Hello everyone, I tried searching the forums for an answer to my question but I came up empty. Here's the situation: I am a Varuna player. I recently obtained a Swiss Guard along with half of a beyond icestorm set, second hand - I need the HMG Kamau, you see. The paintjob, however, was terrible, and since I disliked it I had to remove it. The Swiss Guard's sword, unfortunately, did not survive the paint removal and acetone soak process - it detached from the mini's tiny fist... which detached from the mini's arm. That's all fine and good - with a CC of 15 the Swiss Guard isn't going to be hitting the broadside of a remote with a stick. Problem is... what do I replace his arm with? Or should I be looking at something to use in place of his now-detached fist, sans sword? I was thinking of painting him as a HMG ORC - that way I'd get a cheap and free HMG ORC, but he would have one arm held out doing nothing. Suggestions, thoughts, advice welcome. Thank you for your time.
Yep, sorry forgot about the newest Swiss Guard with sword since I quickly removed the sword. A picture would help refine my recommendation. In general Orc, Aquila Guard and Swiss arms are all swappable to a degree. I have also used a De Fersen, but it took a bit more cutting. If you do not want to replace an arm, you could make a pistol mod to the fist which has been quite popular. I think there are several pics of this conversion in the miniatures conversion thread (including some from me). Nice paint job on that Swiss by the way.
Yeah, that's the model. His sword fell off and I personally prefer for him to not have it, but I am not sure what to replace his fist with. I have actually purchased an Aquila blister to convert one of my ORCs to a HMG - so that arm is being used. I need a Right Arm of any compatible model, I think. Alternatively I could have him dual wield HMGs for hilarity but I don't really think that works. EDIT: @Ghost_X , tried looking for your conversion pics in the thread. Search can't seem to locate them. What model is this pistol swap done with?
Would love to do that, but I personally don't know anyone who plays GW games near me... I think if I can have a right pointing hand attached to his arm, he'd look largely normal.
The extended fingers are made with clip wire sections and green stuff applied with a brush. Make two extended one next to the other and the thumb at an angle of 90 so that it highlights when painting it, like the hacker of the Sergeants of Order. And this is one conversion of Orc with Aquila's Arms
I'm planning to use both the Aquila's arms too. I'll have to look up this hacker model and see if I can visualize the process...
As someone who has already used the Aquila's arms on an Orc body I can say with confidence that it does work. Can't tell the difference between the arm and the base model.
@Golem2God Thank you for the advice. I'll do that for my HMG ORC. I swear, all of my Orcs are weird. One has mismatched antennae due to a mistake from the seller (Long-Ear), the other has a "Muddy" shoulderpad due to me trying out Seraphim Sepia (Mudfish), the Only ORC part of the HMG ORC is his body - even the antennae are Aquila in origin (Orcuila), and the Swiss Guard of this thread occasionally masquerades as an ORC (Mr. Guard). One of these days, I'll have a normal ORC.
Sounds like you have a colorful squad. Consider yourself blessed. Now we just need to name and create a backstory for each of them.
Hello everyone, In the end I took a piece of trash pewter, glued it to the fist, and let it dry as-is. Once the glue had sat overnight, I filed down the rough piece until it was the shape of a finger, and removed the finger closest to the thumb with some cutting and filing. But before that... This was how the hand (finger?) looked before refinement. I had filed it a bit at this point, mainly to get a better mating surface. It then sat like this overnight. Right. So this is the result. The Mini itself is second hand, as is the rest of my Beyond Icestorm set. They came with this terrible paintjob that was almost impossible to remove - this is after 5 days of acetone, 2 hours of ultrasonic cleaning, and probably also another 2 hours of angry toothbrushing. Pegs have been attached to his feet - the assembly service the original owner used had damaged a bit of the foot when snipping off the tab, so I'll have to reinforce it with some putty later on, but in terms of stability the mini is doing much better. Getting the remaining primer off has been such a nightmare. I really wonder what people do to their minis... At least now it looks like he's pointing at a target or an objective. More attractive to me than the sword, honestly. That's all for now!
@Shirley That looks like it is an original digit of the hand. Great job thinking outside of the box and sharing this neat rick with us.
A brass brush is useful for getting some of the last stubborn primer out of crevices. It's sturdier than a toothbrush but won't damage the model like a steel brush might. I will probably follow this pointing example, especially since it's similar to how I gave some of my Unidrons horns.
@Golem2God Thank you for the compliment, G2G. It is more or less a smaller, scaled-down version of attaching pegs to legs - I usually just take a piece of trash pewter, glue it on, and file it until it's round. Pin vice drill bit is round too, so it makes for a strong anchor. Trash pewter is good! I keep all my sprues, they're so useful. Cyanoacrylate glue apparently does not break that easily to shearing forces as long as the main contact surface is undisturbed. This means I'm actually often pretty aggressive with my filing. @gregmurdock I will give that a try, thanks Greg. I actually have a nylon brush i use for cleaning diamond files, but it didn't have enough bite. Interestingly, the stray bits of primer do not show up that much when covered with a more brittle primer like Vallejo's brush-on. That stuff flakes off with a tiny scratch, but it spreads itself out really well. Makes me wonder if it naturally does not flow as much into pre-occupied areas.
@Golem2God Cyanoacrylate glue is just the generic name for superglue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate Or at least, certain kinds of superglue. Personally, I use the Gorilla Glue kind - the bottle is well-designed as well, as long as one caps it well it never spills and causes messes. Cyanoacrylate will also completely dissolve, and in extreme cases disappear if submerged in acetone. Most of the time when I buy second hand I evaluate the paint job... and see if the model is largely fine. If it is (I haven't seen an apocalyptic case yet), I remove the plastic base and glue bond with acetone, and dunk the mini in an acetone bath in my ultrasonic cleaner. Other than the stuff having an unpleasant smell and taking a while to bond sometimes, it has largely served me well. Its terribly difficult to remove if the surface area bonded by the glue is large, though. In that case, I have to get aggressive with my hobby knife - and that occasionally means broken blades. It's why I have goggles.
