Army repairs and Varnish!!

Another post in a matter of days whats going on... HOBBY!!

A few weeks ago I was looking over my Word Bearers as I had finally decided to add Squad markings to them, as it's hard to distinguish the Squad's in the heat of battle. As I was applying the decals (I'll be doing a tutorial on this as I used some products I haven't used before so stay tuned...) I really started to notice the wear and tear this army has accumulated over the last 5(ish) years and I was bummed about it... I'd spent a lot of time and effort in making this army look really nice and I hated to see it diminished in any way. So I decided it was time for some repairs!! Over the last weeks or so I've re dry brushed all the metallic's on the back packs and any where else where it's showing wear and tear. I re glued weapons, broken conversions or anything else that's reared it's ugly head. So far this has been accomplished on my four CSM Squad's and the two Havok Squad's. These six Squad's have now also recieved their first coat's of varnish... ever... I've always been meaning to varnish these bad boys but you know stuff happens and it never came to fruition. Unfortunately that's why I've had to spend time these last weeks re painting metallic's, as dry brushed metallic's always wear exponentially quicker than any other colours (except for anything that's been painted over a white undercoat, they come off real fast!!). This is only something I've really become consciously aware of while working on my WB Terminators, the mithril silver drybrsuh was very lightly built up and until I'd given it a wash of the new GW washes it would come off with even light handling. Another problem I've had is that I apply another light drybrush of mithril once the wash has dried and this has also started to wear off with minimal handling already. So next time I've finished painting any metallic's I'm going to apply a varnish to seal it all in and hopefully a little more time spent here will save me a lot of time in the future with re painting whole sections of models. I've seen plenty of people have success and (lots of) failures with spay varnishes, so many years I'd decided spray varnishes were not the way to go (even though I hadn't varnished anything :-)). I'm not the only one who feels this way as Ron and the boys from FTW Bloggers Group have recently done an article titled Varnishing without Frosting.

Check out the link for their thoughts and ideas at;

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2009/09/varnishing-without-frosting.html

Applying the varnish by brush does take a long time, but I'm very happy with the results. Overall I've used a Gloss varnish on all the armor and metallic's and then I've used a Satin varnish for flesh, standards, holsters, (im)purity seals and accessories. I didn't want to use a Matt Varnish as a Matt finish doesn't compliment and enhance a paint job like Gloss and Satin varnishes do. The Gloss varnish should give good protection to the high wear area's like the shoulder pads and power packs.

I've used Vallejo Model Colour varnishes for this project (See below pic)

On the hobby cards for this week I'm finalizing my decision on how I'm going to paint my Space Hulk Terminators and I'm currently doing the final touches on my Word Bearer Terminators, which is... Metallic's, Decals and Varnish!! As I stated earlier I'll be doing a tutorial on applying decals after I've finished the Terminators and I'll be sure to include the tricks I've picked up over the years in applying them.

PS: I've picked up a Cryxx battle group and a corresponding P3 paint set, once these have been built and painted I'll be sure to put up a post and review on how the P3 paints worked for me...