WIP 2: Gaspez Minotaur and Kord the Destroyer

The Warhammer Minotaur arms and weapons bits that I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to do the next step in my conversion project.

The arms of the Gaspez minotaur are further apart than those on a Warhammer minotaur, so I had to extend the shaft of the axe. To ensure that I have a strong structure, I cut off the middle section of the piece, drilled holes in both ends, and then fitted a steel wire in between. I then applied epoxy to the wire, inserted it into the two pieces, then blu-tac'd the hands onto the main model itself. The telescoping nature of the construct allowed me to adjust the alignment of the two pieces while the epoxy set to ensure that the shaft ended up straight.

The end product was rather long, so I snipped a bit off the end of the shaft, which still gave an eventual length of 7cm, or more than twice the height of a man in scale!

Once the epoxy has set, I needed to build some "meat" around the wire skeleton to match the rest of the shaft with epoxy putty. Rather than sculpting the shaft while the putty is soft, I decided it might be easier to just form a sausage around the skeleton and then shave it down later when it has hardened. I'll let you know how that works out later...

The hands needed a bit of bulking up too.

Also in the package today was the Reaper mini Kord the Destroyer. I got it because I wanted to use my beastman warchief as Kromac in Hordes. Now Kromac is a warlock who has a human form and a beastman form, which meant I needed a human form of my warchief. Using Reaper's Figure Finder, I found and bought Kord, the original form which is shown below.

When the figure arrived, I found that the axe was comically smaller than the one held by my warchief. Well, it can't all be perfect.

I removed all the spikes on the figure, shaved the letter M off his buckle, and decided to take off the nicked dagger in his right hand. The axehead was bent almost 180 degrees onto the shaft when the figure arrived, so I snapped it off and drilled through it, his left hand, then replaced the shaft with a length of wire such that the eventual length of the whole weapon would be the same as the axe held by the warchief, then applied putty to it too.  I also bent the arm at the elbow a little and turned the axehead so it is orientated in a more natural angle so the axis of the blade is in line with the axis of his forearm, and anchored the end of the shaft onto his cloak for stability. It is only now when I am typing this that I realised that I could have placed the axe in Kord's RIGHT hand to better mirror the warchief figure; well, too much trouble to switch it now. Grr.

I epoxied the figure onto a 25mm square base (as the warchief), and then puttied over the integral base on the model and added a piece of cork for terraining.

So when Kromac transforms into his beast form, his axehead also miraculously enlarges, and he turns from being left-handed to being right-handed? Seems legit.

Now to wait for the putty to set overnight. Hopefully the base which I ordered for the minotaur arrives tomorrow and I can move on to the next and final step of the conversion project.