Operation: Spidicules

There’s been a long silence between the last post and this one. I’m sure some of you wondered if I hit the ‘chop up the legs’ stage and found out the project wasn’t viable. At least one person probably pictured a sad Spidicules miniature: sliced, diced and utterly ruined.

Well, I’m really happy to report that NONE of that happened – I just got super busy running a Kickstarter. Spidicules has emerged from her operation safe and sound.

I basically cut each leg into segments, using the joints that already existed on the mini. The front two legs (with the large hands) were cut once at the top joint. Most of the other legs were cut twice: once on the top joint and again in the middle joint.

My SO owns a razor saw, which is what I used to achieve such clean cuts in the tiny angles formed by the joints. I think this tool is pretty much essential for getting into these joints – it might be possible with a Stanley knife, but I think it would be quite dangerous trying to apply the required force to such a small, fiddly mini (the leg).

I did one leg at a time, working my way from front to back. After cutting the segments, the next step was to drill matching holes, then insert pinning wire. I chose to use super glue, then sprinkled each join with baking soda to strengthen it.

While the glue was drying and setting, I had plenty of time to hold the leg up against the spider orb, eyeball the legs positioning, then shift the resulting angles as needed to ensure the feet would eventually sit flush against the terrain.

At the place where each leg connected to the spider orb, I ended up inserting 1-2 magnets (into the body), supergluing them in place, then adding Greenstuff around the magnets to simulate the last bit of join.

This extended beyond the body somewhat, reaching out to meet the magnets inserted into the head of each leg.

At this stage, the project required really careful magnet-managing. I was really worried about gluing a magnet in the wrong way – essentially, the legs were so narrow that I would never be able to get it out again without a TON of damage. I triple-checked every polarisation before using any glue.