So there I was, putting together some minis for a client when I came across a common problem: Tiny, tiny feet on a model that needs to be glued directly to the base. Now, I know how to solve this problem and it's fairly straightforward, hence, a small tutorial. A tutorial-ette if you will.
A join is only as strong as its contact area allows it to be. That's why those slottabases or cast-on discs that most miniatures use are useful. They allow for a small foot while also giving a firm footing. Equally, in plastic it is less of an issue. The welding effect of the polystyrene cement makes for a strong join even with small contact areas. The model above? That is not plastic - nor is it resin for that matter - it's that restic stuff that a few manufacturers use. It can't be glued with polystyrene cement. That leaves only brittle, brittle superglue, and that needs special treatment.
So we've got a cleaned up miniature. You'll want to do some test fitting to see how the model stands best. You don't want to be pinning both feet so look for the one that is the "leading" foot: the one with the most weight on it. That will be the flattest on the floor so the best contact area.
Using a pin vice, aim into the bulk of the leg and drill away. You'll be wanting about a 4-5mm hole, any shallower and it won't resist shearing forces properly and won't work. For some models - especially female ones - this will be tough. I've replaced stiletto heels with a pin before in order to find enough surface area to drill into.
While you've got the pin vice out. Drill a hole into the base where the foot will lie, see? Those test fittings were useful. Shows you where to drill. If you've got a fancy solid cast resin base you can just drill all the way through and insert a wire through it like normal pinning. For the hollow plastic bases, you need another approach. I've tried using modelling putty, filler, all sorts, but the best and fastest way is to bend a length of paperclip wire into an 'L'-shape. Be generous with the length. It's a paperclip, so cheap as to be virtually free. Don't risk the join failing for a few mm of paperclip. Oh, and use bare metal paperclips, not those plastic wrapped ones. The plastic isn't properly adhered to the wire. It'll be like gluing to a painted surface, only as strong as the paint bond to the primer.
Push the wire through the base from underneath, then, using a generous amount of superglue, glue that sucker down. Superglue gap-fills on distances less than a mm or so, thus the generous amount helps to form a firmer bond. Usually this isn't the case, small amounts and very close bonds are how to make superglue be your friend. This is a round wire being glued to a flat sheet of plastic. It needs some extra help.
Now, dry-fit your model onto the wire. The amount sticking out between the foot and the base is the excess you need to cut off. Remove the model from the wire and trim down the wire by the amount sticking out. Once this is done just put superglue on the wire and the feet and stick it down.
And there you go! Like I say, this is straightforward, but I've got the process down to a fine art now and like they say: "It's only simple when you know how". With the increasing popularity of models in things like board games (this chap is from Shadows over Brimstone) but without the design experience that wargames manufacturers have, I foresee more of this kind of thing coming up. Now the knowledge is out in the world. Go forth, and break off your minis no more.
I realised the other day that it has been an absolute age since I last did any kind of tutorial, fortunately an opportunity has rather presented itself...
My client has two of these rather handsome totally-not-Hugo Weaving figures and we were debating which head would go nicely on the spare. We had a few options and none of them were really going right. Fortunately, I solved that problem the other day:
Yup, we suddenly realised that the head that I sawed off the Cadian officer would make a somewhat compelling option on there and I figured I'd take some photos on the way. These days, you see, we have lovely cleverly designed head swap systems both in plastic and metal. But back in the day, this is the only way we had:
First off, poor ol' Hugo gets decapitated. You could use clippers for this, or a fret saw, but the razor saw is quite simply the best choice for this job. It's farcically thin but stiffened by the ridge down the back. If you don't have one I urge you to buy one. Sadly, most are designed for woodworking and have rather large teeth, you need one with tiny teeth like mine.
So we've now got a decapitated Hugo and a head orphaned from it's body. I cleaned up the head, removing anything that was connecting to the torso, collar or neck of the original. Make sure to trim the jawline as it'll look very fat compared to it's original sculpt.
Sadly though, the angle is horribly wrong for the simple option of "just glue it on". That's not going to help at all. Instead, you need to fabricate a new neck. Best option is a long pin.
Just like the normal pinning process, you drill into both halves and use a bit of paperclip wire to bridge the gap. However in this case you want to do the exact opposite of the normal process and cut it to length in order to hover the head above the shoulders. Position is important here, best option is to treat it as the spine and drill in to both the skull and the torso roughly where the spine would be. Aim the hole toward the crown of the head and you won't go far wrong. It's then just the normal posing conundrum of "where exactly should this head's eyeline go?"
Yeah, ok, slightly disingenuous. It isn't just posing. There's rather a lot of neck to fill in there. At this point it's time to break out the sculpting putty of your choice. I tend to use ProCreate as the final grey colour doesn't jar with the plastic/metal so it's easier to see that you've got it right. Green often retreats visually and can leave you thinking that you've done something wrong. Often only when you prime the model can you be sure you've got it right. For people who do it all the time, they learn to compensate for this... I hardly ever sculpt, I use grey.
And there we have it! Original flavour Hugo on the left, new Captain Snooty McMonacle on the right. Sadly, his head is slightly overscale for his body but only slightly. Not the worst we've seen by a long way. Painting will come soon, but for now, that's all folks, more shinies to come soon.
Greetings one and all, today we get to riddle things with holes and set stuff on fire, ooooh yeah!
Y'see, I've been asked to do a trio of Broadside suits for a client and mercifully, he wanted them modelling distinctly "mid-battle". Dirt, grime, fired missiles and that can also mean, battle damage. Now this makes me very happy as grimy Tau are best Tau in my opinion. But it also made me realise that this was a perfect opportunity to show you my method for making bullet hits. You'll need a source of heat (I used a candle, yeah, that's what we're setting fire to, sorry to lead you on but heck, you're reading now...) a couple of thicknesses of wire and some pliers or other wire-holding, hand-protecting gubbins. You'll notice there isn't that perennial go-to of bullet holes, the pin vice. That's because sadly, they don't work for this job. Bullets are not neat hole-generating devices, unless they go clean through thin materials, instead a survived hit on metal tends to look like this:
So how do we create these? Well, in the bad old days of metal you had to drill out a bigger hole, fill it with green stuff and then shove something in to distend the "metal" out from the impact. When plastic is the material?
some of this will not be the best photography as I'm shooting one handed
Just heat a wire and stab the model. No really, it is that simple. You will need to play at getting the right temperature and practice the timings and such (sprue is great for that) but it isn't much more complex than that.
A good trick is to go in fast with the hot wire and then pause, wait for the wire to cool enough for the plastic to solidify again and then wiggle it out. You will leave streamers of plastic every now and again but they can be trimmed later, the upshot though is you are left with:
Gorgeous, damn near perfect bullet impacts for practically zero effort. You can push all the way through a plate and leave a crater in a surface behind it. You can push through across a corner or along a plate to leave a ricochet scar or a through-and-through. You can even use a hot knife to create claw marks where some metal-chomping Tyranid beasty has got at it. It's very versatile and will really reward some experimentation and practice.
The finished squad, all battle damaged and mid-combat. I've tried to change up the poses as much as I can but those legs are limited by the pins holding the ankle and the solid posed knee (would a two part leg have killed you GW?) make it tricky. After two variants of the pose I knew I had to do some modelling jiggery pokery on the third or look like a line dancing set. I removed the ankle pins and turned the - admittedly nice - braced pose into a stride. It's not easy though, and I suspect with the locked legs GW were trying to avoid this:
Being necessary while the glue dries. I get the impulse, but seriously, a deeper ankle joint and a hex shaped connector in the knee would have allowed for some more freedom in pose. Ah well, minor grumbles. But while we are talking modelling and modifying the GW kits, all of you should click on the picture below and check out what fellow Beard Bunker dweller Charlie has done with a Leman Russ:
I love it, gives the Russ a much, much more satisfying set of dimensions. Really inspired to retrofit all my company of Russes with the better true-scale battlecannons. Even found a company in Poland who make 1:48 scale Firefly barrels which will hopefully make nice Vanquisher cannons.
Well, that's all for today folks, happy modelling and
Tagline: Project Thunderbolt - build log part six and a half.
Yeah, I know, it's no "in space no-one can hear you scream" is it? Today, I present a mini-update because I realised that I had something that I could easily step-by-step and would take up a ton of room in another update. So a tutorial is born!
This is a surprisingly nippy technique, took about 15 minutes to do both engines including stopping to take photos. However you really do need a hairdryer to achieve this time. Leaving ink layers to dry naturally will take approximately forever. Start by lightening the metalwork on the area you need to heat stain. You'll need the brighter steel to show through.
A thin glaze of chestnut ink (all ink layers are mixed with acrylic thinner, in this case Vallejo Airbrush Thinner) over the nozzle is followed by a thicker band. Feather these out a bit - stippling can be helpful too. Check to avoid pools of ink forming. You want a nice clean layer... of grime... you know what I mean.
Next a red and chestnut ink mix was applied to the bottom edge of the "brown band" (seriously, look at reference materials for this.
Then a mix of red and blue inks to create the right purple tone, feather this over the red-chestnut to keep the gradually shading tones.
Next, blue ink is used to stain the very ends of the nozzles (nozzles? Who knows), again feather the blue into the purple.
Finally we get some soot staining with drybrushing first German Camo Black-Brown...
...And finally black. Done!
Now if you are doing this on the polished chrome of a motorbike exhaust, for example, you will want it shinier than this, don't add the soot and put a thin layer of gloss varnish over the staining. It'll pick up the reflective quality of the metalwork beneath. These are old, 40k-ish engines so grime is better.
There y'go, quick tutorial, and just because "why not?" here is a picture of a nifty torpedo:
I think I'm a little obsessed with that torpedo...
Hi folks, I was working on the T-70 a little while ago, glueing little bits of carefully bent brass etch into place and realised that I had never actually talked about how to use the stuff! Fortunately I have a Soviet armour addiction at the moment (can quit any time I like, ok? OK?!) and so the beautiful Hobbyboss KV-1s Ehkranami on my workbench would form a nice test bed for a basic tutorial.
Now most brass etch is things like the above, very, very thin components that can't be made strongly enough in injected plastic. Compare the scale thickness of these components and similar things on the Leman Russ. I will confess that that is not a fair comparison as the Russ has been designed to go together easily and withstand the rigours of rough wargaming handling. The KV-1 here has been designed to be an accurate scale model that can also be used for wargaming. If you're careful. But this is what I am really liking about building my Bolt Action collection, there is the option for some really, really nice scale modelling as well as a nifty wargame. Most projects will never need more than the above, but the scale-modelling bug is contagious and the temptation to take things further is very real. I'll caution you that if you are the sort of modeller who rages at a part that doesn't precisely fit (been there) the next products miiiight not be for you...
The part in question is engine intake grills, you see Hobbyboss have helpfully modelled louvres leading into the darkness of the engine. This is odd though as the kit part that covers them is completely opaque plastic. On the T34-85 kit the grills were fairly straightforward and thus included on the etch sprue from the get go. On this tank (the only KV-1 I'm likely to have so wanted to go large on the modelling) I'd need to replace them with aftermarket etch if I wanted them delicate and lovely.
Hauler (along with Eduard and loads of others) make a bewildering array of enhancement products to make the injection kits more accurate, or a different version, or just more characterful. It's easier to do this in scale modelling than in sci-fi/fantasy modelling as no-one owns the design of a 70 year old tank. Anyone can make a KV-1. Parts for a Stormraven are more tricksy. Anyway, lets get on with tutorial flavour stuff rather than musings. There is nothing, nothing in the world that pings off and gets eaten by the carpet monster like brass etch. It's the combination of stiffness, springiness and extraordinary lightness that allows etch components to seemingly defy gravity with a sad little "ping" noise never to be seen again. To prevent this, simply stick some low-tack masking tape to the back of the etch sprues. That way when you cut through the attachment points it can't go anywhere, delicately remove the parts from the tape with the knife and you are good to go. As you can see from the middle image I do this even with the really, really simple components.
Once you've got the parts cut out they often need to be bent into 3D shape. Handily, this kit needed both square bends and rounded shapes so I could show you a lot. There are some magnificent tools designed to assist with this process and if you are working in 1/35 (54mm to us wargamers) I'd really recommend them as trying to get a straight edge bend on a six inch long bit of etch is beyond tricky. For little 1/48 (28mm-ish) scale you don't necessarily need them (I don't own any). I just use two single edge razor blades. These are really, really useful tools anyway and come in massive boxes for not a lot of money so you can always have a sharp one. Lay one razor across the line where the bend will go. Press down and it clamps the part down. Slide the other razor under the part and line them up. Then lift the underneath one and it will neatly bend the part into a perfect angle. Word of warning, measure twice, bend once, if you need to straighten and re-bend it will snap.
If you've never needed tweezers before you will need them for this. You just cannot do this with fingers along. For this project I needed another three semicircular supports gluing on along the frame. The easiest way to do this is tip a little blob of superglue onto a bit of scrap plastic and then holding the part in the tweezers run the edge to be glued through the blob. This controls how much superglue goes on. Get it in place, let it set, then put a dot of thin superglue on the part and give it a sharp puff of air, this will disrupt surface tension and capillary action will distribute the superglue along the stuck edge. Make sure you run a bit of paper underneath before you put the assembly down again to clean any excess otherwise you'll be shaving it off the table with that razor. Once all the supports were glued I turned my attention to the grills.
If you need to get a nice rounded bend, just find a paintbrush with an appropriate diameter and gently smooth down the part over it. Go for slow, smooth gentle bending, don't do it all in one go as you don't want to get a sharp edge in your nice gentle bend. For this kit, the front edge also needed to be pressed flat to fit (this bit was just impossible to photograph). Keeping most of the grill on the paintbrush, press the edge flat against a flat surface with the razor. Once that was taken care of I also needed to flatten the edges along the length of the guard. I put the grill in place so that the supports would keep it in shape and then flattened the edges with the razor. Glue into place and it's a win.
Once in place the difference is clear. Or it might not be. Frankly, this is one of those things that is just for me rather than because I think dozens of people will go "oooh you can see through these!". Most people will never want to do this, plastic is more than enough. I'm just enjoying myself - thus suspecting a slight masochistic edge to my modelling - and thought I'd share what I knew. If you want better info on this kind of thing then you need to plunge in to the pages of magazines like Model Military International (where I learned) and similar publications. There you will find people who want to make sure that there are the right shape, size and number of rivets on a tank. Products that work like a waterslide transfer to make weld seams. It's a magical world with a lot that we wargamers could learn from. Just take it easy on the delicate brass when making a wargaming model, thin brass antennae, while beautiful, will just get destroyed.
And there he (to Russians, vehicles are "he", even ships whereas to us they're "she", just one of those things) is in all his glory. Hobbyboss have knocked this kit out of the park. Do yourself a favour, zoom in at the fenders under the turret, drink in the detail. Can't wait to paint this fella!
Hope you've enjoyed this, I've shied away from work in progress stuff before as I've focussed on the end result of the painting. Do people like this? Do you want to see more like it? Quite happy to do build logs as well as painting. Thoughts? Stick 'em in the comments, I do read them all.
(Don't hate me for the title, it just happened...)
Hi folks, a fun one today, these three have been a blast:
must stop painting hard to photograph brown tones...
These are a the latest commission and are a mix of the new plastic Scions and Victoria miniatures kilt legs and pith helmeted heads. The combination works really nicely I think, something about the anachronistic helmets and the ornate armour is fairly "40k-bonkers". I had completely free reign on the colours for this one so had to think through the feel and balance of the models. The kilts were going to be tartan, the helmets "pith canvas" so there were already colours there, the armour would have to either complement all the colours in the tartan or be a more neutral tone. In the end, I figured that painting the gothic armour in bare steel would be neat. In fact, the whole thing cried out for Victorians in Spaaaaace vibe. So I went with it.
love the stowage on these guys
The rest of the uniform was a either Val English Uniform and Val Khaki. Because everything else was so uniform on them I felt they deserved some individuality, so each got their own tartan on their kilts. I'd like to give some form of full tutorial on the tartan but it really is a matter of fiddling back and forth until you get the result you want. Tartan is created through intermixing coloured threads during weaving so can look very complex, we just use paint so the thought process is different to the weaving and it's one I am still getting to grips with. I feel I can, however give you the basic theory behind getting tartan looking right:
Start with a solid base colour of the background, shade the background in any creases as you won't want to later. Make a mixture of the background and whatever colours you want the squares to be until it looks like it's a 50:50 mix. It won't be, it'll be more like 3:2 or even 2:1 depending on the strength of pigments. Paint these in a broad grid over the tartan, trying to keep the spaces even, you want the gap between the lines the same width as the lines themselves. Then paint the pure colour you wanted into the squares formed where the lines cross.This gets you the basic shape of the tartan.
Now you need the stripe colours, these can be all sorts of colours but here I'm using black. Very, very thin lines (thinned paint and a decent point on the brush here) and paint through an area of the pattern, chose either in the stripes or crossing them. Both will look messy. Real tartans often have multiple lines but we're dealing with 28mm men here. It'll look fine by this stage but you may want to kick it up one more notch and darken the edges of the stripes where they meet the background. Helps the finished look.
Animated .gif! PVP, now with awesome mid-nineties technology...
Look through the tartan patterns on line to get inspiration. Though bear in mind that some patterns that look cracking on people will look utterly horrible on a miniature. Use good plaid judgement folks.
Hi folks, remember this: Windmills... Part 1? Don't blame you, it was back in October, granted, the very last day of October but still, that was a long time back. To be honest, it's been a dry spell for hobby for me. It's actually been two full months since a painted model rocked up on this blog. Just one of those things. But now, I have a biggie to start 2015 with:
Bring on Quixote! The windmill is complete. I waxed rhapsodic about this last time so I'll try to keep my hyperbole to a safe minimum but whoa. The quality of the work Tabletop World put into their sculpting just leaps out when you spend hours painting the thing. Best of all, like all the best models, it started to tell me a story through the little details. It's starting to look tatty, the shingles are starting to break (bad when you want nice dry flour). It clearly isn't being well maintained. The story that rolls in my mind is that the miller is currently in military service (there's a war on after all) and his wife and - what the heck, lets add a child - daughter are keeping the mill working in his absence. The ladies are going to have to get brave and fix that roof and sails soon or there won't be much of a mill left.
I tried to take some step by step shots of the stonework as I went but ohdeargod did the camera hate me. It just looked grey in every step. So I'll just talk you through it. Skavenblight Dinge covers the entire thing in a nice stoney basecoat. Technically you could just start highlighting there and then but to make it look better we need to force some tonal variation into the grey. Tonal variation is totally going to be the words of the day for this post, if it was a video I'd keep a little counter on screen with a "ping" every time I said it. So anyway, tonal variation (ping): I got out of my paint boxes every single vaguely grey, beige, grey-brown, greyish green, greyish blue, all of them. Each got mixed with Skavenblight Dinge and then painted over a stone. I'd wager each colour only appears on about a dozen stones on the whole windmill. Tiny variations but enough to give that natural variety. Then a pair of highlights, first with Administratum Grey then Longbeard Grey put a common theme all the way through the stonework while defining the texture. Stonework is fairly easy but time consuming.
Woodwork went a slightly different path. I then sloshed Badab Black over the German Camo Black-Brown basecoat to define the shadows. Three highlights followed, all drybrushed, first German Camo Black-Brown again, then two highlights of German Camo Black-Brown mixed with Administratum Grey (2:1 then 1:2). Old wood isn't very brown, it's more grey-ish. Tonal variation (ping) was added by using thin glazes of other browns to make the planks individual. Into the recesses of the shingles (deliberately left the planks underneath the shingles free of green) I added several layers of green enamel weathering paints in order to make a mossy vibe to the recesses. Unfortunately as they are beautifully translucent the camera ignores them. Grrr. The metalwork is just AP Gunmetal mixed with black, washed black and a thin glaze of Ammo Rust Streaks.
The windows are Val Dark Sea Blue, washed with black and gloss varnished. The window leads are then painted the same dark metal as the roof but without the rust streaks as lead doesn't rust like that. A nice by product of washing the leading was matt areas around the leading looking like muck building up.
Around the base of the tower I needed to get some muck and dirt that the wind, rain, passing cows etc have stained the stonework with. For this, I again turned to enamel weathering paints. Streaking Grime, Winter Streaking Grime and Dark Streaking for Green Vehicles (essentially, muddy brown, muddy green and a stronger slime green) were variously heavily stippled around the base of the tower. Odourless thinner was used to soften the intensity and fade out the colours before a second round of green was applied to the lowest stones. It looks good in the photos but so much better in person. Superb stuff. Technically the colours I was using were AK Interactive bought a while ago, these days I prefer to buy from Ammo of Mig Jimenez because reasons. Now I've rabbited on about these paints a lot over the last few years. They've completely replaced pigments in my work because they don't rub off, can be removed if you make a mistake and do almost everything pigments can do. Heck, if you add some plaster of paris they can do everything pigments can do. Pigments are great for dioramas and display models. They can't be beaten for conveying the physical presence of dust and rust etc. But dioramas are not touched. Wargaming models are, a lot. So for that reason, enamels is now my go-to weathering product. For as long as I've rabbited on about these things I've said "I must get a tutorial or something worked out". Well here it is, sorta:
Left to right: Dots and streaks applied, first "stumping", second "stumping" see below
The sails are another of those jaw-dropping Tabletop World creations, it would have been easier and more cost efficient to produce one sail and cast four for each windmill. Tabletop World instead made each one unique. It really helps the overall look of the mill and I applaud craftsmen taking decisions to make a quality product rather than just to increase the profitability of a product. After doing the woodwork and attendant metal banding (so, so many bands, twitch), it was time to look at the sails. A mixture of Val Stone Grey and Deck Tan makes a lovely canvas tone but isn't terribly good at coverage so three thin basecoats later I had the main colour. Highlighting simply careful drybrushing of a lighter (more Deck Tan) version of the same mix and then pure deck tan focussing on where the gorgeously thin sails tent over the wooden frame. The ropes were picked out in a more yellowish tone (sorry, didn't write down which) and then shaded with enamel Streaking Grime. I used the enamels as I knew what was coming next.
Lining up nigh on all the enamel weathering paints I had (except for rust and slimy green) I started putting dots and streaks along the length of the sail (leftmost picture above). This will look awful but trust the pirate viking. Give it a few minutes or so to dry off a little (enamel paints can take anything up to a day to cure, it's one of many reasons why they're useless for painting the main body of the model) and then we start "stumping". Stumping is when we take a clean brush, damped down with odourless turpentine or the more aggressive white spirit, and smear and fade the marks we made in stage one. Think about the direction the rain and other factors will move the muck in. The result was the middle photo, more subtle, but still a bit too "painted" for my tastes. A second stumping resulted in beautiful, subtle, washed-out, difficult to photograph muck. Brilliant. Mig has a bunch of tutorials on his site that explain it much, much, much better but there you have it!
After fitting the sails (made much, much easier by the prep work done in part one) I couldn't resist throwing a realm of battle tile and some trees down and seeing how it looks. Pretty damn good I think! One day I might make a base for it to give a bit more story (sacks of grain, worn path leading to the door etc) but that does limit where I can place the mill during terrain deployment. We shall see. Tabletop world assure me that they are making more cottagey type buildings to go with the grand urban structures so the village will grow. Speaking of story, in game I was thinking of some rules to reflect the mill's more unique features. Usual rules for occupying buildings but the building gains flammable despite being stone as flour dust? That stuff is explosive:
Doesn't seem like there'd be enough dry dust to take out the building but having flaming weapons deal double wounds... that seems enough. All in all, a really fun project and I can't wait to get my hands on another building so the village can grow. Tabletop World, I applaud you.
Feel free to throw questions and comments at me below, until next time folks.
