Dip the Monkey

The other day I saw one of my fellow hobbyist's miniatures that he had done, and I noticed he had used the Army Painter dip.  I've heard talk about this stuff for a couple years now and had been slightly interested in it.  But seeing his mini made me want to give it a try.  So while prepping my models for 'Ard Boyz this year I figured try it out on one of the models (yes I'm painting my army for it, I'm nuts!). 

It adds a very slight change, and I'm not sure if I left enough on the model, but over all I'm quite happy with the way this model turned out.  One thing you have to do however is also get an Anti-Shine varnish or the model will come off super glossy. 

The only issue is the start up cost, the Varnish was $30 and the Anti Gloss was another $11.  But I'm pretty happy with the result, and will be trying it out on another couple models to see what the results are.

Magnetizing your Landraider

Hey everyone, today we're going to talk about magnetizing your Landraider so that you can get all of the variants out of it. This is really my first time magnetizing anything to this extreme, and I spent a bit of time thinking about it, while slicing open my thumb, but I believe I've actually come across the easiest way (at least for me) to magnetize the landraider with out having to do to much extra work other then gluing some magnets in place.


So first thing first, I wanted to be able to swap out the weapon sponsons on my landraider. Now I had been thinking about green stuffing an inset that would fit in the holes and putting a magnet in that, but first molding it so it had some design on it, yadda yadda yadda. And as I was watching my finger bleed I kept going wow that's way to much work, and I've got quite a few models I need to work on today. And that's when it hit me, how my poor Eldar with there magnetized bases keep getting stuck to each other sideways.

That's what I ended up doing here. I placed a single 1/8 x 1/16 magnet at the top of the inner hull. Which I would then use as my anchor point. Knowing that all I have to do is have enough resistance to keep the sponson from sliding out, because it will actually be resting inside the hole.


I then put two magnets at the top of the of the sponson, making sure to test out the polarities before gluing (always sucks having your magnets glued the wrong way). Once again using the 1/8 by 1/16. I found that it would work with one magnet here, but that if you held it upside down it would fall out, but with two magnets you can hold it upside down and do the hokey pokey and everything is fine.


Now here's the tricky thing. With the side hatch doors you would think that you would want the magnets going the same way as you do on the weapon sponsons, and that's what I thought too... until I glued it in place, and tried to put in it there, turns out that because it is much more shallow then the weapon sponsons they actually repel each other.

That is why you must remember to flip the polarity on the door hatches, if you do this they will stay in there amazingly.


And here are the two pieces being held into place by the magics of magnetism. Now if you have the bits (or have bought the bits) to make the other sponsons you can freely change your landraider between all three variants.


So now that you can change the variants, what about those weapon upgrades, well I ended up gluing two 1/4 by 1/16 magnets to the bottom of the top hull pieces of the landraider.


I then did a slight bit of stratch building to get a 1/8 x 1/16 magnet on the bottom of the Storm Bolter and Hunter Killer weapon ungrades.


And again, with those magical magnets you can place both upgrades on the landraider, and pull them off when you do not have them purchased, or with the Hunter Killer Missile, once it is used you can simply pull it off without any problems.


Now lastly, we can't forget about those Frag Launchers that help out our dear poor Terminators who for some reason can't hurl a grenade. (Don't ask me, I'd just build them into the armor personally)


So once again I glued a couple 1/4 x 1/16 magnets to the bottom of both of the pieces, using the larger magnets to get more pull here.

With both pieces magnetized, you can now swap the Frag Launchers on and off for the variants that use them.

Now remember as you're working to double check before you glue that everything continues to fits and is in the right spot.

Another thing you'll want to keep in mind is that you should keep all the polarities the same on items you want to be able to share spots with. It'll do you no good if you can't swap between spots because you have the polarities reversed and they are repelling each other. ;)

-CKR

Shaping Bent Resin

So I don't know how many people have ordered pieces from other companies but every once in a while you'll get something that's a little bent out of shape, like the Grey Knight Land Raider Door here.

The easiest way to bend it back into place is to simply throw it in some boiling water.



Here you can see the door floating in boiling water. You don't really have to worry about it melting as it floats and the bubbles keep it off the hot metal sides for the most part. I left it in there for a couple of minutes while working on a few other doors at the same time.



After using some tongs to get it out of the water, I then over so gently bent it back into place. That is until I was a little less gentle on the stubs that slide into the tank and let you open and close the doors.

But as you can see it is way straighter then it was about 5 minutes before hand.



With it straightened out and a little glue for repairs I started building my Land Raider, and as you can see here boiling the piece straight worked like a charm.

-CKR

Grey Knight Escalation League Army Buildup

So this really has been a long time coming, about 4 months ago I won a painting contest over at Hobby Town USA Dallas, and picked up a box of Grey Knight Terminators. They were really nice and couldn't wait for me to start blogging about them.

Well it's taken me a while to get to the point of building them (wanting to finish my eldar army, and had a heck of a time choosing what bases to use) but the time has finally come to get them going. I ended up getting my bases from DragonForge.com let's just say I was pleased with how they look.

To move the story along, I started on the Grey Night Terminator Brother Captain today, who will be leading my Escalation Force. For this army I wanted to do things right, and to do that I needed the tools.



So here are my Tools. You might be asking yourself, why in the Emperors name does he need a power drill. Well it's quite simple. My Grey Knights can take different kinds of weapons, and instead of buying a bunch of GKs and glueing all the weapons on, I've decided to magnetize them.

To do this I find where the two part line up, it's quite easy with the GKs as there's a nub on the body and a hole in the arm, I snip off the num and start the hole there with the pin drill. Then I take my 1/8 inch drill, and power drill it out even wider, and boy does the power help save some time.



After that it's simply putting the Magnet in the body, and making sure that you're putting all the Magnets in the same way so that they are interchangeable. You don't want any of the magnets swapped on polarization as then they'll repel not attach.



With the body done, I then simply used my power drill to widen the holes that were already in the arms. Glued some magnets in and boom, now my Brother Captain can have 3 different arms, and once I'm done with all the other Termies all of there arms an weapons will be interchangable.

With this model started I'll get to working on some Power Armor GKs later today or tomorrow. It should be exciting, but I've also been working on another secret project for the latest Hobby Town Painting Contest. Expect to see some sneak peaks of that next week ;)

-CKR

Green Stuff Molds

So on Tips and Tricks today we're going to talk about Green Stuff Molds. This has got to be one of the easiest ways to replicate a missing part, or simply add a few more for conversions.

I had ran across a blog a couple weeks ago of someone doing one sided Green Stuff Molds to add bits and pieces to their vehicles. That got me think, how hard would it be to do a double sided mold with green stuff.

Now with necessity being the mother of invention, and a reason for me to actually do anything, had to be there for me to even try this out. The problem was that I wanted to make a couple units of Storm Guardians. I don't know how many of yall are familiar with the box sets for them, but they only come in a box of 8, but require a minimum of 10 to run.

So if an effort to make a couple squads I bought 3 boxes, this gives you 24 more men, that's good for 8 with pistol and cc, 2 with flamer, 2 with metla. But the boxes only came with 1 flamer and melta each... so I needed at least 1 more of each of these.

Well after getting on the interwebs, and finding some of these I was able to get my hands on a couple more cc and pistols. But not quite enough to make another set. So after trying to get my hands on some more I came up empty handed.

Now this brings us to the fun part. Instead of buying another Box of men, (4 boxes to make 3 squads along with buying additional stuff online) I decided that'd I'd do it myself.



So first step is to layout some green stuff on something it won't stick to, I used Wax paper and it did a great job. To keep the weapons from sticking in the GS I used a little PAM, that's right the non-stick cooking spray. It works wonders.

With the GS sprayed press the weapon in about halfway and let dry for a couple hours (overnight is best) Also make sure to put a couple extra holes in there to create a guide for the top half of the mold.



After it's been dried, you might check to make sure you can pull the weapons back out. Because the last thing you want to do is loose the bits you have ;)

With a little extra PAM cover up the weapons and bottom half with a new blob of Green Stuff, and once again let dry over night, or about 8 hours.



With the two pieces dried, you should be able to peel back the top half and pry out the weapons. You can see here that the top half now has nubs that will fit in the holes on the bottom half so it locks together.



With both pieces dried prepare some more Green Stuff, spray both sides with PAM, and places the GS in the bottom or top filling it up so that both sides will adequately be filled. Press the two pieces together applying plenty of force, working from the center out. And again let it dry :)



After it's good and dry, peel off the top and you'll see the new forms created.



Pull out the new weapons and you'll see that they have a bit of extra Green Stuff from there being to much in the Mold, this is ok because all you need to do is a little extra trimming.



A little exacto work and boom, I've got a couple extra weapons I can now use for my Storm Guardians. I know I know that this might seem ethical to some, but I'm not reproducing them for re-sale, and they do not have the quality for re-sale either, as they have a couple issues with them. But they will be perfect for some table top games. And is a great way to get your hands on a couple bits you can't get any other way.

-CKR

Rapid Cure - The Other Gamers Friend

Hi everyone, I'm sorry I've been slow getting to posts but as you probably know the world catches up with us :D

So this week I decided that I was going to try my luck at building some Storm Guardians, 36 to be exact, and let me first say wow guardians have more bits then you could ever want on an 8 pt model :P I think it's something like 9 pieces you have to glue together without the extras that you can do.

But that's not a huge deal, other then just a little time consuming. But it's when I got to the part of trying to put the Metal bits on with the plastic that I had an issue.

Now I had started with the heads, for a 12 man batch and I was sorely dissapointed in how long it was taking for the heads to dry vs all the plastic body parts I had been working with before hand. Now me being patient and watching TV I just stuck with it.

So after holding heads in place for nearly an hour it was time to get to the arms. Now these I couldn't simply let gravity have it's way, I had to actually hold it nice and still for 24 of these bad boys.

So that's what I started off doing, I grabbed on arm, and one guys and sat there with the glue for about 5 minutes, and that arm was not going to stick.

That's when I did the next best thing, I have a mini to my wife, with an arm and asked her to hold it there :D

So with each of us holding the arm in place and watching tv it wasn't to bad, until two commercials later and no luck on it sticky.

I gave up on the metal for the night and worked on the next set of 24 guys. The next day I went to the local gaming store and picked up this Rapid Cure stuff that I had heard some of my friends raving about in the past. I didn't really believe them but for 7 bucks I was willing to test it out.

Lets just say about 10 seconds after holding it in place I could've dropped the mini and the bits would've stayed on. It was like a dream come true. Glue sticking and drying faster then I could build them.

So here's the secret. All you need to do is a dab of glue on one piece, and then a dap of the liquid on the other. The rapid cure says you should spray it but honestly that's a total waste of product as I only need a drop of it to cover the piece that I'm glueing.

I found that most of the piece would become snug and dry in 10-20 seconds and then you could let go without any worries of it falling apart. So here's to Rapid Cure :D I'll be using it on my metal figures from now on.

-CKR

40k Roster by GW

So GW just recently put up a roster pdf for 40k and Fantasy. Here's a link to check them out in case you don't use other things to display your army list.

Warhammer 40k Roster

Warhammer Fantasy Roster

Enjoy!

-CKR

Simple Green: The Simple Fixer Upper

For everyone who doesn't know the secrets behind Simple Green this is simply going to rock your world. This little substance here can take the worst looking models in the world and give them a second chance at being worth something.

It'll save you from building up layers of primer on bad painted models and allow you to start anew with something that you could get almost fresh out of the box.

I was introduced to it just a couple months ago and now I'm simply high and giddy with joy being able to use it on models that have been sitting in my closet for close to 10 years.

So what does it do exactly. Well it will strip paint off of metal and plastic without harming your miniatures, and it won't harm you or the environment. A simple soak in it over night and a toothbrush will have your miniatures back to there pewter or plastic selves (or 90% there)

Need the proof, well here it is.



So here is an old school Terminator I got about 10 years ago from my buddy Nick. Now Don't worry I'm pretty sure he didn't do the paint job on it, but you can see why I didn't really do anything with it other then shelve it. (because of the paint and me decideding not to start SM at the time) But with them sitting in the closet and me running out of room it's time to start getting rid of things. Now if I were to sell this guy on ebay he's maybe get 50 cents, a dollar if I was lucky.

So I put him in the Simple Green Bath Yesterday and just pulled him out about an hour ago.



Now here he is with a couple of brush strokes and under running water, the paint literally strips right off. Now I'll admit I am using my powered tooth brush with an old brush head but ya know, you use what you got ;)



So about 2 Minutes later the paint has basically been stripped off the entire model. With it in Like New condition it's now worth quite a bit more to someone else. Sure it is still the same model but you don't have to quell your Gag reflex when you look upon it ;)

But this is also a great way of picking up models off ebay for cheap, don't fear purchasing those ugly painted models, get them nice and cheap and with a little soak you'll be able to have something close to new to start on.

-CKR