TGIDF*

*Thank God** It's Defiler Friday

**By "God" I mean Tzeentch of course.

Defiler Friday

Since I'm not a big fan of the tiny little helmet head that usually goes on the defiler, I made this all-seeing eye of Tzeentch. It isn't permanently attached at this point since I can't decide how I want it. I was thinking of mounting it on the chaos star standard that the kit comes with, but I thought that might distract from the eye. We'll see.

Defiler Friday

See, I told you I would have a Thousand Sons update for you. Above you can see my Defiler. What you can't see very well in the picture is the coruscating flame upgrade I've been modeling onto it. You can see it in this picture a lot better:



Of course, this is very much a work in progress. I'll still need to fill in some of the gaps with more green stuff. The "flames" are actually dryad arms cut up and glued directly on. Thanks to Felix for those.

I'm not sure why the picture below came out so bad, but here's what I've been working on for the sons themselves:



I originally built this painting rack for my goblin wolf riders. It works great because toothpicks (or "cocktail sticks" if you're across the pond) fit perfectly into the little holes in the back of the chaos space marine backpack. Simply break the pick in half, stick the blunt end into the backpack, and stick the sharp end into a strip of balsa wood. Bam! Instant painting rack for backpacks or mounted minis.

Defiler Friday!!

Here is my Defiler "up on blocks" as the glue dries on it's legs. I was a little worried about this part because it looked like it was going to be a difficult task to get these things in the right place. I've seen a ton of kids at games shops with these poorly built, leg-less defiler. These kids always make me what to yell, "Damn, Son! Can't you get those legs glued on? You're a disgrace!" I didn't want to be one of those kids, so I really wanted to do a good job on the legs. I'm happy with the way things turned out, and I've gained a lot of sympathy for the kids with the crooked and/or missing-legs Defilers. This is a tough kit.

Below are the bits that are miraculously going to turn into my army's general. I'm thinking of just putting them in a box, shaking it vigorously, and praying to Tzeentch that the thing magically comes out the way I want.


Seriously, when I laid out these parts to take this photo, all those theories that have been in my head for months about what parts are going to fit together became very real. It's a what-did-I-get-myself-into feeling.

You may notice that the part that is going to become the bottom half is a sawn in half Dark Angel. You may be wondering what happened to the top half (OK, probably not, but just play along). Well, I needed something to give my Defiler a little extra weight in the back to balance it's big claws int he front. What better than a half of a metal Space Marine? That's right. Entombed inside my defiler is the mutilated corpse of a Loyalist Space Marine!! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

Eh-hem. OK, back to reality. Dungeon Con is this weekend, so I should mention that. More info can be found here. I will not be attending, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. To celebrate, here's a picture of me violating the Dungeon's strict food and drink policy.

Defiler Friday!

I took some pictures of my Defiler in-progress. Not much to see at this point. I did, however, magnetize the top turret so that it can spin independently of the bottom.

In this picture you can see where I epoxied the magnet. There is another magnet inside the ball joint that normally attaches to the turret. I glued these together at the same time to prevent the magnet from switching polarity while the glue was drying.

I'm almost out of my old tube of Testor's plastic glue, and I'm not sure what I'll do when it runs out. Only hobby shops carry that stuff, and I don't know when I'll get to one. In the meantime, I'll probably use super glue to keep the process going.

I wasn't sure of the safety of super glue on plastic, so I asked some friends of mine. As it turns out, my friends are pretty knowledgeable about glue. I received this educational bit from Aaron:

Generally speaking...

Plastic to Plastic = Testors model glue in a tube (contains Acetone which is why it melts plastic and styrofoam)

Plastic to Metal = Cyano Acrylate (Zap, Super Glue, crazy Glue, GW Super Glue - with the exception of its thickness, it is all the same stuff.)

The above is the rule of thumb.

I have had bonds with Superglue on plastic that were a total joke, while others were unbreakable. There was an occasion a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to remove a gaurdsman's arm that was glued on with CA and the arm broke in half because the bond was so strong. If you want to use CA on plastic, make sure the surfaces are as flush as possible, and use just enough to cover the surface. When it cures it takes on this weird crystalline form, so if you use too much it will compromise the bond. This isn't the case with most other types of glue where the more the better.

Epoxy glue essentially forms plastic around what it is glued to. That is why it bonds so well. It has problems too, but is a adequate solution to getting plastic and metal to stick.

Think of Epoxy as liquid plastic. You want to avoid using Epoxy on anything that has fine detail, or is a cosmetic surface. Epoxy, unless you are very diligent about cleaning it up will make bulbous drips all over which are hard to get rid of. If you don't mind an area of rigidity, it works great for gluing bits of foam rubber, and fabric together.

Testors glue will fail at gluing metal and plastic together. The metal just doesn't want anything to do with Testors.

The only thing that CA glue sucks at is gluing things that are porous. If you were trying to glue a rock or a bit of plaster to a base, the rock would soak up a lot of the CA and there would be very little of a bond to speak of. The more gooey the CA is (Take zap for example) the less that this is an issue. Epoxy is great for porous surfaces.

There is more than you ever wanted to know about glue. I very rarely have models break, they do from time to time, but not often. Pinning always is a good idea, but I understand not doing it that often because it is a hassle. On metal minis it is essential in my opinion unless you are gluing large surfaces.