The “Lu Shang” Project

Building "Lu Shang"

Part 3: Assembly

Now that I had the basic parts that I needed, I began the process of cleaning off all the flash and piecing the model together.  After cleaning the flash, I always wash the  plastic pieces in warm soapy water before I do any assembly.  In addition to getting rid of the plastic dust from clean-up, this helps get the release agents off which can prevent the glue from adhering the parts properly.  I also only ever use adhesives made for plastics as these will chemically "weld" the parts together whereas super-glue just sticks the pieces together.  I feel that plastic adhesives make for a much stronger assembly even though they can take a little longer to cure than super glue.

During the initial assembly, some of the pieces had to be modified slightly in order to fit and I knew there would be plenty of gaps to fill. The biggest challenge during assembly was the lower legs.  I had to remove the feet and lower skirt from the High Elf body and I did this with a Wizard roto-tool and a small steel-cutting bit.  Once I got the skirt  and feet off, I decided to continue up inside the skirt to give it more definition. The splits in the front and back of the skirt were both carved out as well.   I left two "stumps" inside the skirt so I could attach the marauder legs which I had cut off just below the knee.  The ball-socket on the upper body was trimmed off and test fit to the lower skirt.  It seemed too "stubby" so instead of attaching it directly, I drilled holes and put in a spacer of brass rod.  This would allow me to fill the gap and sculpt on the necessary details with grey-stuff.  It would also allow for a smoother transition between the scale armor and the banded armor.  I attached the "Kung Fu" hand to the right arm and then repositioned the weapon hand on the left arm.  Then the arms were attached to the body.  Once the basic pose was complete I set the model aside to allow the adhesive to fully cure.

When I came back to the model, I first made sure that all of the joints were solid.  I then attached the figure to an old paint bottle so that I would have a something to hang onto while sculpting and painting.  Since I knew the head would need a lot of work, I kept it separate and attached it to it's own bottle in the same manner as the body a little later.

With the basic assembly complete, I began the process of filling gaps and sculpting on the extra details.  Before I did any sculpting I filled most of the smaller gaps with a little sprue solution which is made by dissolving small bits of sprue in a bottle of plastic cement.  Then I began sculpting by adding the fur to the leggings with gray-stuff.  Next I filled in the midsection gap between the waist and the chest.  I tried to get the area as smooth and even as possible as I knew this would only be a base from which I would be sculpting on the additional details later.  I test-fit the head onto the body and determined that the neck area needed bulking up so I put on a blob of putty  for a collar and contoured it so that the head would sit properly.

Once the first round of putty had dried, I went back to the midsection and added three layers of lamellor plates to extend the armor up to chest.  The waist still looked a little narrow at this point so I twisted together a couple strands of fine copper wire and looped it around the body to make a belt.  At this point I also decided to add more character to the boots so I gave them a slight upturned point right on the front.  The “horse chopper” halberd was made by carving the blade from a piece of thick plasticard and sticking it onto a brass rod.  I wrapped the section just under the blade with more copper wire and added a small fur decoration from the Kroot accessories sprue.  I drilled a hole in the bottom of a spike from the Chaos Warriors sprue to attach to the end of the weapon, but didn’t glue it.  This would allow me to slide the handle through the hole in the hand after the figure had been fully painted and attach the spike then.

Finally, I attached the shoulder plates and the cape.  This is a bit of a departure from the way many people I know assemble their models as they prefer to paint the pieces as they go, and assemble everything at the end.  I prefer to assemble my models as much as possible before I paint in order to assure that the pieces bond securely (glue doesn’t stick to paint very well) and the paint job isn’t ruined by some dribbled adhesive.  Usually it isn’t too difficult for me to get paint into tight areas but in this instance I would regret putting the cape on so early as the lining would later prove more difficult to paint than I had anticipated.

With the body done, I could now turn my attention to the head and face.

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