Pratting around with plastic pikemen - Part 2

 Regular readers may recall my efforts to re-angle the pikes on some of my HaT 20mm Macedonian Pikemen. 

At the time I bemoaned these guys (I've actually got four elements of them). They are assembled as HaT intended, but the horizontal pikes are a complete pain to both store and to actually use on the tabletop.

When I did the other elements I had a look at these, but the pikes seemed pretty well stuck on and I was worried about causing irreparable damage. On reflection I realised that as I never used them anyway, it didn't actually matter if I damaged them or not.

So I set to work with a craft knife and a pair of pliers! I did these two elements first as their pikes didn't seem to be quite so well attached, and to my surprise with a bit of trimming and a good yank, they came off quite well. Much better than the first batch in fact. iirc I had real problems getting the pikes to stick to these figures originally , and it looks like the various layers of glue and varnish have just sheared off.

That also gave a quite a good surface to stick them back onto.

I trimmed off some of the excess bits of old glue from the pikes, and then slathered them in UHU. They were just stuck at around 50 degrees to whatever bit of body part was useful, and to the edge of the shields. Even close up, the paint damage isn't too obvious, and while the figures hands are grasping thin air, it doesn't seem to matter.

I had to hold some of the pikes in  place while they set, and they still ended up a bit ragged but good enough for gaming. I also dribbled superglue over the joints while they were setting, and eventually they set solid.

The second batch were, as predicted, harder to get apart (the pikes had been glued right across their midriffs), but they also did come apart eventually. You can see some damage on the shafts of the pikes where I had to work at them.

Like the others, the pikes got cleaned up a bit and then slathered in UHU. I stuck them at and angle across the lower body half and on to the edge of the shields. Even without touching up they look surprisingly OK.

And from the shielded side they look quite good I think.

There are all the modified elements stacked up together, and that looks quite imposing. I just needed to touch up the paintwork on the last four elements I did and they are good to go.

Once the paint and varnish had dried I lined them up with their other phalangite mates.

The phalanx looks pretty good I think. Not that I'll ever use it as a single formation like this, but nice to know I can.