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...

A Word Bearer Assualt vehicle Pt3 +...

Hi guys,
It's been a few weeks since my last and my progress hasn't been great :-), I got side tracked by my Xbox and a certain Lego Star Wars game....

Well as you can see I've made my Land Raider more "Spikey", and Ive added some accessories from the Dark Angels, namely a couple of Books and Incense burners plus some skulls on spikes from the Chaos Warriors. I think these really help to capture the feel of the Word Bearers as Religious Zealot CSM's. All the spikes at the back of the Land Raider have been pinned but not glued to the hull, in keeping with all the other top mounted accessories being removable for storage and transport. It took me days and days of blu taking bits and pieces all over the place until I could find a configuration that worked best for me, but I'm really happy with the way it has turned out!! The only bit I wish I had done was to magnetize the sponsons , I've gone to a bit of trouble with the interior only for it to not often see the light of day, whereas if I'd magnetized them I could remove them and open up the side panels, maybe next time... (Yes Nathan I should have listened to you!!)


While I was pondering what to do with the Land Raider I busted out some plastic Terminators, these were really fun to clean up and assemble, the mold lines were few and every thing fit well together!! The hardest part about making these guys was that I wanted to magnetize all the arms and weapon options. I used 3mm magnets for these as there's a reasonable amount of plastic on there once you get the weapon and shoulder pad mounted. Drilling the 1mm pilot holes was nice and easy, but drilling the 3mm was a pain as the drill bit kept sticking in the plastic, or ripping off line (mostly it was a combination of the two...). I was using a hand vice as i don't trust a dremel not too melt the plastic. Has any one else used an electric drill with success on plastics? Once I'd drilled the holes out I had to bulk them up slightly with some Green Stuff as the torso's of the Terminators are hollow, after filling the hole with the Green stuff I put some Vaseline on the magnet and sunk it into the green stuff to make it level with the plastic. During drying though all of these must of gotten air pockets in them as the next day when I re inserted the magnet to test that every thing fit the magnet was no longer sitting flush with the plastic :-( So with some more messing about I sorted it out...


The other problem I had was a distinct lack of enough shoulder pads for all the weapons options, (5 shoulder pads and 7 weapon options, you do the math...) There are some place's on line that sell bits, but they are nearly always out of stock or too far away (if anyone can recommend one please send me a link), so I decide to reproduce some from resin, setting up the moulds is a challenge that's for sure!!. This sort of worked out (mostly), but little details didn't re produce well or at all, so my limited Green stuffing ability was called into play. As they say "Good from a far, but far from good", they do the job...barely...


The basing was quite fun to do also, I used some small slate that GW have in their basing kits, plus various bits and pieces from the Space Marines, Imperial Guard and new plastic Skeletons ranges. I've undercoated everything now and I'm almost ready to paint, I say almost as It's been quite a few years since I've painted this colour scheme and the pre mixes I'd made all those years ago needed some rescuing. I think I'm going to paint a test model (or two) before i get to the main event!


Well that's enough from me, Happy Modelling!!

A Word Bearer Assualt Vehicle Pt2.

Hi all, I've had a fairly productive week, even with the Melbourne F1 on the tele!!

First up I glued the interior together and made sure the assault ramp moved correctly. While this was drying I cleaned up and pre assembled all the weapon mounts ready to be undercoated and painted separately. Some Tamiya filler was used on the Lascannon sights as there were some large dimples in the plastic. The Lascannon shrouds had to be bent and teased so that they would fit correctly, when bending plastics or metal parts be sure to do it with slow even pressure to reduce the chance of any breakages.


From the following pic you can see white thin strips of plasti card glued to the underside of the top of the hull. These have been added because for some reason the top of the Land Raiders hull didn't sit flush with the top of the sides of the hull. This took a reasonable amount of time to make sure that everything fit correctly, I had done plenty of dry runs (no glue being used) to find out where I needed to fill out the gaps. I used a combination of 0.4 mm & 1.0mm plasti card for this, if a strip needing to be thinned slightly I just rubbed the strip on some 320 grit sandpaper that was sitting flat on the table top. Once all the plasti card had dried, i trimmed it down starting with a hobby knife then I proceeded to smooth it out with files and further still with 1000 grit sandpaper.



All the tracks have been added to the hull (with Imperial Eagles removed of course!). The top hatches were quickly cleaned and assembled, as was the spotlight. With the spotlight I had to use and Imperial mounting as I was going to use the Chaos mount for my Dirge caster, I then added a banner top from the new GW plastic Marauder Horsemen box set to the spot light. The Dirge caster was next on the hit list, this has had a 2.0mm (diameter) brass rod inserted to act as a large pin. I did this because I wanted to be able to remove any accessories I have on top of the Land Raider to ease transporting in a carry case. I've also added 1/8 brass rod to the 4 exhaust ports on the back of the engine for something different. When cutting up the brass rod I used GW's new modeling vice and boy did it make cutting this stuff a hell of a lot easier!!


My existing Rhino and Predator vehicles have removable Chaos banners and flaming braziers, which are fixed in place. For my Land Raider I want every accessory on top of the Land Raider to be easily removed for storage and transport. For the banner I again used one from the new GW plastic Marauder horsemen kit, I used another length of 2.0mm brass rod for the banner pole and cut up a smaller length of 1/8 brass rod that was going to sleeve the 2.0mm rod near the bottom, about 10mm of the thinner rod is poking out. I then drilled a 2.0mm hole into a 5mm x 5mm piece of 1.0mm plasti card. This plasti card was then glued underneath the 1/8 length of brass rod with the thinner brass rod poking through it all. This plasti card was going to stop the banner pole from sliding to far into the Land Raider.

For the flaming braziers I cut up 2x Inquisitor Witch hunter henchmen, unfortunately the cuts weren't straight and I've had to use some brown stuff (it's not as bad as it sounds, its a brown / aluminum epoxy resin) to level out the cuts. I've used brown stuff as it's easier to cut, file and sand than green stuff because of the aluminum flakes in it. Unfortunately I'm not sure where to place these exactly on top of the Land Raider as I also want to put on some smoke launchers and maybe some trophy poles. The braziers need to be in front of the banner (they help illuminate it after all...), but behind the pintle combi bolter (which is going next to the Heavy Bolter). I'm leaning towards the configuration in the pic below, but if you have any other ideas let me know with some quick feed back!


Well that's it from me for now, hopefully I can get these last fiddly bits sorted out quickly so I can get ready to undercoat and paint this bad boy!! In the mean time I hear some plastic Chaos Terminators a calling...


Happy Modeling!!