Saturday, April 11, 2009

Assembly Notebook - Drago

Ahhh, Drago. Legendary a**-kicker war jack. On the upside, Drago is much easier on the legs than the regular BerZerKer. Not all of that messy "how to drill into the one foot on the tab and still have him stand upright" thing. In fact, once the Drago parts become available, I plan on scrapping one of my BerZerKers and redoing it with Drago's legs as a more stable base.

The downside to Drago is the incredibly flimsy arms and arm attachment points. Fail! Like many Khadoran war jacks, Drago has "Pop Eye" shaped arms. This is carried to the extreme in that the arms aren't even thick enough to drill into to pin. 1/16 th brass rod is about double the thickness. This can lead, as in my case, to the weight of the beefy forearms and Executioner axes bending the upper arms under their own weight after attaching to the shoulder sockets.

The Fix? Well, the best fix, although incredibly unsightly, would be to find a third attachment point on the jack or even on the base and drill and pin for something to support the weight. Sadly, like me, this problem is best identified before it happened, because once the arm is mounted, its impossible to reach the underside of the forearm or the "armpit" area of the 'Jack to drill or pin. For me, I am going to put off painting Drago until regular wear and tear breaks the arm. After that, I will do an extensive re-sculpt and pin job.

The smoke stacks are wider than the gap provided when the shoulder assemblies are attached to the chassis. I don't count this as a Fail! It took a little filing and such, but only a little.

The only other beef with the sculpt is the position of the smoke stack/shoulder pad. You can dry fit and place the smoke stacks in the back of the chassis, and they fit fine. You can scrape and file down the set pins to fit the shoulder pads to the shoulders alright. The place the spiky bits on the shoulder pads. Let everything dry. Then when you do full dry fit, you realize the back set of stacks and the back of each shoulder pad are trying to occupy the same space! Fail!

The Fix? I had very little choice. I had already set the stacks in with putty and CA glue. I had to sacrifice the back of the shoulder pads by severe cutting/filing. If I had known, (hence the reason for my assembly notebook ;) ) I may have altered the set pins that fit the recesses in the shoulders to swing the back edges a little outboard clearing the stacks.

Also, be wary of the Executioner axes on Drago. Both arms in my box had the heads slightly bent out of true. Again, gentle heat and pressure brought them back, with a little superglue reinforcement, of course.

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