin brass rod, and a mug of coffee I was off!




Stage one: Looking at how the cable attaches at both ends I decided to pin them. There is going to be a fair bit of pressure and I reckon they need more than just superglue. The cables are just about wide enough to accept being drilled but be careful doing this as its all to easy to put the drill out the side of the cable. You can see the length of pin I left outside of the lascannon cable mount in the pic

Once done I glued the Lascannon and back-pack in place. At this point it looks pretty weird! Make sure you put them on the right way round and think about how they look once you put the bend in the cable.




Stage two: Bending the cables. I had made this extra difficult for myself by deciding to re-purpose
some already painted tactical legionaries, so I had to cut off guns and reposition arms first and then hope the hairdryer didn't boil off the paint job or melt bits of them....urgh!

This pic shows the first heat up...

So what you need to do here is grab your marine, the lascannon and the hairdryer. As each marine's
pose will be slightly different I bent the cabling onto them and kept them together so that I would have a solid fit; I had to paint my Lascannon separately so this probably won't be an issue if you are doing it from scratch and can just glue them straight on after the bend.

With the hairdryer positioned close to the model I started the heat up the cabling, being careful to heat it evenly. Then I positioned the back pack and folded the cable around so the Lascannon would line up with the hand positions. See the pic where the weapon has had its first 'fitting' around the model...

At the first try it probably won't all line up perfect so with the cable wrapped around the model you can bring it into the airflow again and keep it warm whilst you finish it off.

Its not a tricky as it sounds, you just have to be bold and trust the resin not to break under the bending.






There you go, simple eh! Now make ten of them and blow those traitors/loyalists back to the Eye/Dead Emperor they came from!

4 comments:

  1. They look real good, glad the hairdryer worked.
    I must admit that I was phased by this sort of thing in the past, facing always softened resin using warm water and hating it, but after adopting the hairdryer I almost look forward to it now!
    Great work, looking forward to seeing some more tutorials based on your superb army

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  2. Thanks Dave, this army is really coming together now, looking forward to getting it back on the battlefield!

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    Replies
    1. I'm looking forward to absolutely annihilating it.

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  3. Hey! Found this looking for tips or experience with these exact heavy weapons, as I'm faced with the prospect of doing the same thing with heavy bolter ammo belts soon. Glad to hear it worked out well, and I'll definitely be pinning them as you suggested!

    Have you done any other heavy weapons, and if so, have you tried the alternate approach, getting the backpack and weapon in place first and then bending the cable to fit? I'm enough of a perfectionist to want to paint the backpack and weapon separately, and it seems like doing that, attaching them, bending the cable/feed to shape and painting it before finally gluing it in might work, especially since there's more play in them than, say, the current 40k Devastator heavy bolter and its rigid plastic ammo belt.

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