Sanding Elbows on Plastic Space Marines

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**Alex80591**

I'm relatively new to painting/modeling space marines, and had a question. Looking at models from GW's 3 pack of Space marines, and the tac squad from AoBR (this is only on marines posed for holding bolters/flamers) I've noticed that some of their right elbows under the shoulder pad seem overly large and bulky (tbh I think it looks like they have arm tumors covered by armor on their elbows), so I was wondering, do you sand them down? Also any tips on how to without hitting the ammo pouches? Thanks for any insight.

Edit: Spelling

**Gac666**

I don't sand them down, i use a cutting knife to sculpt the detail myself. Yes it's a tumor and you have to remove it. It is caused by the fact, that these marines are 2 pieces plastic kits (not including the backpack) and thus these kind of things occur. You can notice these types of disproportions in all of the basic starter kits (Battle for Macragge, Assault on Black Reach and the WFB ones) and also in Space Hulk (look at the skulls under the Broodlord). At first I didn't sweat about it until i didn't get my hands on normal plastic marines, then I was really furious >:[ .

**Capt. Rex**

That large buldge your talking about is the Marines elbow. It looks chunky because of the elbow guard on there.
I suppose you could sand it down if you wanted to. You could get a pack of cheap files to do it.

**Gac666**

Its not exactly only an elbow. Its an elbow + something that is normal when the model is a one piece. It's the result of mould simplification and some of the parts are extruded and joined with the rest of the model (look under the marines right hand i just seemingly connects with the torso). This wouldnt be an issue if the models were metal (altough some of them have this problem too, look at SM honor guards cloaks and the stuff between their legs, its extruded and thick as hell). This is an issue with most of the starter kit sets (and space hulk too), even the Dreadnought from AOBR has some details simplified due to that process (look at the front plates of the dreds legs or the engine)

**TheRhino**

Paint the extra area a darker version of your basecoat, and call it done. It works like darklining, and eliminates the need for carving up your bog-standard Tactical Marines to be perfect

**MechaEmperor7000**

All two-piece Tact marines suffer from this, where the entire inside part of the elbow guard gets stretched out to the back of the shoulderpad due to the moulding process. It's evident on some one-piece metal models too.

I second TheRhino's method, as it draws the least amount of attention to it. If your elbow guard differs in color than your marine's primary color, then paint the guard up to the point where you think it should end, then paint the rest up the same color as the marine's primary color. Makes it less noticable that way (all of my marines have golden elbow and knee guards, so I paint the excess part the same as my marine's power armor).

**Alex80591**

I was thinking either to blend it in like TheRhino suggested, but as i started painting, I was wondering if maybe i could just paint the extra part black to disguise it as a shadow. What do you guys think?

**MechaEmperor7000**

depends on how dark your marine's armor is. If your marines are the white scars and you paint the excess part black, it's going to be VERY noticable.

**Alex80591**

I'm attempting Ultramarines, the color is a fairly dark blue (honestly darker than I'd like it personally, but its something I'm working on)