Many thanks for that Kev, that's a great idea! Funnily enough we only threw out one of those tubes of tomato puree just before Christmas - it never occurred to me to salvage that tube (mind you, the use by date was around the year 2000! )
I'm currently working on the armour 'improvements' at the moment and tescos is involved in that as well - I never thought I'd be using tuna in this build!!

Back soon.


Robin.

Thanks so much for those kind words Dave! I suppose, where the surgery on Frederick's head is concerned, "jaw dropping" is about as apt as you can get!!

OK then, with this instalment, we begin the complicated part of the main torso section of the model. In Photo 1 we have the front torso half as it comes out of the box. Looking at this overall shot, the top neckpiece or neck-guard is called the BEVOR. In later centuries, ie, the time of the Wars of the Roses, the Bevor was a separate collar which came up underneath the sallet helmet to mouth level, but in the case of Frederick’s armour the Bevor is fixed to the Helm itself. Below the Bevor is the BREASTPLATE. The breastplate, unlike classical Greek and Roman examples is composed of two sections not just one. The upper or inner part is actually called the breastplate but the lower or outer part is known as the PLACARD. The Helm is attached to the Placard via the Bevor by a stout leather strap front and back, which, as you can see here is represented by an already moulded on strap and buckle. Below the Placard are a series of overlapping steel hoops running from the upper thighs to the waist, this is the FAULD. In most medieval suits of armour of this time this would be the lowest part of the body armour with the legs protected by their own plates. Some suits however (especially those belonging to the highest nobility) would have extra protection for the upper thighs consisting of two shaped steel plates strapped to the Fauld called TASSETS. In the kit these are also moulded onto the main torso as shown here.
OK, that’s most of the history lesson done (well done those still reading!) In Photo 2 we start the surgery! The first task is to remove the Tassets from the bottom of the torso piece. There are no simple straight lines on these parts so razor sawing was not possible unfortunately. There’s only one real way to get these bits off and that is to repeatedly score or cut down into the plastic with a fine pointed modelling knife blade, following the curved edges of the Tassets over and over until you finally begin to come through on the inside. To make it a little easier, once the grey plastic interior begins to show a thin whiter line, which is the stressing of the plastic from the cutting action, you can then score along that line from the inside to finish off the cut. In the second photo the left hand Tasset has finally been cut away and the moulded on strap has been sanded down flat with very fine glass paper. Also seen here, and in Photo 3, is that the Bevor strap has also been sanded away. After I took these photos I hit on the idea of first drilling out little pilot holes where the strap rivets will be before sanding the straps off – that way I’ve still got the accurate location points for the replacement ‘3D’ straps after the original moulding has been removed! Also in Photo 3, notice the ‘dimpled’ surface around the armpits – this is the kit representation of the mail (or maille in the old French), this is one of the areas, which is (hopefully) going to be improved further down the line. Photo 4 illustrates the point at which both of the Tassets have been removed, it also highlights one of the very few omissions that Imai made in this highly detailed kit! The box top art correctly shows the Tassets each hanging from two leather straps but the kit only has the inner one moulded on! You can make out two tiny holes drilled into the upper edge of each Tasset in this photo, one is in line with the moulded strap and the other marks where the missing strap will eventually be added in. The top part of the straps are still visible here on the lowest Fauld, I then drilled out the raised rivets on those and sanded off the moulded straps completely. As you’ll see later in this section, the sanding didn’t stop there! Photo 5 shows the other half of the torso with the more complicated backplate section. The longer rear leather strap from the Bevor to the rear Placard is clearly visible here and just like the front one, this one’s got to go too! If you look at the very bottom of the Fauld plates you can see another two moulded on straps – these are holding on the very lowest plate which, unlike the ones above is a completely separate piece which ‘hinges’ on those straps. Just like the Tassets at the front, this section also has to be scored over and over to remove it as well, as shown in Photo 6. This same piece is shown inverted in Photo 7 in the process of having the ridges removed from the inside. As the plates are moulded in one piece, the stepped ridges on the outside are replicated on the inside and need to be sanded down. As you will see in the next instalment however, in this particular case I needn’t have actually bothered with this! Coming back to the single moulding again, this is where a little problem with the lowest Fauld plate rears its head. On the real armour, the plates are slightly overlapped which is fine on the upper rings but if the lowest sections are removed then the one above is now shorter than it should be (the underlying overlap having been removed as well!) This means that both front and back lowest plates need to be re-made so the ‘loose’ bits can be strapped to them, (don't worry, it gets clearer in the next post!) In Photo 8 the lowest front plate has been covered with masking tape to mark out the replacement. You can just make out the actual bottom of the plastic original through the tape, the real bottom is just about level with the two brown felt tip lines in the middle and then running parallel with that point to the edges. Fortunately there is enough depth in the moulded ridges to run the felt tip along to mark the curvy top edge. After the tape had been cut to size it was stuck down onto the material from which the new pieces of armour were to be made as shown in Photo 9 – a washed, cut down and rolled flat Tescos Tuna tin! This is actually the outside of the tin, the inside being an anodised gold colour. It’s a real pity this will have to be primed and silver foiled later – it makes a lovely steel effect on its own but I’ll have to keep all the metal work looking the same for continuity. With the tape stuck down I then used the modelling knife blade to carefully score around the shape ending up with the marking shown in Photo 10 ready to be cut out with a good pair of quite thin scissors.
In the second part of the torso re-styling, the tuna tin armour is cut out and the blacksmithing it into shape begins!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Many thanks for that Kev, I've learnt something now as well, never knew that metal plates in industry were called placards! (I've also since learnt that that part of the armour can either be called a Placard or a Placart - just regional European variations!)
You're right about the Samurai armour containing lots of Tassets, in European armour the tassets became the name for the extra 'add-on' plates whereas in the Japanese and Chinese suits of armour it was used to describe the individual bits of metal from which the armour was constructed. In Europe that style of armour would have simply been called a 'Coat of Plates'
I like that idea of real leather for the straps, at the moment I was planning on making the straps from the decra-led strip but I do have some offcuts of various leathers here somewhere - if I do find them I'll try slicing it down to scale thickness and see how it looks. The buckles are indeed going to be scale metal ones, I've just spent the entire evening trying to get them made out of brass wire - result: 3 good ones!
Many thanks as well for the comments about the tuna tin but the real genius should go to Stevie-o, I got the idea from his brilliant 'Downed Zero' diorama where he used beer cans to create the destroyed wing tips!
Oh well, back to the soldering iron!

Robin.

And now for those holes!
Looking at the original armour as shown in Photo 7, you can see a line of small brass rivets running down the plates of the Fauld. I believe those rivets are what actually support the armour and they are connected to a thick leather strip running down the inside of the steel plates. There are four such strips, two at the front in the location shown here and another two on the rear, slightly further back around. The basic design of the strap system is shown in Diagram 8. In actual fact I’ve put the steel plates in upside down! They should be overlapping on the inside, not the outside, but the principle is the same!
The first job was to mark out the location of the four sets of rivet lines as shown in Photo 9. This was first accomplished with a pencil line followed up with a piece of masking tape stuck down along those lines as seen here. A small hole was then drilled in each plate; I think it’s about 0.8mm in diameter. After the armour has been gilded and washed, a tiny brass pin will be inserted into each hole to form the rivets, a ‘dry run’ is shown in Photo 10. These are currently my smallest, finest brass pins, I’m not exactly sure if they came with one of the ship kits or whether I bought them in the Model Shop, even these are a little over-scale so I’ll either have to find a pack of even smaller ones or possibly try to get them to fit in a drill chuck and grind the pin-heads down a little (I tried doing one by hand in the pin vice on a diamond dust file but only succeeded in grinding the entire head off!)
Photo 11 illustrates the first ‘awkward’ decision I came to in the build – the two halves of the torso are supposed to be glued together encasing the shoulder pins for the arms. Built according to the kit instructions, this would give the arms a little bit of movement in both rotation and up and down. The pose I’m hoping to achieve for Frederick is a little more ‘energetic’ than this however, and since the arm halves have to be glued together over these shoulder pins I would have to construct them attached to the torso from the start. It is going to be far easier to make up the arms as separate components and then glue them into the shoulders so I decided to leave these two moveable pins out. The inner locating rim will be filed off leaving me with a simple peg to be glued in once the arms are completed. Finally in Photo 12 we have the torso glued together at last. Once all the finicky filing and sanding has been done I’ll be able to superglue the new metal plates into position and then work out how two of the essential ‘up-grades’ to the torso will be constructed – the securing straps and the brass hinges.

Until then (and some head scratching) Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Grateful thanks again for those kind words Kev! I think a lot of it is down to the theme of the model - there certainly isn't a glut of medieval subjects on the site at the moment!
Personally that's a pity as the Ancient / Medieval periods are my favourites - there's such a wide range of subjects that can be covered, from Classical Greece and Rome through Viking, Norman and Crusades right up to Richard III. If only the injection plastic kit manufacturers would give us more to work with! (What I really mean is more to hack to bits!)
I'm very much like yourself with regards to the text - a quick "I made this up and stuck it to that and Hey Presto" would be much easier to put together (in every sense!) but I love reading about the 'nitty gritty' of exactly HOW it was made! The more I can understand how someone else came up with a solution to a problem, the more ideas I can come up with to create something for my own needs! The simple and elegant solution to the square buckle shown below is a perfect example!
Anyhows, I do try to keep the wording down (sometimes ) but on occasion 'A thousand words are worth a couple of photos I couldn't take!!'
Since typing out this entry I've sent off for a leather offcut on Ebay to try out 'real leather' straps - I can't keep secretly removing the insides of Mum's purse!

Buckles and Hinges Pt 1: The Buckles

The biggest problem I encountered at first was trying to form the brass wire into rectangles small enough for this scale. I tried using every mini pair of pliers I had but even the smallest and finest still wouldn’t allow me to bend accurate and even shaped rectangles. The answer came, as many others have done, whilst searching for ready made buckles on the internet. I came across an explanation by another modeller who was making up seat belt buckles for 1/35 scale vehicles – he was using fuse wire instead of the 0.5mm brass wire used here but his method of obtaining the initial squares was so obvious I still feel pretty stupid for not seeing it before! Instead of trying to form the shapes with pliers, all you have to do is bend the wire around a suitably shaped former – like I said – so obvious, but as is often the case in modelling, tunnel vision sometimes takes over – once I’d decided on using pliers I became fixated on that method alone!
Photo 1 illustrates the simple method itself. The other chap had used a square plasticard core but to form brass wire I needed something as strong as the brass – ie, more brass! I used three different sized brass square rods for the buckles, the two larger ones had a hole drilled through to start the coil off with, the thinnest one was too small for that so I simply gripped the start of the wire against the rod with pliers. The brass wire was wrapped around the rod, keeping it as tight as possible before cutting off the start end and sliding the resulting coil off the rod as shown in Photo 2.
This first batch was then snipped up through the middle with my finest wire cutters to create the set of buckle shapes as shown in Photo 3. As you might notice, a couple of them are not exactly ‘square’, I later refined the process, squeezing the coil against the rod to even up the sides and then cutting the coil off by slicing down the middle with a thin cutting disk instead of using the wire cutters. The subsequent sets were better shaped! The next step was to create the central bar over which the eventual strap will pass. This was probably the most exasperating task so far on this build (with the possible exception of the chain mail experiments to date). The bar had to be cut to such an exact size that many ended up going just a hair’s width under size, which made them useless! It was a case of cutting just oversized and then grinding down each end of a 2mm? Piece of brass until it could ‘snap’ into position, holding itself in the middle until I could fix it with a tiny drop of solder as shown in Photo 4. More than once I got it just perfect only for the ruddy thing to ping out of the tweezers and vanish into oblivion! The perfect fits were snapped into place using the bottom of the large cylindrical aluminium knife handle and then the whole thing was gripped in the very tip of the spring tweezers for soldering (and another great opportunity for the ‘pinging fairy’ to strike!) Three finished buckles can be seen in Photo 5 alongside the 0.5mm wire used to form them, whilst in Photo 6 you can see the growing collection of buckles – there are three sizes here, the smallest ones are for the side straps of the breastplate, faulds and tassets, the middle sized pair are for the straps securing the helm to the bevor and the largest one is the main buckle for Frederick’s sword belt. There is another set of buckles to come yet – the ones for the tightening straps on the arm and leg armours – these will be even smaller!
In the next part of this section – Forming the Hinges.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

I fell a little behind with this but have just caught up and wow

It never ceases to amaze me the skill that goes into your builds a well as the endless patience!

The subject matter I'm sorry to say isn't something that appeals to me, however saying that doesn't stop me enjoying and admiring your build

Many thanks to Alan, Dave and Ian, much appreciated as always! Modelling is such a vast ranging hobby - far wider than most I should think with everything from dinosaurs to sci-fi (two of my personal favourites right there!) To me, model cars and trucks are the least appealing although even then, chuck in a couple of '50 cals and turn it into something out of Mad Max and I'm in!

I've split the second part of 'Buckles and Hinges into two parts - mostly because the leather turned up and I've gone back to the buckles again! Anyhow here's the first bit!

A test fit of sorts is shown in Photo 7 running on from last week with three of the side strap buckles placed on the torso, whilst the final shot for the buckle collection is seen in Photo 8. You can see those smaller silver buckles at the back of the group. These were made from a smaller 0.4mm silver plated wire which I found in the local Hobbycraft store – a 20m roll for just £2 – not bad at all considering the ebay prices were very similar! I did come across a slight problem here though, I assumed the wire was silver plated brass but when I sanded down the solder joints I discovered that it seems to be silver plated copper instead. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get the central bar to fit inside these which leaves me with a decision for later – do I solder them, sand them off and then paint them back to silver or simply squeeze them into shape and leave the silver plating intact? Time will tell on that one. Note also at the top left an initial trial using a tiny bit of black leather inserted through one of the brass buckles. This is a more supple leather than the off cuts I’m still looking for and was consequently more difficult to slice down to scale thickness. It’s not bad though, but I will still try and get some tan coloured leather to try out before I decide how to make the straps for real.
And now on to the brass hinges!
I did a lot of thinking on these hinges – I considered trying to fabricate them out of actual thin brass sheet or strip, the problem is, they are so ruddy small that it’s almost impossible to hold them with anything in order to file or sand the ends smooth! In the end I realised that I already had a good facsimile of this brass right in front of me – Mum’s old eye ointment tubes again! The same material which I had used for corrugated panels, was already plated with a gold/brass finish on the other side! (As is shown in Photo 9). The first task was to introduce a line of ‘rivets’ into the opposite silver side using the good old circular saw blade from the rotary tool set as illustrated in Photo 10. What I haven’t shown here for clarity is the six inch steel ruler, which I first placed in position to roll the saw blade along. With the first line in place, a second was then embossed a couple of mm inside the first. This is shown in Photo 11 with the tube metal now brass side up showing the rivets in relief. With the sheet upside down again, the steel rule was used once more to scribe a line or channel between the two rows of rivets as shown in Photo 12. When that was done, we then have a strip of ‘hinges’ with the central bar or pivot running down the middle as in Photo 13. Photos 14 and 15 look pretty similar – this is because the thin coat of Humbrol Black Enamel Wash doesn’t appear as dark in the photos as it does to the human eye! When the hinges are finally glued onto the silver gilded armour, I’ll probably give them another wash to emphasize the shadows further. All that remained then was to slice the hinges off the strip, each one having two sets of rivets as shown in Photo 16. The cutting process does flatten the ends of the central bar in some cases but this can be remedied by carefully re-embossing the channel with the large sewing needle – and finally for the hinges, Photo 17 illustrates the set of five, temporarily placed on the left side of the armour where they will be glued after the silvering and ‘steel’ washing is complete.
In the meantime, my leather off cut has arrived from ebay! It is shown in it’s entirety in Photo 18 and is a 8 x 2.5” piece of “Warm Beige” which worked out at about £1.30 or so. Unfortunately it is also of the ‘soft’ and pliable type which, from my point of view, is a little more difficult to work with as I mentioned compared to the stiff type (like briefcases are made from for example). As I still can’t find my old pieces of leather, I’ll have to go with what I can find! I do like the colour however, I think it’ll go really well up against the steel plates later on. As you can see from the close ups in Photos 19 and 20, the leather is way over thickness for this scale and in the next part of this section I’ll show how the initial trial straps were formed. In working on them and after some further web research, I discovered that there was indeed an easier way to accomplish what I’ve done so far (I thought there would be!) So I’m now waiting for another delivery from China – more on that in the next instalment!

Until then –Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Before I begin hacking up Frederick’s left arm, here’s a quick example of how this type of jointed armour actually works. Unfortunately I don’t possess a piece of arm protection in this style (mine is a two piece shoulder and forearm with no elbow protection) but I do have leg armour with the same riveted ‘lobster-plate’ joint as shown in Photo 1 which will serve the same purpose. Apologies for the dull finish, I should have polished this up months ago! Photo 2 illustrates the moving joint system with the straight limb shown on the left and the flexed or bent limb on the right. Most of the movement is taken up with the knee (or elbow) piece, and the riveted plate below it. The knee ‘bowl’ is called the Poleyn but the corresponding elbow piece would be called the Couter. If you compare the Couter and adjoining plate in the two photos you can see that there is more of the plate showing in the bent photo illustrating how the Couter has rotated up and back from it. Both of those plates are capable of hinging and in the highest grades of armour the movement in both would probably be about the same.
Photo 3 shows the three parts of the main left arm (there are another three parts later to make up the gauntlet). As you can see everything is moulded ‘in-situ’, and despite the moulding being of excellent quality, a lot of it is going to have to be replaced in order to bend the arm. Photo 4 shows the movable shoulder joint in place on the inner peg. If following the kit instructions to the letter, those two rims on the plug would have been used to trap the joint between the two halves of the torso giving the arm some movement at the shoulder.
In Photo 5 we have a close up view of the elbow joint itself. There were two ways of going about altering the joint, I could either attempt to carefully pare away under the protective ‘butterfly’ plates seen here and then, equally carefully try and cut into the edge of the Couter to salvage as much of the fine detail as possible or I could simply hack off the parts mentioned above and start from scratch. Looking at Photo 6 you’d probably think I went for option 2 but in actual fact I did make an attempt to use the butterfly part! Despite my best attempts, once I began to cut or slice under those ‘wings’ the plastic simply started to curl upwards and eventually cracked away from the rest of the arm. With one side lost, there was no point trying to save the other so after filing down the rivet and replacing it with a drill hole to mark the spot the rest of the butterfly was rapidly removed with blade, grinder and file as shown here. Photo 7 is actually out of sequence! Before attempting the salvage option I took the precaution of marking out the shape of the butterfly using masking tape and a permanent marker pen as shown here (just in case!) As the attempt was a dismal failure this was just as well and the masking tape template was then used to cut out a replacement part in the tuna tin metal. This was then drilled through to take an Amati ‘very fine’ brass pin as shown in Photo 8.
The real butchery begins in Photo 9! The Couter has been sawn through on the inner line beside the ‘dome’. In retrospect, this was a mistake as I later realised that the first riveted plate beside the dome isn’t in fact a separate piece but is actually part of the dome. This meant I’d have to do some ‘repair’ work later on, this error hopefully won’t be repeated on the right arm! The same stage is shown from the other side in Photo 10, the two arrows indicate the remains of the outer riveted plates – these will have to be sanded away smooth to the surface to provide the under-surface which the outer plates (to be made from the metal can) would be sitting on. Also due for removal is the moulded on strap at the bottom left to be replaced with a real leather one later on. The moulded rivet was again filed down and replaced with a marking hole for a brass pin. I gently flexed the arm into a more bent position hoping that the Couter might stay where it was but in the event it did part company on one side so I removed it completely as shown here for easier cleaning up, in Photo 11. Also shown here is a section of brass rod, bent into the angle at which the arm will be ‘set’. What is probably obvious in the pic but wasn’t to me until I tried to fit the rod in, is that it was far too long to go into both halves of the arm at the same time! It was consequently reduced down in length until I could just get it in, at which point the arm was super glued to the rod (by dribbling the glue down inside) and finally, the Couter was also super glued to the ‘elbow’ of the rod and also liquid poly-glued back to the edges of the plastic armour as seen here in Photo 12.
In the second part of this section the metal armour plates are formed to fill in the gaps in Frederick’s arm, the repair to reform the Couter is achieved and the armoured gauntlet receives it’s own alterations.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Many thanks for those kind words Ian! In this installment the new armour sections finally begin to like actual armour!

Photo 13 shows the first of the metal replacement plates under construction. A strip of about 2.5mm has been cut off the tuna tin metal and was then simply pressed around a suitable wooden dowel to form it into a curve. After drilling the rivet hole in the starting end, the now curved strip was offered up to the plastic arm and the other end marked in with a thin permanent marker as just visible in this photo. The position of the other rivet was then marked in and using a hard nail, a small punch mark was hammered into the strip to aid drilling out the second hole with the pin vice and drill bit as shown here. (Keeping the darned thing still to be hammered was not easy!)
Once the second hole was drilled out, the strip was cut off along the mark and the completed strip placed onto the plastic arm as shown in Photo 14. As with the full size armour, the effect of forming the strip around the dowel creates a sort of ‘sprung steel’ and the new metal plate will hold itself in position whilst a small amount of thin super glue is applied around the edges with a cocktail stick, ‘wicking’ itself under the plate to fix it in position permanently. The composite Photo 15 shows the first three plates in position following the same procedure as outlined above – the first plate now has its overlapping companion on the wrist end of the arm and the first plate has been fitted on the shoulder end as well. As I said before, it’s a real pity that this lovely ‘steel’ effect has to be silvered over to tie all the metal and plastic sections together later on! Photo 16 is almost a repeat of 13 with the last of the articulated plates sprung into place to be marked for cutting off. At this point, this was as far as I’d originally intended to go with the arm, leaving the rest of the armour as it came on the kit. The more I looked at it however I kept thinking why not try the upper arm section too? The thinking was ‘ it’s only a simple cylinder with no compound curves – how difficult can it be?’ In the end I had a go and, lo and behold, it was easy enough to do - I stuck a piece of masking tape over the plastic part, marked around the edge and then cut it out of the tuna tin before curving it into shape around a slightly smaller wooden former (a paintbrush handle in this case) so that the finished piece would be ‘clipped’ in place for gluing. The result is shown in Photos 17 and 18, the new piece stands out a lot more from the underlying layer than the moulded on original, something that will be far more convincing when the ring mail is added on much later. Also seen in these two photos is the thin layer of Milliput epoxy putty used to ‘fair in’ the new plates adjoining the Couter. This extra depth can be seen even clearer in yet another Photo 18 (I’ve only just realised the numbering mistake – too late now!) shown with the protective butterfly wings also temporarily back in place. The dimpled bottom layer will eventually be composed of individual metal rings – but not until some more Milliput application!
Photo 19 (without the butterfly again) illustrates one half of the armoured gauntlet placed on the end of the arm to show how it fits on the end of the peg at the wrist. The two ‘tabs’ sticking up on the edge are just the sprue attachments which I hadn’t yet removed at this point. The lower arm is composed of these two halves together with a single piece hand insert which is shown in Photo 20 (front and back views) In the finished model, this hand will be gripping the handle strap of Frederick’s shield so a little more articulation is required from the fingers. The first step for this is shown in Photo 21 – the hand has been cleaned up from the slight amount of plastic ‘flash’ evident in the previous pic and then the fingers have been sliced off at the first and second knuckles which corresponds to the moulded strap. This strap is nothing to do with the shield however, this is the gauntlet’s own strap which secures the hand to the moveable articulated plates protecting the hand inside.
In the third part of this section, I'll be re-modelling that hand and beginning to silver leaf the gauntlet. As this is a completely separate piece, I can bring it to it’s finished condition now and then lay it aside until final assembly.

Until then Happy modelling to you All!

Robin.

Just having a Senior moment here! I couldn't work out why I couldn't paste the latest text into the diary - suddenly realised it might have something to do with the fact that I haven't copied the text yet!! Ho-hum!
Anyhow...

In Photo 1 we have the two half pieces of the left Pauldron, this is the articulated shoulder armour. In the following centuries, the Pauldron would itself be protected by a second layer of steel, a single large plate called the Gardbrace but in Frederick’s time the Pauldron was considered sufficient. The kit parts have been glued together in Photo 2 and are shown together with the first replacement steel plate. This was formed from the tuna tin metal by first sticking a strip of masking tape over the bottom-most plate or Fauld, marking the edges of the plate with a thin permanent marker pen and then sticking the marked tape down onto the tuna tin and cutting out the design. The resulting metal copy was then carefully bent into shape by forming it over a variety of wooden paintbrush handles with the armpit ‘kink’ bent into the metal with a pair of long nosed electrical pliers. This first section is then shown placed over the plastic kit original to check the shape in Photo 3. Note the pre-drilled ‘rivet’ hole in the ends, which will take the smallest brass pins to secure the individual parts together.
The second plate has been formed in the same way and temporarily fixed with the brass pins in Photo 4, the masking tape is marked along the upper edge and sides, following the kit contours, but is continued down about halfway under the plate below to create the ability to articulate without leaving dangerous gaps in the armour. Plate number three is attached in Photo 5 and now you can begin to see the shape of the lower part of the armour taking form. I found it easier to drill the rivet holes in each successive layer after it had been attached to the one below – this way the holes can be made to line up a little better!
I have now arrived at the first dilemma with this part of the armour. There are two ways I can proceed – the first involves trying to make the entire Pauldron from scratch using the tuna metal. If I can achieve this, this would be my preferred course of action as all the parts of the shoulder would be uniform in thickness and appearance. The problem is, the next section, the largest part of the shoulder is not as easy to produce. Unlike the other plates above and below it, which are basically simple curves (with a ‘kink’ in the lower ones), the central piece is far more complex with compound curves and a sort of ‘expanding’ effect under the armpit at the front. Instead of simply bending the metal around rounded wooden formers, this part will need some bashing with a hammer to get it right!
The second method will be to form the upper and lower plates out of the metal and to employ the kit part to provide the central section. This has two problems – the first is the thickness of the plastic part – irrelevant on the bottom section as those metal plates fit over the top of the plastic (which will of course require the original lower plates to be sanded down smooth) but on the top section the new plates will be fitting underneath the plastic so the plastic part will need to be thinned down dramatically as much as possible. The second problem is shown in Photo 6 – in the kit, the Pauldron is designed to fit over the arm using the sockets seen here. In the next instalment you’ll see the arm ‘fitted’ in place (not really though as I’ve sanded off the locating lugs!) In reality, the Pauldron is secured by a leather strap under the arm with another one at the top linking the Pauldron to the breastplate/backplate. If I do use the kit part I’ll need to grind down those sockets completely so that the shoulder piece just ‘sits’ on the arm allowing the arm to rotate inside it. I’ve started bashing the tin around this weekend – so far so good but wish me luck and we’ll see how it went next time!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.