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So... I have quite a bit of guard pieces these days. Ive always been about the game, not much interested in modeling, but my brother got his wolves painted and I finally got the urge to get my stuff painted... Heres my issue. I cannot, for the life of me, paint an assembled guardsman. The gun is slung across the chest and... maybe those of you with skill can do it, but its just not working for me.

I was wondering how disastrous it would be to try and remove the arms from my guardsmen.. paint the stuff up, and then reglue the arms on. Ridiculous? If I cant do that, then I think Im just going to resign myself to not painting their chest pieces and working on their helmets / shoulderpieces / weapons instead.

Anyone ever successfully did anything like that?

Your best bet is to leave the arms on, spray undercoat them black and then only paint the bits the brush will reach easily.

The spray undercaot will get into all the fiddly bits that the brush cant reach and creat natural areas of shadow.

Any bits of the chest you can get to with a brush will be left black and simply look like they are in shade.

Almost no one will be able to tell there are unpainted bits when they are on the table and even up close they should look just fine.

Hope this helps.

I've actually been removing arms from some secondhand CSM I picked up. I needed to remove their arms so I could give them sonic weapons. The arms separate from the torsos okay, I just worked a razor blade into the gap between the arm and the torso and wedged them apart. Of course, this is held together by light model cement. If you used to much you're probably out of luck.

Another word of warning, I've already managed to snap the tip off one of my razor blades, so make sure you use a blade that you won't miss!

I've lost count on how many times I've sliced up my fingers doing this. Try to pry them apart with your blade. But, as Romulus said, be careful as the razor blades might snap.

Just paint them asembled! It's ok if you dont get the little areas where the arms and weapon meet the chest, just get them in a good undercoat and paint the parts you can see. As difficult as painting a figure can be, painting a disasembled figure will be a lot harder. If you just want them apart, useing a sculpting tool to pry with is safer than an exacto, prolly save you some stitches.

I took mine off by just pulling the gun towards the head but you can snap the gun if you used too much glue.

However way you do it, it will take some touching up when you reattatch the arms because polycement makes the paint go ridiculously patchy.

Linked wrote:I've lost count on how many times I've sliced up my fingers doing this. Try to pry them apart with your blade. But, as Romulus said, be careful as the razor blades might snap.

I sliced my fingers many times cutting through so many plastic minis but honestly that's not a problem. A scalpel blade breaking and shooting spinning in the air is a big problem though as it can (and will likely try to) hit your eyes. Put on some safety goggles when cutting through thick plastic minis or strong glue bonds. A finger heals (or can be sewed back on) an eye doesn't.

And for painting the part hidden by the lasgun doesn't really need painting as you most likely won't see it, I have Obsessive–compulsive disorder so I do it but it takes more time to paint your guardsmen when painting under a lasgun.

squilverine wrote:Your best bet is to leave the arms on, spray undercoat them black and then only paint the bits the brush will reach easily.

This. For real. If you have to turn it upside down and sideways to see the unpainted part, then that son of a biscuit is painted.

The best way to do this is to glue the legs the base, the body to the legs, the head to the body, the arms together but not to the body prime and paint them, Then glue the arms to the body.