Reposing Hard Plastic

[Splurch]

So I recently started working on my Shadows of Brimstone minis (btw, if anyone hasn't started on theirs yet, all the mini's are a nightmare to clean and I've only really only worked on a few types so far.) I want to repose my Void Spiders so they fit on a 28mm base, which means I have to repose the legs inwards. They are a polystyrene hard plastic and I've had little luck finding anything about reposing the material. Is a heat gun viable? Should I just cut the legs and glue at a different angle? Will boiling water or just putting them under a heater vent for a bit work?

[Splurch]

Since no one replied I decided to just give things a try. First, I tried putting it in front of a heater vent, didn't do anything. Next, I tried a heat gun.

base spider on left/heat gunned spider on the right (note the shortened front legs on the heat gunned spider)

Test spider is on the right. While I was able to repose the front two legs the problem is that too much heat causes the plastic to shrink quickly and drastically, his two front legs are much shorter then the unmodified spider as a result of the heat. The difference between being poseable and shrinking is pretty narrow and if you stop the heat when it starts being poseable it almost instantly hardens again so you have to move things while the heat is on it. It's a very hard and unforgiving process.



I then tried using hot water. Like the heat gun, as soon as the spider is removed from the water it hardens almost instantly, so heating it in water, taking it out and reposing isn't viable. While in the water though it will get hot enough to repose, I just had to do all the posing under the water while it was boiling (or near boiling.) Very hard to get the right angles on the legs under water but essentially it worked. The other problem is that some parts seem to have slightly shrunk (the 2 fangs is where I noticed it was more then just reposing causing the problem since I didn't move them and no warping from reshaping occurred.) So not really a viable method on most things. I tested the water on a 2nd model that hadn't been exposed to the heat gun and had the same result.

Spider after boiling water reshaping

After all this I also tried just putting a dab of plastic cement on the bottom of a joint to see if it would be enough but it wasn't, the amount of cement needed would just destroy the leg.

[anotherpainter]

I did not think its so hard to bend hard plastic.
I don't know if it will work but i have one more idea:
Try heating a piece of metal and press is on the underside of a joint. When the plastic shrinks on contact it perhaps pulls the leg more inwards...

[Splurch]

Interesting idea, I'll give it a try when I get a chance. Ill try on a sprue piece though as I worry about it melting the contact point aggressively.

[supervike]

Sorry, I don't have any tips for you regarding the melting and bending. I would have clipped and repositioned.


But, is there a reason you just didn't use slightly larger bases?

[Splurch]

Sorry, I don't have any tips for you regarding the melting and bending. I would have clipped and repositioned.


But, is there a reason you just didn't use slightly larger bases?

The spider/game design prevents larger bases from being used on them (the game didn't actually include any bases for them.) Game spaces are about 30mm wide, the spiders legs extend far enough that I'd need to use a 40mm base on them, which brings me to why I'm putting them on 25mm bases. Several large creatures use 40mm bases already, if everything else is on 30mm bases then when they are near a large creature they get pushed off of their square which can be a big problem when you have multiple large creatures near each other. Putting things on 25mm instead of 30mm gives the large creatures room enough to not actually push other things out of their square.

Also, the spider legs are at kind of an awful angle for easily picking them up and sliding them makes a horrible screeching noise on the map tiles. Basing them just fixes a lot of issues.

[supervike]

Ah, I see.

[vincegamer]

I would have opted for using a pin from the base and just making them hover over it. Most minis are smaller than their bases so standing next to another 28 mm would work (bases wouldn't clash) but your spider's legs would reach over onto the other mini's base (nicely terrifying)