This is my rifle, this is my gun

Every great warrior walks onto the battlefield with a weapon in hand, that their life depends on. Warjacks are no exception to this. The Centurion is a Jack that I consider one of the more attractive mechanical sculpts of the lot with its elegant hull lines and hint of movement. But when we compare the concept and illustrations to sculpt, we can see a need for a more appropriate spear shaft.

In order to get a successful spear extension, people usually hit 1 of 2 problems, parts, or the fact of not having extra parts to work with and using a more common smooth piece of rod that doesn't look like the original spear. We'll with a little time and minimal supplies we can over come both. Other than our tools, the only thing we will need is a length of 1/16 steel rod and some Green Stuff.

Tearing down what others have built

We first need to work over the original spear bearing arm from the Centurion.

Take the arm and place it in a micro vise of some sorts, but make sure there are rubber boots or some other device to protect the metal from scratches. With a firm grip, a solid table surface and your jeweler's saw, carefully remove the textured sections of your Centurion's spear. When removing the metal, take care to not damage the fist, butt spike and spear head as these will obviously be reused.

After removing those sections, take care to file down the cuts to a smooth surface in preparation of our new extensions.

With the three parts left, we need to open up holes in these parts to receive the new extensions. The biggest worry here is making our holes centered and aligned with each other. I end up drilling twice per hole to facilitate this. First with a .032 drill bit and then with that hole as a guide, then with a 1/16th drill bit, which will match up with our extensions later on. With the fist, I prefer to drill from one side half way, and then attack the other side. This will help make up for some slight misalignment, as when the holes meet in the middle, the drill bit is forced to follow the path of the previous sides drilling.

After the fist, rinse and repeat with the spears tip and butt spike.

As with any custom modeling, you should always dry fit your parts prior to final assembly. So take a piece of 1/16 solid steel rod that will become our extensions base and make sure all of the holes you just drilled, fit snugly.

Getting those extensions finally

Now we first need to cut and prep 2 pieces pieces of steel rod about 2 inches in length. I prefer to cut them down with my Dremel and a fiber cutting wheel. After cutting them to length, rough up the surface a touch by running the extension base over the edge of my Dremel's wheel. This will give the Green Stuff something to grab hold of later on.

Now to create the texture on our extensions. Its pretty simply when you boil it down. The texture will be created with a metal tool's knurled surface that can be found on a lot of common modeling tools. I prefer to use one of my pin vises as I can break it down to smaller parts by removing the front and back ends, which will make it more manageable when transferring the texture.

Mix up a small batch of Green Stuff to be skimmed on top of our metal rod, very little will actually be needed.

Start off by pulling your Green Stuff out a bit, and threading it onto your extension. Slowly wind it down till you cover about an inch of the surface.

Then on a smooth surface roll out the extension till you get an even coverage of Green Stuff to work with.

With the extension ready with Green Stuff, slowly with even pressure, roll the extension onto the knurled texture to transfer it over. This might take a few tries to get it where your happy, but luckily this step is very forgiving in the fact that if you mess it up, just roll it smooth again and retry. Once its transfer over to your liking, let it sit over night before moving on to the next step.

Once this has fully cured, find where you want the texture to end on each end. This is where it will run flush against the original parts we have already prepped. Roll it under a blade to make a nice clean cut. Then slice down along the steel rod to shave off the excess Green Stuff.

Do this to both sides so we have a nice flush edge to work with. Then with a Dremel, cut the metal rod down to where we have about an 1/8 inch extension from the texture. This will be the area that we will place in the drilled out holes of our Centurion's hand and spear ends.

From here, its as simple and Insert tab "A" into slot "B". Just make sure to keep everything a straight as possible to keep the realism factor up. If you find any of your holes over drilled in size, you can also use a touch of Green Stuff in the join to make up the difference.

As you can see with a bit of love, you can easily take a good looking Jack like the Centurion to the next level.

Till Next time.

DD