Building the Reaver Titan PowerFist

Goal: A fully magnetized and positionable reaver titan powerfist.

1. Understand where each piece fits. While it’s obvious now, before I started assembling the arm I thought that the ‘wrist end’ of the arm was actually the ‘shoulder end.’ This ended up being okay, as I realized it before magnetizing the hand itself, but could have been disastrous had that not been the case. Take a second to carefully read the instructions, ID the parts, and figure our which parts go where. Test fit. In particular, separate the thumb finger set of pieces, the two ‘long’ sets of finger pieces, and the two ‘short’ sets of finger pieces. The thumb pieces only very slightly, with some wider knuckle covers, joins, etc.
2. Optionally, magnetize the arm. I magnetized the mount to the shoulder, the first joint below the shoulder, and the wrist. I didn’t magnetize the elbow as there wasn’t an obvious way to do that joint, and it’s already a bit ‘fiddly’ with the three other magnetized joints (although with the 1/2 x 1/4 neodymium magnets is suprisingly secure).One thing to watch out for…I got the first joint ‘backwards’ such that the ‘more armor side’ of the should joint (fart right piece in below picture) was ‘outside.’ (‘up’ in the below picture). In fact, it should be INSIDE (down) if you want to be able to pose the arm ‘up and out’ (as in lift your right elbow away from your body) For the reaver to do that, the ‘short armor side’ of the upper/shoulder joint needs to be facing ‘up/out.’ As a result, my upper arm is ‘backwards,’ the ‘tube’ is facing forward from the inner elbow instead of facing back, and I was unable to use a piston. With all that said, I still think it looks great! If I could do it over again, I’d build it as designed. Ooops! If you build a power fist arm don’t make the same mistake as me!
   

3. In the picture on the ‘shoulder joint’ you’ll see green stuff. Because of how I magnetized the shoulders on the titan body, I needed the magnet on the power fist arm to NOT be flush with the top of the arm, so I created a slight (maybe 1/8th inch) hole for the magnet, used jb-weld to secure it, then built up green stuff around the magnet (I used the same 1/2″ x 1/4″ stepped magnets as I used in a previous post. Between the JB-Weld and the green stuff, the magnet is very secure and relatively safe from chipping.
4. Decide how to pose the hand. Use your own hand as a model. I didn’t do this, and I somewhat regret it. I went for what I thought would be the natural hand pose, with the index finger extended the most, middle finger slight less, etc. While it looks okay, I actually would have gone for a more ‘grasping’ pose, which would be more dynamic/imply more action.
5. Once you’ve decided on the hand pose, build each finger with the proper curve, independently of the hand. I didn’t do this… I started by attaching the first digit to the hand, then the second digit, etc. I didn’t realize the second digit was wider than the first, and so my fingers were too close together. I tried correcting this mid-glue, and ended up making a slight mess with the CA glue and got one of the joins ‘gluey.’ :(  While it’s a bit of a leap of faith, if you decide on the pose and build the fingers separately (and let them dry for a few minutes so they are at least mostly cured) you’ll have an easier/cleaner time attaching the fingers individually and will get a better pose.
6. After you’ve built each individual finger, the next step is to glue them on. Again, you’ll see in step 5 that I didn’t follow this order but which I did.
   
7. Don’t glue the thumb on! In my case, I glued the thumb base on, then later changed my mind and pried it off, as I want to be able to have very good access to the inside of the hand during painting.
8. Here’s a pic of the hand with me holding the thumb in place so I can view the final pose.