The Energon Pub

I worked up a little modification for the stock hand/foot that comes with the Combiner Wars limb bots. With this mod the hands look more like hands and the feet look more like (munky not trukk) feet. The onnly downside is that in the 1.0 version, I've lost both the ability to fold the hand up for vehicle mode integration and weapon mode. I guess you gots to give a little to get a little. I've chosen Dead End's hand/foot because it doesn't attach to vehicle mode very well and I only ever use it as a hand or foot anyway.

I feel the end result is very nicely realized hand.

First up as a refresher, here is the original:



Here is the end result:



Pretty nice huh? Wanna know how I did it? Instructions and tools used below.

X-Acto knife with a nice pointy blade
A slightly stouter razor knife (a slim Olfa) to make some of the tougher cuts
A very fine toothed hack saw blade (I just used the one I use on PVC pipe for plumbing work)
Sand paper (I used 150 grit, but I feel a finer grit like 220 or finer would have looked nicer)
A nail to push out the pin (a punch would work better)
A tiny drill bit to make a new hole for the pin

Of course you could use what ever tools you have or feel comfortable with. I avoided power tools, such as a dremel, because of how fast they cut through this soft plastic.

First push out the pin that holds the fingers in place.


Then I cut off the weapon part with a hack saw blade. Then I made several dado like cuts to clear out the plastic where the fingers will go. I used the xacto and olfa knife to clear out the bits and to smooth out the plastic.



I estimated where I needed to drill new holes, marked them with a nail and slowly hand pre-drilled the holes with the xacto knife. I used a drill bit (by hand) to finish the job.


I used some small nails to test fit the fingers and found that I had to round out the back of the "knuckles" so the fingers could fold from hand to foot.


Then I used sand paper to smooth all the rough razor and saw cuts. I then used a razor scraping perpendicular to the service to smooth/soften the surfaces. The 150 grit sandpaper didn't do the nicest job. I recommend 220, 440 or better yet all three working your way to finer.

I recommend using small nails to test fit and movement before pushing the pin back in. There isn't much plastic left to hold the pin in if it was to bind and be forced going from hand to foot.

Once your satisfied with the movement and clearance, push the original pin back in. As a bonus you could grind the pin just a hair shorter so it will be flush with the plastic.

A few more pics to show off the end result.












And a few more attached to a limb.






Whatcha think?

Fists are okay but I prefer the original feet. The modified ones give them toes and that, to me, doesn't look very alien robot like.

Burn wrote:Fists are okay but I prefer the original feet. The modified ones give them toes and that, to me, doesn't look very alien robot like.

I'm shooting for that Bayverse look

As a hand it definitely looks better. Not sure about as a foot though. Looks kinda...simian.

Delta Magnus wrote:As a hand it definitely looks better. Not sure about as a foot though. Looks kinda...simian.

Yeah, but now you can have a trukk and munky o/primal with ape feet

If you cut the fingers into individual ones, you can give the combiner the awesome power of MIDDLE FINGER NO JITSU!

carytheone wrote:

Burn wrote:Fists are okay but I prefer the original feet. The modified ones give them toes and that, to me, doesn't look very alien robot like.

I'm shooting for that Bayverse look

nice work i perfer bay version of faces on bots they look more alien realistic robotic look compared to what we get in comics with nice smooth edges that look human like.

feet are little werid perfect if there was gorilla combiner hands are perfect would it be easier and faster if you cut guns off instead of making new hole for fingers?

Microraptor wrote:If you cut the fingers into individual ones, you can give the combiner the awesome power of MIDDLE FINGER NO JITSU!

I actually thought of that. I really couldn't think of a realistic way to do it; maybe a super thin and sharp saw (does that even exist) or I though a hot razor (would probably just mess the whole thing up). But It'd be really neat.

dragons wrote:nice work i perfer bay version of faces on bots they look more alien realistic robotic look compared to what we get in comics with nice smooth edges that look human like.

feet are little werid perfect if there was gorilla combiner hands are perfect would it be easier and faster if you cut guns off instead of making new hole for fingers?

Thanks. As a foot it looks a little weird, but not really that much more than the two "gun" toes. I started with the gun bits cut off and flush, but I wanted the full foot effect.

Some of the hand/feet really require the gun bits to work or look good in vehicle mode (Breakdown, Offroad, Dragstrip molds to name a few).

I did the mod out curiosity and I felt the hand looked good enough to share.

Man I wish I had the right tools for this cuz I would love to do it.