I certainly don't show it off in public as it hit me in the upper thigh lol

Martyn

Moving on to Frederick's right arm!

In Photo 1 the entire right arm from the shoulder to the forearm has been glued together and after sufficient time to set hard the forearm section has been sawn off leaving the elbow joint still attached to the upper arm, (as in the left arm, the wrist and hand is a separate section again). As you can just make out in this pic and a little clearer in the following ones, we have the same ‘universal joint’ at the shoulder, this was kept moveable to allow final positioning later and the flange or rim at the extreme end will be sanded away in order to allow the ‘plug’ to fit into the torso. If I’d been building this out of the box of course, that flange would have been secured between the two torso halves to allow some degree of movement (as would similar fittings on the legs). You can just make out the ‘chain mail’ effect beneath the elbow joint, this is also found under the forearm piece as well and both parts of the arm have had the mail trimmed back at about 30 degrees from the moulded on strap around the elbow, this will allow the arm to be bent to almost a right angle as shown in Photo 4. Before we get to that point however, once the elbow joint was removed completely I used masking tape to cover the upper arm plate known as the “Rerebrace” and to mark out the outline of the plate, this will be replaced by a tuna tin version to match up with the left arm. More on that piece a little later on! With the Rerebrace marked up and cut out of the tin, the next job was to fix the two, now separate halves of the arm back together in the new bent position. In Photo 3 the thick brass rod, bent at ninety degrees, and cut to fit the hollow arm sections has been super glued into the forearm. You can just make out to the left of where the brass rod enters the arm how the mail has been filed back at that steeper angle mentioned earlier. In Photo 4 the protruding brass rod has been super glued into the upper arm, securing the limb in the bent position. As well as the super glue, the two mailed parts of the plastic are also touching each other so polystyrene glue was applied there to fuse the plastic parts together as well. In the foreground is the elbow joint removed at the beginning, however, to get as it looks here, there were a couple of extra jobs to do as you can see in Photo 5. That photo shows the elbow piece as it was immediately after cutting it away from the arm sections. There are a couple of plates to be made from the tin, which allows the elbow to flex in real life. Unfortunately, these plates protrude from under the elbow and to allow those to be put in, the thick plastic of the kit part has to be ground down to as close to a scale thickness as possible as illustrated in Photo 6 (and also Photo 4 which was taken after this was done!) Apologies for the focus on that one! Unfortunately for me, the thinning down process revealed a little flaw in the moulding on the inside of the elbow piece which resulted in the loss of the extreme bottom of the little flange which runs around the edge of the elbow as shown in Photo 7. This left me with two alternatives: either to try and fill in the missing bit or to remove the entire flange and add a new one out of the tuna tin. Trying to fill it was probably going to be a heap of trouble, not only was the missing section really thin but it would need a hole drilling through it for the rivet as well. As you can see in Photo 8, I opted to remove the entire thing and make up a new replacement. After cutting a couple of strips and trying to drill the rivet holes into them I came to the conclusion that the strips were too thin to take the drill bit without spreading the edges out of shape. The method I came up with to solve that deformation problem is shown in Photos 9 and 10, put simply, I just cut the initial strip twice as wide as it was supposed to be, drilled the holes and then trimmed it back to size in width and length as seen in the second photo.
In Photo 11 things have moved on a little with the new flange super glued to the elbow, the elbow itself glued into the gap between the two ends of the arm and the second separate hinged plate glued in place under the flange. The elbow was super glued on the new metal flange side and polystyrene glued on the plastic to plastic side. As you can see there is a fairly large hole or gap below the elbow which I was all set to fill with Milliput but in fact there’s no need as there is another piece of armour called a Couter (which I’d forgotten all about until I looked at the instruction sheet again) which covers up the whole gap! There is a much smaller gap on the other side, which will need filling however. In the background is the new metal upper arm plate which will be glued over the plastic moulded original, this is shown sprung in place in Photo 12, it butts right up to the elbow piece as you can see here and the edges of the moulded original plate will be sanded down and blended into the mail so that the ‘proper’ mail effect will be able to go in tight under the new plate later on.
Finally, in Photos 13 and 14 we have the kit right hand which, as mentioned much earlier will need more ‘adaption’ than the left one which was only gripping the shield straps. Frederick’s right hand will be holding the hilt of his Battle Sword and will therefore need to be cut into four parts at the knuckles as shown in the final photo. These pieces will be glued back together after some sanding off at the joins to impart a bent grip. More on this and the even more complicated Gauntlet in the next instalment!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Brilliant work yet again Robin. Well done m8
By the way I used to go down to Devon for a field shoot years ago as a member of the NFAS loved it down there .

Rgd Martyn

Many thanks indeed to Alan, Martyn, Tony, Kev and Stevie, much appreciated! These are lovely little kits in this series, definitely basic as far as the number of parts and the initial pose is concerned but so well detailed considering how old they are now and well worth a look if you fancy a change (or a challenge!) You can still find the odd one on ebay at a reasonable price although nowhere near the £1.99 I got them for when new!!
I can't remember the name of the archery venue I went to Martyn, I can remember it was somewhere off Holden Hill outside of Exeter and there were quad bikes roaring along a track in another part of the site (a very tempting moving target but we weren't allowed to!!)

Carrying on with the right hand Gauntlet ...


Photo 15 illustrates the right hand re-glued back together after sanding the edges of the individual parts to create the ‘clenched’ hand. This angle does fore-shorten the thumb unfortunately but it was still the best pic I took! In Photo 16, we have the kit supplied parts for Frederick’s main armament still on the sprue, namely his Battle Sword. This is one part of the kit where I can’t help question the thinking that went into the design of the components. On the left is the empty scabbard, in the middle is the sword inside the scabbard and on the right is the ‘naked’ sword. As far as I have found so far, this is the only kit in the series which supplies both the sword, sword in scabbard and an empty scabbard. Most of the other kits have just the sword and the sword in the scabbard, the instructions showing how to make the empty scabbard by cutting off the sword hilt – which, of course is a perfectly logical way to do it! As it happens however, the way that this kit is supplied is a Godsend to me – just as the Samurai always carried two swords – the Katana and the shorter Wakasashi, the European Knights of this period always went into battle with their Battle Sword and a (usually) matching long dagger. Sometimes called the Misericorde, this dagger was both a secondary back up weapon and also the means of administering the ‘coup de grace’ to a fatally wounded enemy – literally putting him out of his misery! So for me, the inclusion of the sword in the scabbard is great – I’ll be using it, shortened down a bit to create the dagger, but it would have been an even better use of the kit plastic to supply either a second right hand in the same ‘gripping’ position as I’ve had to create or even the sword with a hand already moulded on the hilt. Still, where would we scratchbuilders be if everything were done for us!!
Photo 17 shows the effect of the re-animated hand using the scabbarded sword as a test (this is the one which will become the dagger further down the line). Those square extensions on the scabbard are supposed to be used along with the kit polythene belt material but I’ll be removing them later and building a more authentic leather and brass scabbard suspension system. With Photo 18, we are moving on to the steel right Gauntlet. This will be explained in two phases – Phase 1 being the initial plan and Phase 2 being the additions added because Phase 1 didn’t work, actually Phase 1 did work – it just didn’t work enough! Unlike the left Gauntlet (which I didn’t need to alter from the kit) the right hand one has three hinged plates (the other one only had two). These are all overlapping in the ‘lobster plate’ fashion and in the first photo here the kit halves have been glued together and the end plate, like a steel mitten has been cut away from the rest. You can see the two moulded in plates here and my initial plan was to file down the outer plate, replacing it with a tuna tin version together with a tin mitten to replace the previously cut off plastic version. Photo 19 shows this in process with the outer plate reduced down to the level of the inner one whilst Photo 20 shows the first stage of creating the metal replacement plate. A strip of the tin has been cut to size, the ‘V’ shape bent into the centre and the two side panels bent down to fit over the plastic section before the two holes were drilled in for the brass rivets to follow later. The holes were carefully placed to match up with the moulded on rivet heads on the plastic part which were then sanded down and drilled out as well. The next stage was to create the outer-most plate as illustrated in Photo 21, here the tin has been bent to the basic shape to fit over the preceding section and the outline of the edge has been marked in prior to cutting out. The first plate has been super-glued to the plastic kit section in this photo. The basic shape of the plate has been cut out in Photo 22, the rivet holes drilled out and the two plates fixed together temporarily with a simple ‘hinge’ of brass wire. The edge of the new plate is still in need of some gentle sanding down to round off the angular bits. All of the tin plate is being cut to size with my pair of trusty scissors – I’m probably ruining the poor things as I go but in any case, they were part of a multiple set of scissors in the Pound Shop – so not the end of the world (although it still makes me feel guilty spoiling any tool!)
In Photo 23 we come to the transition point between Phase 1 and Phase 2. This picture shows the gauntlet with as much bending as it can do without a great gap appearing between the two metal plates. Unfortunately, since the right hand is much more shortened in the act of holding the sword hilt, this just isn’t enough to follow the shape of the fist. The reasons are obvious enough of course; the middle plate is glued in place and cannot move and also, it’s glued to the first plate, which is still a part of the plastic kit part, which also cannot move! The only answer is to return to the plastic original and remove that plate too, replacing it with a third metal plate which can be used to begin the flexing of all three moveable parts. After carefully removing the super-glued middle plate I was left with the kit part shown in Photo 24 with the moulded on bottom plate outlined in yellow. This section was then sanded down until flush with the surface of the rest of the gauntlet and then I could begin to design the third metal plate replacement. This one was a nightmare! Unlike the other two plates which are basically parallel in plan view (see Diagram 26), this one is angled slightly at the back to match the moulded original, it’s bent over at the top (as are the other two) but more importantly and more difficult to get right, it’s also angled outwards from front to back where it follows the shape of the back of the gauntlet. I eventually managed to get the shape right as illustrated in Photo 25 where the third plate is being gripped in the helping hands crocodile clip so I can make an initial mark through the rivet hole to drill out the hole in the new plate (incidentally, I’ve just realised the little side view of the third plate in the diagram should have two holes in it, just like the middle plate!)
In the final photograph Photo 27, the now drilled out third plate is pictured set over the plastic gauntlet for a final test fitting before the excess side plates are trimmed back to size. As you can see, there is now a second brass wire hinge joining all three moving metal plates together.
In the next instalment, the metal plates are fixed to the plastic component and all the separate pieces are made to look like the same polished steel. I have to say in advance, I’m really pleased with the way it turned out too! (Hopefully bodes well for the rest of the build – phew!) And Tony:
Hope the rest of your ideas flow into build sequences without too many issues. Yep! Me too!!
Until then Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

The work you have done with this really is quite stunning Robin.

It's always a pleasure to read your posts as you explain quite nicely how you achieve what you do, fascinating stuff

Flipping heck Robin scale chainmail you must have the patience of a saint and eyes of a hawk. Lovely work on the gauntlet looking forward to seeing your next update

Rgd Martyn

Blimey Robin, it's thinking how this can get any better each update, but them when your update comes it's another wow!

Fabulous, just fabulous...

Regards

Alan