Assembly: Cerastus Knight Castigator, Part 2

So now I tackle the leg assembly. This was a bit more difficult due to how I wanted it positioned. As you can see above, I hacked apart the body of a Wave Serpent to use as base decoration. This would prove to make putting together the legs more challenging than I initially thought. It also caused some other obstacles that I will have to rectify.

The leg assembly is composed of a few big pieces and a few fiddly bits. Each leg is composed of a two-part foot assembly, four toes per foot, A lower leg section, upper leg section, four pistons and rods, a hip piston and rod, and the cable assembly. Finally there's the hip torso section they connect to. I wish I had taken a picture of the parts before putting them together. That's on me.

First step is the feet. The foot assembly is in two parts. The top plate that contain the piston seats goes into the bottom part with four pins, so it's straight forward.

 Next is to attach the toes. The trick here is that the foot assembly sits up off the ground while the toes make contact. I used the same trick here I did with the Tarantulas.

 I placed the glue in the well the toe will fit in.

 I then turn the foot assembly over, set the toe pieces in place and then press down on the toes to make them flat on the table, effectively lifting the foot assembly up. A little pressure on top as well and the glue is set.

This gives the whole assembly the height it needs.

I only did this for one foot as the other one would be on the Wave Serpent.

I had dry fit all the main pieces to determine placing. I then glued the right foot onto the Wave Serpent. The one fault in my plan is I glued the foot assembly down first and then put the toes in. This means the toes aren't sitting as well as they could. I am planning that most people won't notice because it's crushing a Wave Serpent. :)

Next, I dry fit the pieces with sticky tack again to get the correct positioning and to make sure the hip section would sit level.

I then glued the left foot in place.

 Next, I dry fit everything together again. I cannot stress how many times I dry fit the whole assembly together. Get some poster tack and do it. It will make your life much easier. I then lifted up the right leg so I could get some glue down into the ball joint of the foot and then placed the leg back down.

 Once set I got to work on the pistons. These snap into the receptacles n the foot plate.

Next, place a piston on top of the rod and see how much it needs to be trimmed down.

 Give it a small snip and test the fit again.

Once it's at the right height, glue the ball joint of the piston into the leg receptacle. Remember, better to trim not enough than too much. There's some leeway, but it pays to be careful.

Next I dry fit yet again, attached the upper leg and finally the hips.

 And finally, I repeated the same steps with the left leg.

Here's the (mostly) completed assembly after placing the left leg pistons in place and the hip armor.

 Here are the hip pistons. Here's where I ran into a big issue. The piston rods aren't very long. This means I cannot place it on the right leg that's up on the Serpent. I'm going to have to go to the hobby store and find a styrene rod the same diameter and replace the piston rod with it.

In the mean time, I was able to place them on the left leg. It proved to be challenging, but eventually I came up with a method of getting it glued in place correctly. I got the two parts in the right place and the lifted one side up slightly, got glue in place, then put it back, then I did the same to the other side.

So still to do: I need to fix the right hip piston rod issue and I need to heat warp the cables to fit properly in place. I can now work on the arms and getting the torso attached.