Friday, December 12, 2008

Just Frelling Typical

So, some of you may have realized that I like super apes. I was tooling around the Reaper site today, and saw that they produce a new super ape, Ape-X, Super Villian, in their new Chronoscape line. Naturally, I ran out and bought one. It's not evident from the picture, but Ape-X includes four separate hands-- the fist and chain gun shown, plus a wrecking ball/mace and a drill. Now, this excited me because I have been looking for a chance to do some swappable bits with rare earth magnets, which is all the rage lately...


So, I get him based and all cleaned up, and spend most of the night drilling 1/8" holes into his arms and hands. The bit is too big to fit in a pin vise, and the metal is too strong for me to drill by hand, so I used a full-size power drill and carefully made the holes. The hands are especially fiddly work, but eventually, I get everything drilled well enough and ready to go. I epoxy all the magnets in, keeping very sure to maintain the proper orientation of the stack of rare earth magnets on every single element, and gluing them firmly in with 5 minute epoxy. The problem is, if you really stop and think about it, by not changing the orientation of the stack of magnets, I guaranteed that the "top" side was exposed everywhere. I now have the perfect screw up-- not a single hand sticks to any arm!!! Frell me dead!!. I don't know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to get these gorram magnets out after epoxying them, and making sure some of this firm epoxy slopped over the front, just to make an extra strong bond. I will probably just glue some hands on, as neodynmium magnets are toxic once the shiny covering is off, and my prying at it with pliers and X-Acto blades is taking it right off...

5 comments:

  1. Holy crap chief, I feel your pain! If it's worth it to ya, ahem, for the future, I just worked with one pair of magnets at a time...AFTER mounting the initial magnets in the sockets. I used a sharpie to mark the 'out' side on each. Hope this helps...that's a sweet looking model, especially with those Mignola-esque knobby gauntlets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. I was trying to do the whole thing on one mix of 5 min epoxy. I should know better!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. There is only one thing to do... buy another Super Ape and position the magnets such that you can get two functioning apes.
    Brian

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha! Don't think I didn't think of that (or of just trashing the one I had), but at $16 each, I think I'll just glue them in!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I glued the fist and the chain gun in, like the pictured model.

    ReplyDelete