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Tuesday, 15 December 2020

An Ancient Persian Monster - Cyrus War Tower: Fixing the Tower to the Base Securely (Part 4 of 4) Complete

I was so close to finishing this project - but I sensed disaster was also near at hand. Every time the war tower unit was moved I could see there was no way that simple "glue" (even super-super glue) would hold the tower in place. It would become a saga of crumbling sand departing the base and many a wargaming tear split over a toppling tower (see below, for a sense of the problem - where was the center of gravity lay? Too far up in the tower):
'

I pondered and pondered and pondered for an answer and decided I would have to have an industrial grade DIY solution for this .. a household screw through the plasti-card base, up through the sand covering and into the chunky metal floor of the war tower, then on into the interior (see below, I classify this as a major piece of surgery that could easily "undo a lot of good work" if I were too heavy handed): 


Before the major surgery I decided to affix the "three archer amigos" to a mini-base so the war tower could be shown in either a combat of transport mode (see below, note this has no effect at all in DBA, DBM or whatever rules, but rather it was done for pure aesthetic purposes): 


Behold after my successful "screw" an empty Persian War Tower awaits orders (see below, tip of the operation was "to start with a small drilled hole in the plasti-card base to give the screw its start through the plasti-card", then 2drill a smaller dimension hole [than the thread of the screw] in the bottom of the metal war tower base so you get a bit of bite but don't have to force it to hard" - the join is then solid): 


A fully manned and ready for all-comers Persian War Tower (see below, also note the subtle bit of flocking on the base was also applied right at the end): 


Hopefully my description makes sense when you see below the naked screw poking up inside the model - I still marvel as to how I actually did it (see below, I cannot express the sheer relief I felt for not "screwing" this up and as far as I am concerned, I am happy particularly as this was a pure "once off - no squadron of war towers for me):  


I would have loved to be able to call it my "Archimedes Screw" but seeing as it is for the Royal Persian Army it seems a tad inappropriate, although the Persians did employ many an ostracised Greek in a technical capacity (see below, normally I am terrible at any form of DIY but this one seems to have been the one exception that worked OK):  


The End (followed by a heavy sigh)! The job is a good one. 

Next Up: I think Cyrus also needs some "combat camels" painting up. Standard basing techniques apply there!

4 comments:

  1. Well done Geordie, you've got some balls to fix it like that but it's what it needed.
    Regards,
    Paul.

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  2. Cheers Paul
    Heart in mouth as I was doing it but I got away with it ;)
    Thanks for your praise

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  3. This came together so well. I can imagine your trepidation at inserting that stablising screw into the underside, worrying lest it resulted in two halves of a war tower!
    Regards, James

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  4. Cheers James
    All's well that ends well ;)

    And the next project is ... tbc

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