Assembling tactical marines, leaving bolter seperate

[Dindrenzi]

Hi folks,

 

Probably the simplest question ever but I'm just looking for an easier way of doing it.

 

I see lots of pics with tactical marines assembled, but with the bolter left seperate, how do you make sure the arms line up?

 

I've been doing it by blu-tacking the bolter to the supporting arm and gluing to the body, then lining the firing arm up and gluing....

 

Is there a quicker way or should I just carry on?

 

Cheers

[DistroyA]

There's nothing wrong with that method, although when I do it, I line up the wrist with the supporting arm, making sure to have it somewhat looking like it's sitting within the fingers and thumb.

 

If I'm honest, you're probably better off lining up the first marine's arms like normal, then once those arms are glued into place, remove the bolter and eyeball where the wrist "sits" in the supporting hand and just eyeball the rest like that.

[deathspectersgt7]

I have been just eye balling the alignment .

[Ovidius Incertus]

Liquid plastic cement is forgiving and takes a while to dry.  I glue with an eyeballed alignment and then when the arms are set up a bit, place the weapon on and tweak the arms' alignment as necessary, then pull the bolter off.

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

The quicker way is leaving the entire arms off, or leaving off the weapon and the left arm.

 

This method doesn't work for people who do things like sprayed zenithal, but for regular paintjobs or anyone who can freehand the shadows/blending because they know which side of the arm will be up and which side will be down, it works fine.

 

There is no real shortcut. The fastest way would be to glue the weapon on before painting, but that blocks places. To get an unblocked access to the whole model, you're going to have to either fiddle with dryfitting the weapon in the right spot then removing it, or leaving more pieces off. I ended up choosing to mask connection points and simply spray and paint each limb separately, then gluing it all together. This means less time fiddling around trying to assemble the model without gluing it and when I paint the pieces, I can do a much more thorough job since each piece is so small and fast to paint.

[Goonbandito]

I just cut a bolter out from the sprue (clean it up so it dry fits properly) and just use it as a guide to position the arms.  The left-hand holding the forward grip (ie the one that the bolter sits on) generally holds the bolter in place well enough without any need for blu-tac, allowing you to position the arms appropriately before the plastic glue sets. 

[Dindrenzi]

Cheers guys.

 

I prefer to paint separately, but as I'm learning to airbrush wondered if it would be better to attach arms before....

 

I've got one aligned with arms on so I guess I'll just do a practice run when time permits and see which way works best for me

[Major_Gilbear]

I glue the right arm and bolter together, and the left arm to the model. I then add a pin to the right arm at the shoulder which lets me align the arms as well as giving me something to hold when painting the parts separately.

 

Even if you zenithally prime, you can just position the arm in place with some poster putty (the pin will add enough strength to keep it there without any glue) and pop it off again when the primer is dry.

[Chaplain Raeven]

I glue the bolter to the arm and blu-tac that arm. The supporting arm gets glued into place, since that arm doesn't block much of the model. When everthing is painted, you just have to glue the right shoulder and call it done.

 

You can also glue the supporting arm first, since you can't go awfully wrong with that one. Then Blu-tac the right arm and align the bolter while glueing it to the wrist. That way you have less risk of having a crooked bolter.