WIP: Mauler/Forgefiend and Cable Maker Tool

Got the 'Fiend just about ready for paint. Just had to add some cables to the guns and do a touch more on the base. Look at that pretty boy.

Who's the cutest little demon engine? That's right! You Are.

So, the one piece that really prevents you from doing both weapon mounts on this model is the little pipes sticking out the side of the guns (see below)- they only give you one set. Boo. Fortunately I've got just the tool for this situation.

A little while back, Trip and I were talking about making our own tools in 3D and printing them out. I decided to make a cable maker. It's basically two fluted plates that you stick a Green Stuff snake in to and roll them back and forth to scribe lines. I've made two of them now. The first generation I had the scale all wrong and we learned some things about using it that I was able to fix in generation 2. Here's how it works now:

Roll out a little snake of GS. You'll never get it uniform thickness on your own, so use the flat bottom of the base plate to roll it out to a consistent diameter.

Now apply a tiny bit of lube to the plates to prevent sticking (I actually use the sexy kind- a little goes a long way). Place the snake on the base plate perpendicular to the wall. 

Make sure you've got your top plate oriented correctly- I put an arrow on mine to make sure I knew which side pointed toward the wall. This is the only way to make sure your "teeth" are lined up properly so you don't end up with a weird zig zag thing or way too many ribs...hmm thoughts brewing for v3. Now keep even pressure and gently roll back and forth, making sure to keep the top plate pushed up against the side wall.

I gave myself a few different diameters to work with. Been a while since I used this thing, so my results weren't perfect, but definitely useable. Leave them out to cure for a few hours before applying to your model (or don't if you're hard core like that). It'd probably be smart for me to just make a big batch of these so I'd always have some ready, but I'm not that smart and I like to make sure my models take as long as humanly possible to finish. 

Here's the finished results- not as icky as the originals, but they look a heck of a lot better than the empty holes. If you wanted to get really crazy you could put a thin "skin" around them with holes showing this inner cable and then it'd be more like the original.

Now, I got a little sloppy with my magnets and the shorter guns don't have a clean connection making them droop pathetically. Can't have that. I put a little post on the underside of the shoulder mount and on the base of the guns so that they'd key together and prevent gun droop.

Tough to spot, but it's the little white edges by the ball joint

And, as promised, here's the final touches on the base. I cleaned up the weird holes and shelves that were left by oddly drying glue, added some more bricks, duckboard steps, some razor wire, and an ammo crate lid with some spent shell casings at the base of the wall.

Next step, paint! We'll see if I get home from Comic Con early enough to get some done for Monday's post.

Incidentally- if anyone knows how I can post those STL files for the Cable Maker on Blogger here, I'm happy to put them up so others can print out their own. I'm sure I'll have to find a hosting site or something, huh?

~Deet