Modifying Plastic Zulus With Welding
Jamie Delson makes great use of a hot knife to weld plastic figures. he is the owner of the Toy Soldier Company and does custom conversions for people.
I tried the technique after reading about his efforts and had mixed success. The main drawbacks were the possibility of melting too much plastic or, more scarily, burning myself.
Recently I was pondering my Armies in Plastic Zulus. they are very nice figures but suffer from 'look at me, bayonet me please' syndrome. In other words their shields were held out from their bodies. This is not confined to these figure; it is a widespread feature of many toy soldiers because of the casting process and the wish to avoid big wedges of plastic between weapons. This can be overcome by providing separate weapons but then the annoyance is gluing them on. I have a lot of Zulus to paint - you can't have too many Zulus (although Boer settlers and 24th Foot might have had other views).
Thinking of Jamie's technique I decided to try cutting wedges out from the Zulus arms but not cutting through completely. This meant I could close the knife on the hot knife without worrying about the arm falling out of my grasp. The drawback is some slight distortion on the upper outside part of the arm. which you can fix with putty later if necessary. In any case the resultant pose was more realistic. I had already painted some figures as they come but now they will be pleasantly juxtaposed with these conversions.
I used a craft knife heated over a gas flame. It had plastic at the blade end which started to melt so I'll avoid that choice next time.
In the example below both arms have been cut and welded closer to the body.
I tried the technique after reading about his efforts and had mixed success. The main drawbacks were the possibility of melting too much plastic or, more scarily, burning myself.
Recently I was pondering my Armies in Plastic Zulus. they are very nice figures but suffer from 'look at me, bayonet me please' syndrome. In other words their shields were held out from their bodies. This is not confined to these figure; it is a widespread feature of many toy soldiers because of the casting process and the wish to avoid big wedges of plastic between weapons. This can be overcome by providing separate weapons but then the annoyance is gluing them on. I have a lot of Zulus to paint - you can't have too many Zulus (although Boer settlers and 24th Foot might have had other views).
Thinking of Jamie's technique I decided to try cutting wedges out from the Zulus arms but not cutting through completely. This meant I could close the knife on the hot knife without worrying about the arm falling out of my grasp. The drawback is some slight distortion on the upper outside part of the arm. which you can fix with putty later if necessary. In any case the resultant pose was more realistic. I had already painted some figures as they come but now they will be pleasantly juxtaposed with these conversions.
I used a craft knife heated over a gas flame. It had plastic at the blade end which started to melt so I'll avoid that choice next time.
In the example below both arms have been cut and welded closer to the body.
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