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I'm reaching out to the dakka modeling commiunity for some guidance on how to repair as one of these fell into my lap, so to speak. Easy enough to re-assemble, glue and all that, but a model so big, grand and so pricey, deserves extra love.

It's assembled (well, it was built) and painted, but has many loose pieces. Shoulder pads, head cover, Missile pod, grieves, etc.

Majorly of course, is the torso to the hips. I want to really secure the torso to the hips in legs, but still have it able to detach for transport and storage.There's that nickel sized circular depression in the hips and the male/joint in the torso.
a. REM? Like a really strong, circular/disk REM? (I like KJ magnets for my REM 40k needs).
b. Pin or pins? Will one or two do? a tri-point? What to use?




Then there's the feet. Who ever assembled it in the first place has the 'cleats' pointed down, so the feet do not 'stand' flat.





I'm reluctant to snap them off and start over. It makes sense to give this top-heavy models a base, or even two foot bases (allowing easier placement around terrain on a battle field), to give it stability, so I'm casting a net wide for input on that, too.


Questions:
1. Should I use acetone/nail polish remover on the old glue joints? Is seems like an obvious yes, but heck, I dunno as it'll effect FW resin.
2. If I decide to pin or screw in a base for the feet, is there anything to FW resin about drilling into the feet I should watch out for?

Acetone may make the resin rubbery even if it does break any superglue bonds.

I saw some guys with some really old Armorcast Reavers a couple of years ago, they used 12mm or 1/2" thread diameter bolts to secure the torso/hips and the arms to the shoulders.

Big fat NO to acetone + resin. Not worth the risk IMO.

I'd second the recommendation for some serious hardware for jointing that bad boy together. Magnets aren't going to cut it. Bolts sound like the most sensible choice. Two individual foot bases would be my first instinct too - with a model that size any fall is going to be disastrous, and reposing the feet without breaking it apart is going to be tough.

Purple Power, a degreaser that you can buy at Wal-Mart will strip the paint, eat most of the glue and not harm the resin. I have stripped FW and recasts and never in 12+ years has it harmed the model. For heavy joints that need to be static but able to be disassembled I recommend square brass tubing. Any good train shop or amazon will carry K&S precision metals SQ Brass Tubes 8153 slides into 8154. On my FW Phantom I drilled the arm sockets out, placed a length of 8154 into the hole and secured it with layers of baking soda & Super glue to rebuild the void between the sq tube and round drill hole. I repeated the process on the arm ball joints drilling a larger than needed hole and starting with a small amount of greenstuff to hold the tube until I figured out the correct angle/placement. Then I once again layered Baking soda and super glue to fill the void. The arm ball brass tube extends out about 3/4 to 1 inch and the body ball socket brass tube is flush with the socket. My Armourcast Phantom came factory original with large bolts holding the arms on and the torso / legs joint.

theunicorn wrote:
Purple Power, a degreaser that you can buy at Wal-Mart will strip the paint, eat most of the glue and not harm the resin. I have stripped FW and recasts and never in 12+ years has it harmed the model.

Purple Power (it goes by another name up here, I can't remember what's on our jug) is great stuff. I've only used it on plastics and metals, but will be filing away that it's also good on resins for future use.

re the hip joint - I used a threaded 3mm dia x 60mm long steel bar. no magnets. works great.
To lock in position, I might add a small locating spigot pin but he seem just fine without it due to the weight of the top half inducing a nice bit of friction.

Fire_Forever wrote:

theunicorn wrote:
Purple Power, a degreaser that you can buy at Wal-Mart will strip the paint, eat most of the glue and not harm the resin. I have stripped FW and recasts and never in 12+ years has it harmed the model.

Purple Power (it goes by another name up here, I can't remember what's on our jug) is great stuff. I've only used it on plastics and metals, but will be filing away that it's also good on resins for future use.

Purple Power also goes by the name Super Clean. Purple Power comes in a purple container while Super Clean's is white.

 Deathklaat wrote:

Fire_Forever wrote:

theunicorn wrote:
Purple Power, a degreaser that you can buy at Wal-Mart will strip the paint, eat most of the glue and not harm the resin. I have stripped FW and recasts and never in 12+ years has it harmed the model.

Purple Power (it goes by another name up here, I can't remember what's on our jug) is great stuff. I've only used it on plastics and metals, but will be filing away that it's also good on resins for future use.

Purple Power also goes by the name Super Clean. Purple Power comes in a purple container while Super Clean's is white.

That sounds about right - ours comes in a big white jug.

Peeps,
Thank you very much.

I started viewing youtube vids on these, Purple Power, Super Clean, etc. I will try some on a cloth, to less essential areas. And then once cleaned of old glue, then I'll start figuring the pinning/bolt suggestions. So, it might be a bit, but I'll bring this thread back once that stage is complete.

Be safe out there.

I'm in a very similar situation with my own Reaver in that I want to repose the leg from a half-stepping position into a more stable pose. Personally, I would just attach it to the hips, if you magnetise it my gut feeling is that it may rotate or slip about due to being a ball joint. It'd be far simpler to just glue/pin it, one pin should do if you use a length of brass rod and epoxy.

In terms of removing the feet I'd try to level the toes out, you want this thing to be as stable as possible. One trick I've heard is placing the model in the freezer for a couple of hours, which apparently causes the glue to expand and weaken. Worth a try, otherwise it may just be a careful job with a saw. I've already snapped one of the toe joints, although once the pistons and armour are attached it hides it quite well.

 Valkyrie wrote:
One trick I've heard is placing the model in the freezer for a couple of hours, which apparently causes the glue to expand and weaken.

This can work, but it depends a lot on what material the model is made from and what kind of glue was applied. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution. And I don't think it makes the glue expand. Cold causes most materials to shrink, heat makes them expand. Ice is one of those weird, weird exceptions due to going from an amorphous molecule arrangement into a lattice. Presumably this works when there's a differential in the rate of contraction, causing the glue to shear off?

When considering trying to break the glue bonds, the first question is can you tell what was used to glue it together? If it's just superglue then you'll be able to break the bonds using some of the methods mentioned, but I'd never rely on superglue for the major joints on a titan. Two part epoxy is the usual go-to - the vast majority of the joints on my Warlord were made with JB Weld, and anything you could do to break those bonds would do far worse damage to the resin than it would to the epoxy.

However that Reaver does not look like much care went into the assembly process, so it's probably likely that the original owner did just slap superglue on. Why on earth anybody would assemble it with the toes pointing down like that unless they were modelling it stepping on and crushing something, I have no idea. Similarly the angle that the arms are mounted at looks odd. I hope you can successfully break those joints and do it justice. If you can't break them without doing more damage to the titan itself, then I think the best thing you can do is make it a base, or bases for each foot, and either have it crushing something, or just standing on a bit of a mound just so that there's a logical reason for the toes being posed that way.

Fire_Forever wrote:

I'd second the recommendation for some serious hardware for jointing that bad boy together. Magnets aren't going to cut it.

I've got magnets in the waist of my Warlord, and they absolutely do the job if they're big enough - I'm talking 20kg pull magnets here. I've even arranged it so that they're deliberately separated by a few mm rather than direct contact in order to weaken the pull enough that I can actually take it apart without being worried about damaging it. You can pick it up by the torso, and there's no question of the legs falling off. I don't know whether the same sort of size of magnets would fit in the Reaver's waist though, it depends on the size of the waist joint as to whether there's enough space to fit something that beefy. Bolts would certainly do the job too.

 Bellerophon wrote:
However that Reaver does not look like much care went into the assembly process, so it's probably likely that the original owner did just slap superglue on. Why on earth anybody would assemble it with the toes pointing down like that unless they were modelling it stepping on and crushing something, I have no idea. Similarly the angle that the arms are mounted at looks odd. I hope you can successfully break those joints and do it justice. If you can't break them without doing more damage to the titan itself, then I think the best thing you can do is make it a base, or bases for each foot, and either have it crushing something, or just standing on a bit of a mound just so that there's a logical reason for the toes being posed that way.

These statements exactly echo my thoughts.

Dual foot bases with a little bit of terrain or ruins build up, using Masonite as the platform.

Just examining the parts, taking them in and out of its box, has the gun mounts breaking (at the 'pipe/conduit' sections). I might be looking at a full dis-assembly, except for the toes.

 Bellerophon wrote:

Fire_Forever wrote:

I'd second the recommendation for some serious hardware for jointing that bad boy together. Magnets aren't going to cut it.

I've got magnets in the waist of my Warlord, and they absolutely do the job if they're big enough - I'm talking 20kg pull magnets here. I've even arranged it so that they're deliberately separated by a few mm rather than direct contact in order to weaken the pull enough that I can actually take it apart without being worried about damaging it. You can pick it up by the torso, and there's no question of the legs falling off. I don't know whether the same sort of size of magnets would fit in the Reaver's waist though, it depends on the size of the waist joint as to whether there's enough space to fit something that beefy. Bolts would certainly do the job too.

Fair point - standard sized magnets aren't going to cut it. If you have access to, say, old hard-drive magnets or better, those are pretty darn beefy. I was thinking more of the extra bits though, where free rotation could cause issues without enough friction.

Well, if it is superglue that has been used, 4-5H in the freezer should help snapping it off, if you can see where the parts are seperated. (so you dont apply preshure on the wrong spots)

For the feet, you could get a hold of some polymer clay and make some large round rocks as it could allso double as an anker point for you to pin the feet to the base. It should be fairly cheap stuff but it needs to be cured in an oven.