How to Make Maxim Machine Guns

First off let me say that when I became fevered with colonial war gaming I couldn't wait to start throwing units together.
That and the fact that I love to scratch build 'things' is why I cobbled together some machine guns to begin with. If you
are a 1/72 scale plastic war gamer I encourage you to also consider purchasing this set from Italeria (re-release of ESCI)
http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.asp?manu=ITA&code=6057 (seen below after base coating with black)
which has 3 Maxims in it that come in 3 convenient pieces: The gun on pintle, the shield, and the roller assembly. You
could just as easily mount this baby on a gun carriage or tripod (or camel or elephant) and be on your way! If not...

First off you need one of the plastic coffee stirs I find at work. Second Ii purchased a bag of sticks (hefty matchstick
like things) from the hobby store - these are great to serve as 6x6s or 4x4s for general modeling requirements too.
With my ever trusty (sharp) X-acto blade I guesstimated lengths for the water cooled barrel (at left) and the whole length
of the machine gun body (at right). This method happened to give me 5 perfect sets of pieces from one stick of wood,
and I still had plenty of coffee stir left over for other projects.

Next I placed a little white glue on the inside edge of the coffee stir bit and gently shoved the wood length in after it
until I had the rough proportions seen below. Easy as 1,2,3,4,5 and then you leave them to dry.

Next I cut the tips off of some of the Better Half's sewing pins (she'll never miss a few) and then gently slid the pointy
part into the end of the barrel between the plastic of the stir and the wood. Make sure this barrel is in a proper location
so that when you mount your gun level the barrel will be at the lowest point of the gun (and not sticking out some where
askew or at an angle that looks funny). Also be careful when cutting off the pins as the stay metal likes to fly to your eyes!
Once the barrels have all been inserted, gently place some white glue in the end of the gun to make the end flush with
the end of the stir and to cement the barrel in place. Let dry.

Once the glue has dried on the barrels (note the excellent view of the end of the MG) gently pierce a pin through the
body of the MG as seen below. Place some white glue under and over the head of the pin to secure in place. The wood
part of the MG may split (one did for me) but the body of the plastic stir holds the halves together - just patch the split
with white glue and it will dry just fine. Let dry. (Maybe I need to go buy some more pins for the Mrs.)

Now, I happened to have two extra gun carriages laying around that begging to become MG carriages. So first pierce
the carriage body with an extra pin, then I stick one of my new MGs through the hole I made.

Anchor the pin all the way down on to a bed of white glue and clip off the excess pin from below. Note this is one of
the MGs that had the wood split on me, but as you can see the white glue filled in the crack fine. Once base coated
you'll never notice the difference and if you do you'll notice it still mows down enemy troops just fine!

Next is the tripod mounted MGs. I have three left (I decided to make a batch of them because if I couldn't do the
process of making these in an easily repeatable manner then I wasn't doing you any favors). Cut the head off (and save)
of a pin (okay, now I really have to go buy more pins) and grasp the length half way in such a fashion that you
can bend the arms down to an angle that looks good for a tripod. Note the flat portion made by how I placed my pliers.

Okay, here is the slightly tricky part. First take your MG with protruding pin, grasp the pin just below the body of the MG
with your plier tips and gently bend the length of the pin at a back angle that looks good for the rear leg of a tripod. You
will notice I stuck this leg of the tripod (angled out to the right) into some cardboard so that the MG body was level to the
ground and at a height suitable for my soldiers (place a fellow nearby to check this). The I took our bent legs from
above and stuck the feet into the cardboard and then leaned the legs back against the MG so that together it looked
like a nice tripod holding the MG up. This was a little tricky, but wasn't too difficult for me and I am no genius for this
kind of work - you'll figure out a way that works best for you. Then I took a little white glue on the end of an old X-acto
blade tip and smeared it in such a fashion that the legs and the underbody of the gun were wrapped in a 'pintle' of
glue. Once this dries as seen below it make quite a sturdy mount and is sufficiently strong for mounting purposes. Make
sure you let this pintle dry *completely* or your will just screw up your hard work later on. Remember the head of the pin
we saved earlier? I decided to glue it head down to the back of the gun to give it more 'substance'. Let dry.

Alright, now that our little babies have dried, pull the rear leg out of the cardboard (it will appear quite long to the forward
two legs). I held up the legs to a line in the distance (edge of my cardboard) and estimated the best part of the rear
leg to cut to make the tripod look balanced (watch for flying metal) and then checked it again as seen below.
Remember, cut too little instead of too much if you doubt your ability - a couple passes to get it right is best.

So I have yet another reason to keep a bits box - in it I found three perfect washers to mount my MGs on. My original
MGs were mounted on pennies, but the copper doesn't stick to magnet sheeting and thus they bounce around the box.
These washers stick to magnet sheet (I checked) and I plopped them down on newspaper (after washing off any oils
or solvents) and put a blob of glue in the middle to fill the hole and put a dab on the end of each leg. The dab on the
legs will run down and grab the legs better to the base. With your old X-acto blade tip work the glue so it clings
completely around the whole of the leg and to the washer. Almost there! Let dry.

Ah, now that the glue on my MGs has dried 100% I gave them all a nice coat of black paint (underside first) - beautiful.

My test fellows don't know which one to shoot first - some dry brushing, then flock and then bring on the Zulus!

Hope you have enjoyed the tutorial - thanks to Tim for asking and I hope you all have more challenges for me!