Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part One

Greetings one and all, I'm trying a new approach for this next project. As it'll be a fairly long one I'm breaking up the reporting of it and spreading it over a series of articles as a kind of build log. "What project?" I hear you ask. Well, it's a cool one, a brace of my very favourite 40k aircraft. The Imperial Navy Thunderbolt:

These two have come ready assembled (thank the gods as my tempestuous relationship with Forgeworld's instructions is well documented) but they still need a little work. Mostly cleaning casting plug remnants, mould lines and the main thing the client wants. Bombs. Lots of bombs. Missiles too:

We're using a box of Academy's 1:48 WWII ordnance for the job. 1:48 is perfect for 40k's slightly exaggerated scales - indeed, I think it is the right scale for any "chunky" 28mm figure as the Bolt Action stuff I'm doing indicates. These need to be interchangeable, so the only practical way to go is magnets. However, magnets over such a variety of sizes of hard points and ordnance will lead to problems with fiddly making-sure-everything-is-exactly-the-same-size-and-polarity-itis. I eventually realised that it would be a bit too fiddly. Never mind the inevitable mistake when a magnet gets put in upside down. No. A better way needed to be found and one presented itself in the form of movement trays. You see, lots of people (Maisey of the Beard Bunker included) use magnets in their bases to stick their models down to movement trays to prevent that "we're in a pile at the bottom of the hill boss" formation so popular when gravity gets involved. What do the magnets stick to? Sheets of very thin, self adhesive flexible steel. Essentially plastic impregnated with fine steel filings which leaves it both magnetic and very, very soft. You can cut it with scissors. Or...

If like me you've got one, a guillotine (really useful bit of kit) which will give you perfectly straight cuts no muss, no fuss. I cut 5mm wide strips of the flex-steel - measured to fit the rectangular mounting points on the underneath of the wings. These were then cut to one inch lengths and moved on to the sticking.

The self-adhesion will stick 'em in place just fine but I feared for it's longevity. So after they were all in place (note the extra centre-line mounting for really large bombs) I ran some superglue around the edges. Capillary action will draw it in and seal the edges up nicely. Ought to be bomb proof now (badum-tish). These 0.5mm thick flex-steel pieces will vanish nicely beneath the primer coat and will just look like extra sculpted panels. The idea is that if the client just wants to use them as interceptors the wings will simply look painted. No obvious points of attachment. The magnetised hard points for the bombs and missiles will just snap into place and - hopefully - not leave a mark.

Speaking of paint, the scheme we're going for is an "Imperial-esque" variant of a neat WWII luftwaffe scheme the client found. Looking forward to playing with it. Handily, the transfer sheet came with a colour guide complete with RLM colour values. Five minutes on Vallejo's website found me their equivalences pdf and the correct colours for the greys are found. But that will wait for next time gadget. Next time!

TTFN

p.s. like the idea of seeing more workbench articles? Seeing the process instead of the finished result? Let me know in the comments.

Imperial Guard! Flags! People Holding Them!

Yes, I'm running short of titles for DKK posts.

Today we've got some shiny, shiny banners and some very normal DKK dudes holding them. These are all part of the mopping up project finishing off the client's DKK collection. The dudes are pretty much normal as per previous posts:

Perfectly normal dudes for reference

I've done some minor modifications as per client instructions, mostly small posing changes, goggles on helmet etc.

The banners are mishmashes of Imperial Guard flags, Empire finials and "dangley bits", one of them is a straight up Empire banner. The one above is just the army colours and my faux NMM gold.Getting happier with it as I go. Still not a fan of NMM in general but on cloth, it works really well.

The next two have more work involved in them. The flag on the left had a Cadian Gate on it. Client asked for it to be removed and replaced with an Armageddon style fist. Twenty minutes with a Dremel and a couple of hours with ProCreate and a new flag is born. The one on the right is totally freehand. The horses tail is less stubby than it looks in the picture. The black shows through the yellow with the lighting.

So, all done! There'll be more DKK before we're done (again) but for now

TTFN

Men in Blue (part 3)

Hi folks, got some more DKK for you, the blue flavour, and with flags this time!

As I've chatted about the painting side of these before so I won't go into to too much detail, more of a picdump.

I am really liking the way the blue works with the various greys. The camera doesn't pick it up too well but the lining, helmets/armour, trousers and gas mask are all slightly different greys. I added a splash of khaki this time with the bedrolls on the backpacks but the overall look is very "professional soldier" which I always like on guardsmen.

The banners are a mix of plastic cadian banners and Forgeworld's rather nice krieg ones. The piles of skulls are so very Death Korps.

So there you go, not much to chat about but pretty pics nonetheless. These got finished over the last week or so but it seemed insane to do multiple posts all featuring the same colours and models so I waited till I had a group shot going.

TTFN

Tank (Spanner) Girl

Hi folks, today we have some of the wo(men) behind the armoured might of the Imperial Guard. A mechanic to keep them running and a commander to aim the gunning (I'll stop that now). First off, the mechanic, or Tank Spanner Girl as I'd named her:

I wound up painting this model twice. The first time I was just not happy with the result, so I thought "what the heck, I'll have another crack at her". Stripped, repainted. Still not happy. I figured I couldn't possibly have cocked up such a simple figure twice in a row. The commission brief was simple enough (to fit the brown Krieg I've painted before) and the colour scheme was sound. So what was wrong? Then it hit me. She didn't look like a mechanic. She looked like a pin up from a car mag "'Ere luv, 'old that big spanner and we'll take some shots...". Clearly she needed more mechanic cred. Nothing I could do about the sculpt (she must have been warm in the workshop or something) so I gave it more thought. Grime! Was the result of that thought. Proper mechanics are dirty. Initially I tried just using the Ammo Oil Stains paint. This was way too shiny (model is much, much more matt than the photo indicates) and too brown. It's designed to indicate spilled fresh oil. So I mixed some black dry pigments (forgeworld ones) into the oil stains and tried again. This time it was entirely made of win. The right consistency, the right colour everything. I softened each stippled layer with odourless turps and overall applied 3-4 layers. I now realise that the reflectiveness in the pictures is the microscopically thin layer of the turps that still hadn't cooked off reflecting light. Doh!

Anyway, this fixed her. Win! On to a friend, a dismounted tank commander (possibly destined for the leviathan, possibly just a disembarked chap for when tanks become sad and explode mid game:

The model is a cut and shunt conversion of a tank commander body and a cadian set of legs. The sword he came with had such a bad miscast (hollow) that it just disintegrated on assembly. Fortunately I had a perfect alternative in the form of a cutlass from the Free Company box. I figured that like sailors, tank crewmen would appreciate the easy-to-draw-in-confined-spaces curved blade over the normal straight guard sword. Maybe he's friends with a navy armsmen. Who knows. Painting wise he's nothing special. Dark grey and gloss black to fit with the previous tank crew I painted for the Krieg. The pink flashes on the cuffs and epaulettes are to finish the WW2 German tank crew vibe (yep, pink, it actually works quite well).

And that is all! Short one but at least there were shinies!

TTFN

Using Brass Etch - KV-1s Workbench

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.

TTFN

Wyrd innit?

Hi folks, quick update for you today with the latest of the commission stuff to be finished (there's been a lot of assembly and other un-photographable work lately). A feral-world Wyrd:

I can't tell you who sells this (anyone enlighten me?) She is an Impact Miniatures Theja Doris, from their fantasy football range (thanks Christopher Sheets). Client had assigned this to the pool of random imperial agents as a Wyrd psyker. I can see why, it's debatable what else it could be? I sometimes think - and I'm afraid ladies that this is a problem mostly with the female figures - that sculptors just stop thinking on certain figures. This one had clearly been sculpted to be alluring but what else is she? [edit: turns out she has interchangable left arms including one holding a football to throw, how anyone thinks that right arm is "about to throw" is beyond me a little but hey ho!] However, she does make a more than passable psychic, from the passive pose probably a telepath subtly working her puppetry into the mind of an unwilling dupe rather than the more "Blaaagh!*" type of psyker.

But enough about the figure, painting! From the get go I knew I wanted to use Dwartist's lovely skin tone from his Hasslefree 'Giant' piece. Go check it out, you will not be sorry. My version of this boiled down to Vallejo Burnt Umber as a base coat, highlighted with Val Beige Brown, glazed down with Agrax Earthshade and rehighlighted with the Beige Brown. I'm pretty sure that by varying the starting point and shading that between these two colours and the Caucasian flesh tones already available I can do a fairly large array of different skin colours. Exciting! I do now know, however, why Caucasian seems to dominate the painting world, it is really, really hard to photograph subtle dark skin tones. I had to do a lot of jiggery pokery with levels and colour balance in photoshop to get this model looking even halfway as good as it does in real life. I suspect I will improve with practice. For now, tricky.

Shame-faced apologies for the horrible noisy image. Must improve my photography

To emphasise the "I'm totes a psychic" look I decided to paint the eyes in a faint turquoise glow. Usual method of layers of very thin washes for the cast out light with a strong colour on the eyes highlighted to very nearly white. You can also just about see here that the lips have been glazed with Carroberg Crimson in order to give them some definition. All in all a quick, fun figure. The client and I had discussed some Day of the Dead style body paint (google at your peril but some awesome work) for her but looking at images of the style, it's strength is all in the fine details around the large areas of white and this just vanishes at 28mm scale (or needs Golden Demon level chops which ain't me I'm afraid, sadface) so we figured let the clean lines speak for themselves. Until next time folks.

TTFN

*Blaaargh! evidently refers to any sort of psyker who just fountains energy at people. Definately a legit term. Yup.

Teeny Tiny T-70 (Bolt Action)

Once again: Privet Tovarishchi! The mighty bear of the Soviet army have another tooth with which to grip the throat of the fascist grey wolf! The mighty... what? It's not, in any way mighty? Oh, well... the plucky T-70 light tank!

annoying "shinyness" in all these photos, actual tank much more matte.

The T-70 was one of a whole line of Soviet light tanks, it was first made in 1942 and replaced the T-50 infantry support and T-60 scout tanks. This is actually the T-70M variant because the '70 had a nasty habit of exploding due to it's engine configuration. Not long after the T-70M was replaced with the T-80 the Soviet Union abandoned light tank production all together and replaced their role with armoured cars while focusing on medium and heavy tank production. I think the T-70 was unfortunate in a way because it was developed at the time when the T-34 was king of the battlefield. A medium tank with the performance and speed of the light tank will always draw uncomfortable comparisons and the '70 just wasn't up to the job. It didn't help that the tank could literally only fit 2 crewmen so commanding an engagement was all but impossible for tank commanders who had to focus on gunnery. Anyway, enough history (more here), on with the show!

The first thing to note about this kit (the MikroMir 1:48 T-70) is that it is tiny, it feels like a 1:72 kit in many ways. In the photo above the T34-85 looks enormous compared to the '70 despite it being far from a big tank (wait till I break out the KV-1 or Maisey brings the Tiger). I should confess, at the time of assembling the kit I was ready to turn this article into a symphony of frustration at this kit. I hated assembling it. Lousy instructions of the mislabelled parts, "lets mash 12 steps into one, they'll figure it out" school; soft details on hard brittle plastic; unnecessary brass etch components (every ridge on the turret is a piece of brass you have to fold) and the worst track run I've made to date. All told on and off it took about eight hours to make. Approach this kit with caution, "Made in Ukraine" is unfortunately not a mark of quality it seems. That being said, it is the only (to my knowledge) 1:48 scale T-70 kit on the market so I feel fortunate to have one available at all.

Despite all that grumbling? My hate for this tank vanished under the first spray of primer. The various components were unified and the tank emerged. I had also by then done more research (seriously, to find out where to fit the rear road wheels, the instructions did not show it...) and discovered that some of the features of the kit that looked properly rough were accurately representing the tank! It's build quality is terrible! Not surprisingly, for Soviet armour, painting proceeded in exactly the same way as the T34-85 kit. Vallejo Cam Olive Green, highlighted by adding Green Grey, shaded by adding black. Tracks were painted in Vallejo Track Primer and Ammo Track Rust, the rims of the wheels in Ammo Rubber & Tires. There really isn't much else to the normal painting (Soviet armour is seriously easy to paint, "any colour so long as it's green!"). From then on it's all weathering.

Weathering was - again just like the T34-85 - just Ammo Enamels loaded onto a brush and then blown off onto the model with bursts of air from the airbrush. Starting with the lightest, and the greatest coverage, and working darker and darker for fresher and fresher splashes. I dampened the upper surfaces of the tank with odourless thinner and then ran the lightest earth colour into the creases, panel lines, around the bolts and anywhere else that dust would gather. Did some streaking anywhere that rainmarks would form and that was that. Last two things to mention are markings - again, hand painted by the crew so just a freehand "51" and a "For Stalin!" on the side - and the exhaust system. I decided that the crew had recently had a new unpainted exhaust fitted but the pressure of the conflict led to the tank being thrown back into service with no extra paint (there are stories of the tank factory in Stalingrad literally rolling off the production line, unpainted, covered in welders chalk marks and being crewed and driven straight into the conflict outside). As a result, the exhaust, which are all cheap metal, rusted fast. I wanted to play with the ammo rust colours and they are fantastic. Really good for the "jeffrust" stippling thing. I started from a German Camo Black-Brown basecoat and worked up.

So a fun paint job on a really, really hellish build. Shakes out as a fairly enjoyable tank. No idea how it will fight on the table, but I'll let you know. You see this is the first step of a Tank War army (list above) designed to reflect roughly the proportions of different models of tank in the Soviet Army, i.e. mostly T-34's with a big KV-1 and a little nippy T-70 for scouting. Two lethal squads of SMG armed tank riders to sweep aside the opposing infantry round it out (great help not having to have separate transports for them and it's very Soviet). I know we'll be facing a Tiger at some point... eep.

That's all for today tovarishchi, keep the vodka handy and your gun oiled for winter is over and spring will bring the attack once more!

TTFN