Adding an Acrylic Peg for Stability

If you have a model who only has a few hooves on the ground or is simply unbalanced, they might need a stand or peg as support. A horse with only one or two hooves touching the ground usually needs the added security of a base, like my Shetland pony work in progress:

Often, an acrylic rod is used when the horse has a hoof that nearly touches the ground, but not quite, and needs to for stability. Many people prefer acrylic rods to bases because they are less obtrusive and often make the horse easier to show.

My new resin, Linda York’s “Roll” has been having some tippiness issues. As I get closer to priming him, it’s becoming more and more important that he can stand upright safely- I won’t be able to prime or fixative him if he needs to be lying down all the time!

This resin has three hooves on the ground and another slightly raised, so he’s a perfect candidate for an added acrylic rod.

I believe you can buy acrylic rods in various sizes from hobby and craft stores, but another excellent source is hobbyist Myla Pearce, who sells them in various sizes through the Model Horse Sales Pages. In this instance I’m using her smallest size, 1/16″, which she recommends for Stablemate leg supports.

The first step is to drill a hole in the hoof where the rod will go. You want to drill a straight, deep hole without punching through the other side of the hoof. I chose a diamond drill bit only slightly larger than my acrylic rod.

Happily, I managed to drill neatly and straightly up into the hoof, making a perfect little nest for the rod.

Then I simply inserted a piece of the cut rod into the hole. Once I had it cut to roughly the correct size, I pulled it out, set in just a drop of super glue, and replaced the rod.

As you can see, the rod wasn’t the exact right length. It’s extra height is lifting his near fore leg off the ground. This is easily remedied, however, and easier than trying to cut the exact right size before gluing. Once the glue is completely dry, simply use a needle file to incrementally shorten the acrylic rod until you reach the correct height.

Voila! A happy, stable horse ready for primer and beyond.

Rasps and Their Various Uses

One of my favorite tools is this large, heavy duty rasp:

You can buy them at hardware stores, but knowing me I probably got it at a garage sale or thrift store. I don’t remember.

This giant file has many excellent purposes. For one, if you don’t have a dremel (or are too lazy to get it out) you can use this to file down large areas on a horse, for example if you are slimming their barrel. It leaves big marks which you’ll want to epoxy or sand over, but it’s useful it you need to get rid of a lot of material quickly.

I also use the rasp to keep my other tools in good shape. When my fine little dentist’s tools end up with hardened epoxy all over them, a few rubs on my big rasp takes them back to the finessable sculpting tools they should be.

Finally, the least obvious use for my file: getting super glue off your hands. I use super glue a lot when I’m customizing, and too often I end up with glue on my fingers.

Aaaargh!

Even if I do avoid gluing fingers to each other, I still end up with a nasty callous of dried glue. I absolutely hate the feeling, and it doesn’t go away quickly… without help. I simply rasp the gluey spot on my skin, and soon enough it’s gone. It doesn’t hurt, since you’re just sloughing the glue and the very top layer of your skin. Much better!

The beginnings of Sleipnir

When my dear friend Sarah asked me to make her a model of the eight-legged stallion of Norse mythology, Sleipnir, I couldn’t help but say yes. Even though it’s a completely insane project and I have quite a few others I’m in the middle of- or would like to start. But I couldn’t resist.

Traditional references aren’t as applicable for an eight legged horse, but we found lots of very cool Sleipnir art on Deviantart to inspire us and aid in the brainstorming (including this amazing skeleton). From there I made a series of sketches until we were both happy with the plan:

It took me a couple of weeks to get both of the bodies I needed (Schleich’s Andalusian Stallion and Haflinger Mare) and I was very eager to begin. Alas, cutting a Schleich in half is a huge pain and I burnt out my dremel before I finished both.

Now, with new dremel in hand, I’ve been using every spare moment to work on this wacky, fun project. Check it out!

The unsuspecting victims

Plotting the carnage

Ouch!

Starting to come together… sort of…

Pinning the pieces – you definitely want at least two big wire pins to hold together something this large

Assembly progress: 6/8

All legs attached and lookin’ fine!

Next up: tons and tons of sculpting. But it’s super satisfying just to have him at this stage. Now I think I can calm down and spend time with all the projects. Sometimes you just need to scratch a certain itch.

RIP Dremel

Alas, my dremel seems to have died in the middle of cutting a horse in half. Tomorrow morning I’m off to the hardware store in search of answers… and probably a new one.

To be continued…

Details on this (rather insane) project soon.

Adventures of a First Time Stripper

Is there any blogger who can resist a racy title when talking about stripping paint off model horses? I obviously cannot.

Before this recent foray, I had never needed to strip off a previous paint job from one of my bodies. I was usually working from an original finish horse, and the few times I wasn’t I just sanded down the original paint job until it was smooth enough to re-prime.

But I recently found myself with three models in need of stripping: a Breyer SM with a thick lumpy acrylic coat, a multi-media Schleich with layers in acrylic, pastel, and modge-podge, and a resin with a mediocre acrylic paint job. So I finally started paying attention to all the discussions of technique.

After a little research, I decided to try to Oven Cleaner technique. And of course, to chronicle my trials here for whoever else might want to give it a go!

To strip a horse using oven cleaner, simply stick the horse in a bag, spray liberally with oven cleaner (I used the recommended brand Easy Off) and wait. After an hour or so, remove the horse and scrub with a toothbrush under warm water. Repeat until clean and add time in the bag as needed.

Tools of the trade

WARNING: Oven cleaner is made of nasty chemicals. It is smelly and if you get it in a cut it will burn. Avoid inhaling it, getting it on your hands, etc. Keep away from children and pets, and wash your hands!

First Victim: Breyer Stablemate

This guy was easy to strip. His acrylic coat was so thick it was begging to come off, and after only about an hour in the oven cleaner he was ready to go under the sink.

I barely needed the toothbrush- the power of the oven cleaner and the pressure of the running water did most of the work. I used the tooth brush in the crevices, but my model was soon restored to near OF condition:

Victim Two: Schleich Pony

I was a little bit worried that the oven cleaner would eat away at the soft rubbery plastic of a Schleich horse, so I didn’t leave him long in the bag the first time.

He was soon back in the chemical bath, however, because even with some serious scrubbing this is all the progress I made at first:

I got a little braver and left him in for longer, reminding myself that if I’m gonna ruin a body it might as well be a cheap one that I have no specific plans for. It ended up taking quite a while to get him relatively clean- I estimate that he spent 5-8 hours in his chemical bag total. I don’t know if the issue was his modge-podge sealer, or the multi-media coat, or what.

He didn’t clean up quite as well as the Stablemate, but certainly well enough to reprime and repaint. I stopped using the oven cleaner on him when I noticed that I was actually stripping of his original finish paint. But the plastic itself seems fine, with no evidence of the melting or warping that acetone can cause.

Ready for a new identity!

Victim Three: Resin Stablemate

At first the paint job on my newly acquired “Roll” resin seemed nice and smooth, and I considered sanding and painting him over without a full strip. But upon closer examination I saw that the thick acrylic on him was obscuring some of his detail, particularly in his feathering. So into the oven cleaner he went!

His first foray yielded promising results:

Besides the toothbrush, I found my fingernails to be useful tools.

Although the main areas of paint came off easily in big pieces, he needed a lot more chemical therapy to get down to primer and into detail areas. Even when I declared him stripped (after maybe 8 hours total in chemicals, and multiple scrubbings) he still had some residual paint and primer in cracks and crevices, which I’ll just have to get in the prepping stage.

But happily, he’s now much cleaner and ready to start his next adventure. And to my great relief, I don’t seem any damage at all to the resin from all the chemicals. Despite assurances from other hobbyists, I had worried.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with my new technique. It’s definitely nice to start afresh, and the oven cleaner makes it pretty painless, albeit somewhat time consuming. The price was right, too- Easy Off ran me about $6, and the can is still pretty full even after all the liberal spraying on these three horses.

Next time I think I’ll be braver with the soaking times, and invest a few dollars in a hard-bristled toothbrush to use instead of the soft used ones I have.

Fixing a Broken Leg 201: joints

Last month I did a quick little tutorial on how to do a basic fix on a broken leg using wire. This month I find myself fixing another leg, this time more complicated because it’s broken right below a joint.

This fix uses a similar technique, but with a bit of a tweak to make it more stable.

Required reading: How to Fix a Broken Leg

The sad (and blurry, sorry) victim:

This break was half on purpose and half not- I was intentionally repositioning the leg, but failed to heat it enough before bending and it snapped. Oops.

Because the break is right below the bent hock, I need to use a wire join that is also bent to follow the shape of the leg so that it actually stabilizes the break.

weak join

strong join

The first step in the fix is simply to embed a piece of wire into the straighter side of the break, in this case the cannon bone (just like in steps 1-2 of the first tutorial). Once the wire is fully fixed in that side and the glue is dry, gently bend the wire to match the shape of the full leg (see below).

Since my wire joiner has a bend, the hole its going to fit into, in the upper part of the break, needs to match that bent shape. I used my carbide scraper to dig out a trench in the front of the bent hock. You could certainly use a dremel, but it’s not necessary.

Here I’ve dug my trench into the hock and fixed the wire, now bent, into the model’s cannon bone.

I keep scraping until the wire nestles fully into the trench and the leg lines up properly.

The wire nestled in its new home

Here I’ve got the leg just about where I want it.

As you can see above, I’ll need to do some resculpting (including removal) on that hock joint to make it anatomically correct. The important thing here is to get the bottom part of the leg securely where I want it to be on the finished custom, and then I can worry about the details.

Once the wire sits fully in the trench and you have the leg positioned how you want it, just fix the wire into the trench using superglue and baking soda. It sometimes helps at this stage to have an extra hand, or rest your horse upside down in a cup so you can hold the leg in place while still applying glue.

Once the glue is dry, make the fix even more secure by filling in the surrounding area with your epoxy of choice.

Ta da!

Visualizing Colors

I ran across an awesome idea from Karen Grigson of Bluebird Studio in a Blab thread recently. The subject was shading and tones on a white horse, and she posted this cool visualization from the reference picture:

What a brilliant idea! And it’s not just for those difficult white/off-white tones, either. She also posted these:

Seriously, this is so brilliant. And widely relevant too- no matter your medium of choice, these easy color palettes are extremely useful! I can’t wait to get back into finish work and use this technique.

If you don’t have a program that can take color swatches like this, there are several free downloadable ones. Karen mentions Paint.net (downloadable at getpaint.net) which runs on Windows/Vista. If you’re using a Mac, never fear, GIMP is a free, open-source photo editor for Mac.

Karen Grigson is not just a talented (and helpful!) painter, but also an excellent and creative sculptor. She did an awesome post on her blog called Character that has some great tips on facial customizing.

It is super awesome how open and helpful hobbyists are!