<![CDATA[Latest posts for the thread "Building, Modifying and painting a Forgeworld Acastus Knight Asterius"]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/8.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net Building, Modifying and painting a Forgeworld Acastus Knight Asterius I have been asked by people to keep them up to date with the latest project: The biggest knight there is The Asterius!

This is where I will be documenting the process. I will attempt to go into as much detail as possible and update this thread as often as I can.

Monday 22-02-2021
I was sat at my lunch table at home during, you guessed it, lunchtime when the front door rang! And to my surprise, my new Kit had already arrived. I expected it to take weeks from the day I ordered but it was much faster than last time.
Ohh well, I won't complain. It was a bit of a shock though since I selected the free and tracked delivery when I ordered this thing, but no dispatch order had been sent to my email.
Anyway, I still had half a day of work to go through before I could even take a good look inside the box.
When I finally did open the cardboard shipping box, I was greeted by this:


I knew this thing was going to be big, that's at least half of the appeal, but I don't think I realized quite how big this thing was going to be.
I put the main carapace of this next to a spare knock-off carapace that I had laying around (which I had bought to be part of the base for another knight at one point) Ohh boy, this thing is chonky!


Next up, time to check if I have all the parts, and if there is anything broken or terribly warped!
To my surprise, only one part was slightly warped, with no obvious huge defects anywhere, and I had some extra parts!
This is part of the reason I went with the Asterius over the Porphyrion. You can really see that the molds for the parts on the Asterius are new and in great shape.



Tuesday 23-02-2021
It was time for the part of the process that everyone who has ever worked with resin knows, and hates! Giving it a bath and a scrub!
I took a short break from work (I work from home, like everyone else currently) and filled up the bathtub with soapy water since there are THAT many parts!
After work, and after dinner I felt the parts had soaked enough and were ready for a scrub.
So I put on a podcast about something 40k competitive related ( don't know why I hardly ever play the tabletop game. But it was a good podcast!) and got to scrubbing.
Two hours, sore knees from kneeling next to the bathtub, and two wrinkled and sore hands later and I had all parts cleaned and lined up!


Afterward, I spent some time looking at the instructions and I found something I didn't like about the kit. As you can see, the mortar battery is fixed to the Carapace with just two very small hinges.

Not only is that WAY too flimsy, since I am going to model mine with the mortar battery open, it is also not realistic.
I feel like I might have caught some of you off guard with that last statement, so let me explain.
The models in 40K are only vaguely realistic by themselves, but I like my models to at least be somewhat plausible.
The mortar battery opening on its own, when only attached to that little hinge? That isn't going to cut it. I feel that FW had some lazy design there especially because the Porphyrion comes with these nice pistons
for its missile bay, as you can see


Luckily, I still had to order some supplies like new superglue, brushes, and some modeling putty. So I a plan formed in my head on how to remedy this situation!
I ordered the supplies and the other things I needed for this little modification at an online store and waited for those too to arrive.

Wednesday 24-02-2021
The start of the de-spruening! Well before that, I actually started this update post thing. But there's probably a date on here somewhere that told you that.
Anyway! I started taking off the casting sprues.
I put in a new blade in my box cutter, Took out the big and small pairs of snips, got my small file set ready, and put a new blade in my razor saw!
Also, I put on a dust mask and vacuumed the desk after I was done with every part because I HATE resin dust, and I want to remove as much of it as I can.
That's because the room I work in is also the room that my elderly cat sleeps in at night, so I don't want her to breathe resin dust either.
Take care of your lungs folks! You've only got two of them.
I got done with the parts of the torso assembly and the carapace today and then I gave up because my hands hurt. It's a new day tomorrow!


Thursday 25-02-2021 & Friday 26-02-2021
Nothing exciting is happening currently. It's just me getting covered in resin dust, and also immediately cleaning off said resin dust.
I think I am about halfway done with sanding the parts. I am finding a few cavities in the resin here and there that I will address in the next step after sanding is done.
For now, I am sanding most things by hand with my set of precision files since a lot of the bits have fine detail that I want to hurt as little as possible.
But for the parts that allow it, I use the little sanding jig that you can see in the bottom right corner of the picture.
I basically just clamped my Dremel to the desk and clamped the tip of the vacuum cleaner next to it to get as much of the dust as possible since this thing can kick it quite far.
I have it set to the lowest speed, which is 2000RPM, and I have the finest wheel on it, but I still have to be SUPER careful since this thing still absolutely chews through the resin.
This build is getting the skills I have. To be truthful, I H A T E cleaning mold lines and on the plastic kits, I have a tendency to leave them if I can.
Don't get me wrong, I clean them I need to, but I will absolutely leave them if they end up not being visible in the finished piece.
Not so here though, I am forcing myself to go the extra mile and to get everything I can, as well as I can.


Thursday 27-02-2021 & Friday 28-02-2021
Well, you guessed it, more sanding was done this weekend. Some parts had quite significant mold lines and took much more time than I expected.
Commonly, when I see people sanding off mold lines, I see them use those disposable nailfile-type things. And But if you want to also build an Asterius I recommend you get a set of precision files.
Some parts like the grates over the Conversion Beam Cannons have mold lines inside between the spokes. You could NEVER get them with the disposable files.
Back to the build.
I got done with all the sanding today (the 28th of February) and I am so glad this bit is over. I love building models, but I really dislike the cleaning and sanding phase of it all.
After that, I rinsed all the parts off again with water to get rid of the last bits of dust and left all the parts to dry overnight.
I also did a bit of measuring at this point. Namely, I weighed just the resin parts together and it weighs a massive 952 grams! (Google tells me that that is 33,6 ounces, for my American friends!)
For comparison, I took my fully painted and based Questoris Knight Warden (No carapace weapons) from my display cabinet and put it on the scale and it's just 186 Grams (6,6 ounces)
This thing is already over 5 times heavier than the most common Knights out there! There isn't even any glue, paint, or a base on this thing!
The next steps are filling in the small number of bubbles that I found, Straightening up the few warped parts, and waiting for my !#$^^*!*^@# parts to arrive from Germany.
Ohh, almost forgot, I also have to repair the 1 part that I damaged during this cleanup phase! I took a chip out of one of the dish things that are at the end of the weapons.
It will be an easy repair with some Milliput. But that is all for another time.



]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064749.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064749.page GMT Building, Modifying and painting a Forgeworld Acastus Knight Asterius
Good spot with the hinges there, didn't realise the Asterius doesn't come with the pistons. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064761.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064761.page GMT Building, Modifying and painting a Forgeworld Acastus Knight Asterius
 Valkyrie wrote:
Damn this looks like a cool project. Can't wait to see how it develops.

Good spot with the hinges there, didn't realise the Asterius doesn't come with the pistons.


For sure this is the biggest project I've undertaken! I also can't wait to see how this process goes.
As I write this I am in the process of taking off the sprues, fixing and sanding mould lines etc. This might take a while lol]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064806.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11064806.page GMT Building, Modifying and painting a Forgeworld Acastus Knight Asterius http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11067578.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/796467/11067578.page GMT