Pylon - assembling the axle

There are 3 parts to fit together. They have all been primed with Chaos Black, followed by a dry brush of Dwarf Bronze, and a light wash of Thraka Green.

 

So one of these:

 

 

And two of those:

 

 

First, I removed the extra paint so the glue bonds to the resin, and not the paint. A Dremel with appropriate bits helped here. An added advantage is that I got a rough surface, which makes for a stronger joint.

For an earlier pylon, I'd used blu-tack to mask the parts I did not want to paint, that works too.

 

 

 

 

 

The glue goes in the axle's groves, and the guides get prepped with a primer/accelerator (I use Filla-Glu and their very convenient Kicka-Pen).

 

 

In order not to get nasty surprises during the final assembly, I fit the pylon onto the axle while the glue dried.

 

 

One final note on pinning: tempting as it might be, do not pin. On an earlier pylon, I pinned where the arrows are in the picture below. All I got was a weaker piece, which snapped in two during my first game with it. I've stuck with just glue since, and haven't had a single problem.

 

Pylon progress

So yes, it's been a while, but at long last I've been making progress. The thing with pylons is, they're big. If you want to take them with you, you pretty much have to go flat-packed. Like so:

 

So what I've done is cut the tip of the pylon with a hacksaw, drilled some holes, and glued magnets in (in this case they're 3x2mm, ensuring a nice powerful fit).

 

On the pylon side, I drilled 3 roughly equidistant holes, glued the magnets in, waited for everything to dry, and then added a spot of paint on top of the magnets. I pressed the other part while the paint was wet, which gave me the place to drill…

 … I then drilled where the paint was, put on more magnets (taking care I got the polarity right), and here we are:

 

Here is the result, on one of my older pylons (I've managed a tighter fit this time around):

 

 

 While I was at it, I assembled the centre of the pylon: glued the 3 parts together, then added 1mm brass rod in 4 places. The rod is not flush, the idea is to fill the hole with a bit of green stuff. It was quick to do, and ensures the thing will not break apart. The joint in the middle will be filled with green stuff as well - easier than spending time trying to get the two parts fit exactly.

Back to the pylon

So it's been a long while, but at long last I'm back with the pylon. First step is to build the base. I've pinned the legs, using a cunningly crafted template to ensure the holes match on both sides. It certainly helps speeding things up too, as this needs to be repeated for all 6 legs.
One side of the template is marked 'hub', the other 'rim', to help ensure I don't drill the holes the wrong way around. An alternate method would be to drill the guiding holes in the exact centre of the template, but I could not be bothered.

 

 

The leg side of things:

 

And that's all for now.

Distraction

I was ready to get started again on the pylon, but my plans got changed when I received my latest ForgeWorld order. Onto the Tomb Stalker.

There are quite a few bits in the kit. First, the body parts: the head, the tail, and 10 segments.

 

Then, the legs - 4 sprues with 6 legs each. Only 20 are needed, the extra number is to help with posing – which is nice.

 

There are 5 sprues with 4 leg claws each (top of the below pic), and 2 holding an "energy forcipule" (the gauss weapon), and an antenna (bottom). Note there is a hole towards the tip of the blade, this is not a bubble, it is used to help glue the gun muzzle in place.

 

 

Then come the other bits used to fully build the forcipules. I've added a quick note below on how it all fits.

 

One other sprue holds 2 mandibles (extreme left), and 20 "tertiary velocitators" – small legs going in between the main ones.

Last, the manipulators. This is the part I had most trouble with, I found them quite fragile. The good news is that as they are very light, any breaks can easily be glued back.

The documentation provided by ForgeWorld is quite good, just thought I'd expand a bit on the assembly of the forcipules. The below picture indicates how all the bits fit together.

 

The result:

 

Drat…

Just when I was getting started - I break my last 1mm drill bit, so cannot start the pylon's assembly. Plus, the batteries on my camera have given up the ghost, so cannot take pictures either. I guess I'll migrate my old posts instead…

Pylon

To get us started, I'll try to document my building of a Necron pylon. First things first: you'll need to verify you've got all the bits in the kit, clean the pieces using cold soapy water, straighten any bended bits with warm water, and remove the extra bits of resin, using a combination of saw, Dremel, and sand paper (usual warnings apply: resin is toxic, wear a mask and protect your eyes). In the pictures below I've marked in purple all the bits to be removed. Note: I start with the cleaning and then do the sanding, and have not had any issues with peeling paint. Others will prefer to sand first and clean later.

 

 

 

Moving in

I have been told that my old blog was not that easy to link to. So hey, hello Blogger… Hopefully this will make things simpler.