Turn the Nob..

A little more work some Orks.. not much really but time being what it is .. and I've been sucked into Diablo III so when I'm tired I haven't walked into the painting room. A little break here and there is nice and especially before I start a new project. Like I was saying I want these guys to be painted quick. So I'm just playing with what I like and how I can keep cranking them out. I was playing with some washes on him and colors. I'm going to be giving them mis matched boots and bands here and there.. I figure Orks put on whatever is close at hand.. and being Metro isn't really a concern.

Pants before

I also got a little paint on a Deff Kopta . I dry brushed the whole thing with Boltgun and I"m going to go over areas with multiple metal shades. I figure the more piece meal the better 8)

Time to get dirty..

Another Rhino/Razorback getting ready for the field. I haven't applied any weathering powders to the tank yet this is all the prep work before I apply it. I still need to finish up the Storm Bolter and the Metallics on the tank then it will be powder time. The turret is going to be painted black on the armour bits so I can swap out the LAS/Plas for which ever chapter I'm playing that day. I think it will look find and will save on the cost of getting multiple turrets for each different army.

Just some blending of White, Umber and Black on the tank. I also dry brushed some of the metal areas with Boltgun and added some paint wear. I'll be finishing up the lights, metals and guns then moving on the powder for the finishing touches.

Crazy weekend..

If you are in the US I hope you enjoyed Memorial Day, if not you missed out on some burgers and dogs... I took my road bike out for a 33 mile ride in some of the worst heat and humidity we've had in awhile. I was happy to get out for a ride but I'm still dehydrated. Then when I got home had to take care of my daughter, she was teething pretty badly yesterday so me and the Wife took turns holding her .. then went to the harware store and bought materials to build a fence, cut a pass thru from the kitchen to the living room with counter top and other material for our breezeway which will now become a playroom. The next few months are going to be fun. yay me. But I did buy a table saw .. a pretty BA DeWalt .. I've been wanted one for awhile. Makes ripping so much easier.

Tomorrow I'll be back to normal posting.. a little extended weekend post free. I'm also going to try and pick up the new White Dwarf to check out the flyers. The Ork plane looks slick but I'm not sold on the Marine one .. and could careless about the Cron flyer haha ..

Hurry up Golden Rod!

A couple of Saturdays ago I went up to Chuck's Comics (localing gaming store where a couple friends work and usually where I game when away from my own abode. Dave asked me to come up and I said I'd give pointers or help if anyone needed it. Someone was gluing a metal banner to a model and was having troubles. His first trouble was he was using Plastic glue and the second was it's metal and heavy which we all know can take a while to grab. He was complaining about it so I looked over and said "you'll probably have to pin it, that's going to take awhile". He looked at me quizickly and said "pin it?". So that got me thinking, I wonder if people getting into the hobby really know about pinning and the help it can be. Which lead me to writing this up. There are many reasons to pin a model; it's metal and heavy, you are working on a model and want to test fit the final position so you don't want to glue it, you want to mount models to a different base and want to be sure they stick, really the list goes on and on.. 

Here's the basic idea of what pinning is ..  You form a mechanical bond between the two pieces which is much stronger then a surface bond. You also typically don't have to hold it while it dries 8)

Drill out the two sides and glue the pin into one side. Then glue them together.

Here are a few Tips or Hints and Info ...

• To start off you'll need a Pin Vise Drill. This is basically a small hand drill. Works great for drilling into plastic or resin but can be tough in metal.
• You can also get one of these http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/tam/tam74041.htm . It's a Tamiya Hand Drill, it works great for what it's used for. But be forewarned you have to build the actual drill, takes some time but is kind of fun in an erector set kind of way. You can use a standard drill as long as your chuck is small enough to handle micro bits.
• I use standard paper clips as my Pins. They are the perfect size and are cheap and available. Take your bits and hold the clip up to the rear of the bit to match size. It should be either the same size or just slightly bigger.

If you are going to Pin something to mount it to a base removed the tab on the bottom with snips then drill holes in at least one foot. Be careful where and how far you drill as you don't want to pop through. Then line the pins up on the base making marks where they are. Drill the holes in the base. Not only does this make for a more solid mount but you can also paint the model off the base and then mount if you choose. Pic above with Dragon's Pinned feet. Below the dragon mounted and a BA mounted to a larger cork base.

You can also Pin bits of the mini.

This can help with posing and painting models that may cover sections of themselves. Then adding them on later.

Pinning on Banners is also a good idea. They stick up and can easily be knocked off. The Pin adds a lot of strength to the bond as there is now a shared mechanical bond instead of just the surface bond. Below I pinned the banner before I glued it to the dread. I don't have a pic of the actual pinning but you get the idea.

The other option would be for heavy metal Minis .. I was looking for a picture but unfortunately I can't seem to find any on my computer. But it's the same .. just with metal dudes  8)

Bitter Enemies

I started working a little on the Orks I got from the Black Reach and trade from Sean. I'm thinking these guys will be some easy painting. At least some what. I want to work on speeding up my painting so the standard Orks are going to be quickly painted.. by my standards at least. This guy is a test and so far only green and brown with a wash. Oh and some Boltgun, I'm going to try to knock these dudes out quickish .. just to see how fast is fast for me while keeping him looking good.

I'm also getting a Crimson Fist army together (slowly) so I built his LAS arm and filed them down. I had an old metal Furiso I bought and don't plan to use him as such. Now he'll end up being a rifle dread for the Fists.

In Space, no one can hear you scream or cry or whine .. so suck it up!

Last night I finished up the Brood Lord and I'm really digging the way he turned out. I painted up the diamond plate and added rust plus some grime to the pipes. I also added more blood to the talons and some dripping down the skulls and termie helms. I mentioned it before but the main reason I started adding blood to this guys is the sculpt of the mini. Where the two sides join (Space Hulk is snap together) there is some .. um I guess I'd call it pulling. It makes the skulls look a bit stretched and figured hey .. that might look cool if I added some gore to make it look like the blood was stretched across the skulls instead of just a crazy mold haha ..  I think it worked..  I tried to make it have a feeling of trickling down the bones and also added more rust where the pipes are snapped to give the feeling that water does drip out from time to time. I think this dude will look cool in the Kill Team games in the future.

A little snip here and a little snip there

I have the Banshee build and primed .. She'll be the test model for the Jain Zar mini, I want to figure out how I'm going to paint her up before just jumping into it. I'm thinking of white faded into a bluish grey but I'm still undecieded. Tonight I'm going to finish up a few things I've been messing with namely the BroodLord and made a few touch ups on some other minis.

I used a standard Banshee arm for the Exarch to give her a little different pose. Chopped and moved the tassle over though. I will need to bend the sword up, true to finecast's wonderful ways it keeps going limp on me haha ..

Hey,.. Pull my finger..

This weekend I had limited time as well so I gave the converted models I've been working on a Simple Green bath to remove the rough paint. I took a few pics and might put up a how to if I get a chance. So I moved on to the Broodlord. I'm hoping to have him finished up soon, I added some plasticard diamond plate to his base and primed it. Worked on getting some details finished up but there are a still a few to go. He's coming along is all his gory meanness!

Scream a little scream for me..

It's been a busy week so I haven't had as much time as normal. I built up this Banshee to use for test coloring for the Jain Zar conversion. This week I truly realized how much I detest Finecast. Beside all the normal bubbles and thin sections, the ton of flashing ... so many areas have striations and texture. I cleaned the paint off the green stuff that crazed and realized how rough some of the areas really were. Hesperex's hair is truly a mess, I used a seam scraper and got it as clean as I could. I'm going to prime her again tonight and hopefully it will be smooth.

I'm also going to start concentrating on getting the models done for Games Day so my focus will be much tighter for the next few months.

I can breathe!

Artograph 1520 Product Review

I purchased the spray booth a couple of weeks ago to help with paint and glue fumes. It seems that over the past few years glue has been increasingly devastating to me. If I use Super or Plastic glue for more then 5 mins I get sick, I guess it's part of getting older who knows. I do know it sucks so I had to do something because it was killing me. So I purchased this spray booth.

I got it off Amazon for about $250 dollars on sale and so far I'm really happy with it. It comes with multiple filters and they are easy to replace. They are pretty much just standard house return filters which can be bought at a hardware store if you don't want to buy the replacements. There is also the thin layer of a paper like filter which is more of a surface to spray on to protect the main filter. The hood is made of cardboard which sounds a little cheap (my wife thought so at least haha) but for the price it's ok and it makes it easy to break down if you need to. The booth has very good suction and pulls from below, venting in the rear. The vent is 4" and will take a standard vent hose (dryer hose) so it can be routed.

I bought a 4" dryer kit and cut a piece of Masonite to mount in the window when I'm using the booth. The kit I bought has quick release attachments so I can just pull them apart without the use of clamps and then attach them again when needed. Was a pretty quick setup and only cost about $20 at Home Depot.

I've used the booth on numerous occasions in the last few weeks. From glue to air brush and I'd have to say I'm completely impressed. If you keep the glue in the booth you don't even smell it. I glued together 5 Dusk Wolves, an Ork, a DeffKoptor and some metal bits. I didn't smell anything and I haven't had any ill effects. With the air brush you might get a whiff of the smell here and there but that was typically the way I was spraying. Either way none of the spray itself got out. As of right now I'm completely happy with the purchase and would recommend it in a heartbeat. If you can't stand the smell of glue and paint or are just tired of over spray you might want to think about picking one of these up. The only slight downside I'd say is it doesn't have a light so you'll have to rig something up. Right now I just drop a light over the top and it works great.

I'll swallow your soul...

I mentioned before I was going to paint up some Nids and Orks for Kill Teams so I broke out my Space Hulk Nids and got to painting the Broodlord. The models in Space Hulk have a good bit of detail and thankfully the Broodlord looks much cooler then the arms raised normal model (to me at least). I went with a more old school look for him rocking the purple but went with red instead of the blue accents. So far he's probably half way done but needs a good bit more detail and blending. Thankfully he is coming along and I'm liking the look of him. The one down side to the Space Hulk mini's is the sculpt is a little weird in some spots. So I'm going to make those areas and others look like gore to give it some added creep factor. I'll also be adding some to the base to make it look right .. 

The Razor's Edge..

A bit more work on the Dusk Wolves Razorback. I added icons and numbers plus a bunch of weathering. This guy is practically finished I just need a little touch up here and there and I think he'll be all wrapped up. In the last game I played he melted Kharn's face off with his LAS .. was a good day haha..

The sum of my parts..

A bit more work on my Eldar conversions. The Farseer is coming along nicely and is mostly built. I unfortunately didn't completely clean the Vaseline off the green stuff so some of the primer crazed. No biggy though, there are still some areas I'm going to work with to get  him looking 100% .. I'll strip those sections and reprime.

Bits so far:
High Elf Mage Body
Rune Armour from Eldrad
Farseer Helm
Banshee left arm and pistol
Jain Zar's spearhead

Jain Zar

She is also almost finished being built. There are still little sections of her that need more green stuff work. I think she's looking pretty good so far, though she doesn't really stand out haha..  I've put a ton of work and time into her even if she doesn't scream WOW look at me ..

Bits so far:
Banshee body
Jain Zar left shoulder guard
Jain Zar Triskele (The Silent Death)
Lelith Hesperax head
Succubus left forearm and spear
Lemartes Base