Awesome Xmas Present...

Just thought I'd share - my beautiful wife got me an awesome Christmas present (that she couldn't resist giving me early) - a Nook Color e-reader.  Of course the first thing I did was to load all the Black Library e-books on it:

Tutorial: Pinning Models

When I built my Ork in Mega-Armour, there was a piece that needed pinned:

Even though the need to pin models isn't as frequent nowadays since GW (and other manufacturers) have greatly increased the quality of their plastics, it still a useful thing to know.  I thought I'd do a basic write-up on how I do it.

The first step, obviously, is to determine where the piece is going to go.  Once I have it placed, I make a mark on the model where the center of the piece will be.  Then, I use a pin vice to drill a small hole:

(You don't need to drill the hole extraordinarily deep or anything, a quarter of an inch or so will do).  Next, clip off a bit of brass wire (available at your FLGS, or in a better-stocked hardware store):

I kept the length short, but still a bit longer than needed for the finished product - this makes it easier to work with.

I put a drop of superglue on the end of the wire and insert it into the hole:

Making sure the wire is sitting at the proper angle (i.e., not leaning wildly) I leave it to dry.

After the glue has dried, I clip off the wire about a quarter of an inch above the surface of the model:

Next, I take a black marker and rub it on the end of the wire several times - the goal here is to get a good build-up of ink on the end of the wire:

Next, after carefully lining up the piece to be attached, I press it against the wire - the ink will leave a mark on the piece.  This is where you need to drill:

When drilling, I periodically test-fit the piece to see if the hole was deep enough yet.  After it sits flush against the model when the wire is in both holes, it's ready to glue - put a drop of glue on the end of the wire that's sticking up out of the model, and a small amount where the flat surfaces will touch, assemble the model:

Finished:

I was a tiny bit off, and it hung over the back edge a bit - maybe a sixteenth of an inch or so.  Luckily with this model, I was able to clean it up with my files and it wasn't noticeable.

Ork in Mega-Armour

Built an Ork in Mega-Armour today:

 What's in the kit

 After de-flashing & a good scrubbing

 I forgot to bring a Freeboota base, so I had to mount him on the included base temporarily

Left arm & jaw attached

Finished!

As with my other Ork metal models, this one probably won't receive a full on "Freeboota" conversion. besides the custom base & paint scheme.  Honestly, I bought this model right before I decided to build a theme army, and I don't even know if he's going to see any playing time in my final list...

Forge World Goodness

Got a Forge World order in the mail today - first up is some etched brass Ork glyphs:

...lots of people gripe about the cost of Forge World products (and rightfully so if you actually buy their models), but in my book their etched brass is a great deal - the above sheet contains enough pieces to add cool details to over a dozen vehicles & a few dozen troops, with some left over.  Trust me, I've made my own custom embellishments before and, while it can be fun to do, it's a time-consuming process.  These speed things up considerably.

Next is some Ork glyphs, plates, and doors:

These are mainly for some scratch-building projects I have in mind - there are a few larger projects I have in mind, and while Orky stuff is pretty easy to build (it's supposed to look like crap, remember?) the doors & such are a bit too fiddly to bother with, when I can just buy a big mess 'o them for ten bucks.

Next are some Forge World weathering powders:

I've been wanting to try my hand at weathering powders for a while now, and almost talked myself into buying the whole set, but I decided to just pick up a few at first to give them a try.  I'll post a write-up of my experience with these sometime soon...

Score!

...as I've mentioned before, I'd really like to do a Black Templars army someday.  Well, I was perusing Craigslist a couple of weeks ago and fell into the following deal:

All-in-all I got:

- 1 Emperor's Champion
- 1 Land Speeder
- 1 Sword Bretheren Assault Squad
- 3 Dreadnoughts
- 3 Captains
- 19 Terminators
- 52 Tactical Marines
-Black Templars codex

I haven't done a proper point tally yet, but I believe it's around 1700 points, and retail it would be over $600 worth of models (although the Dreadnoughts & many of the tactical Marines appear to be taken from the Assault on Black Reach box).  I'm not one to deal-and-tell, but let's just say I got it for considerably less - as in, somewhere around 7 cents a point.  :-)

While they're already painted as Templars, I still plan on stripping them, adding the chapter-specific bits, and repainting them.  (Theoretically this should be easy - I'll just splurge on a couple cans of GW Chaos Black spray, and call the basecoat done). Although the Templar bits would cost a fortune if I were to use the GW Chapter Upgrade, I don't even want half of the bits in that kit, and I would need to buy at least five or six of them for the whole army.  A quick look on eBay reveals over a hundred auctions for Black Templar bits, at a very reasonable price - if I go with one of the bitz sellers I frequent that offers combined shipping rates, I should be able to get all the parts I need for less than the cost of one of the "official" kits.  I also plan to base these on the custom-made resin bases that I already casted, so hopefully it will be a great-looking army at a bargain price...

Captain Sicarius

Got a Captain Sicarius model in the mail today:

After de-flashing & a good scrubbing.  The configuration I chose has Sicarius wearing the helmet and holding a pistol.  The configuration shown on the GW website is neat, but I wanted something that looked a little more like it represented an "on the battlefield" pose.

 Mounted on base

 Backpack / banner attached

Head attached

Done!

It's been a while since I've built a metal Space Marine model - it was a pain.  I broke off almost every piece of this model at least once after I glued it, but the sculpt has the "notch & stub" pre-molded at all the connection points, so it would be practically impossible to pin, even if you wanted to.  It's a good thing this model didn't require any Green Stuff work, as I'm sure I would have broken off all the pieces again multiple times and thrown it across the room in frustration. 

Regardless, it is a fantastic looking model, and I look forward to painting it!

Ork Big Mek

I finished up an Ork Big Mek:

This was an all-metal model.  When I first started buying Orks I didn't really have any intention of building one of these, but as I started looking at list builds, you'd be crazy not to.  Since the model has such a stout mounting peg on the right foot, I decided to go ahead and mount him on his resin base from the start:

The included GW base vs. the Iron Halo resin base

 Drilling a hole for the mounting peg w/ a pin vise

Done!

Body mounted

Kustom Force Field & head attached

 Arm attached

There was lots of flash to be filed, but relatively little Green Stuff work needed - just the cable that goes from the hand controller to the Kustom Force Field / backpack.  overall there will probably be little "Freeboota-fying" done to this model - as with my Painboy, I hate to mess with such a beautiful sculpt, so I'll rely on the base and the paint scheme to tie this model in with the rest of the army...

Freeboota Bases

I got my bases from Iron Halo primed:

(Yeah, I know, white bases on a white background makes a great pic)

...I would have done these with my airbrush, but the technique I'm planning on using on these pretty much depends on them being primed white - unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a white primer that agrees with my airbrush.  Vallejo Model Air primer is gray, and the white Game Color & Reaper primers don't work well through the airbrush.  Vallejo is now making an acrylic-urethane white primer sold in bulk bottles, but it doesn't appear to be sold in the U.S. - I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and order some from a UK eBay seller.

Anyways, the technique uses inks:

Privateer Press P3 Brown Ink & Yellow Ink

Here's the first test I did on my Painboy's Grot orderly - this is straight brown ink over white primer:

Ehhh, not what I'm going for - too dark.  When I think "deck of a pirate ship", I picture a more "blonde" wood color.  I started playing around with adding yellow to the brown ink to lighten things up, and settled on a 50/50 mix of brown & yellow ink:

That's closer to what I'm looking for.  The main thing I like about using inks for this is that it also acts as a wash - more ink naturally settles in the crevices between the planks, making them darker.  This makes the process much faster - and I've got almost a hundred bases to do, so that's a big plus.  The other nice thing is that a little ink goes a looong way. 

Once I had the ratio figured out, I mixed up a bottle and labeled it:

Now I'm ready to crank these out:

Working with inks directly on primer can be tricky - as you can see in the picture above, the ink doesn't want to stick like paint would - I'm guessing that this is because the inks are all liquid and don't have any suspended dry pigment in them, so there isn't any "tooth" to help it cling.  You basically just have to keep working it in, and it will eventually stain the surface.  The other problem is that if you work the ink too much, it gets "frothy" and pools in odd ways - and, by the time you work the pools out, they have already stained one area much darker than the rest.  (I guess I'm not being a very good advocate of this method, but trust me, it looks much more natural as wood than the standard "base with dark brown, then paint lighter brown "grain lines" on top").

Here's some of the finished bases:

(Obviously I haven't painted the lip of the bases yet).  I did touch up one or two of the bases with a bit of Devlan Mud wash where the ink didn't settle in the cracks as much as I wanted.  I did the bases in the above pic in about ten minutes before I went to bed, so the process should be pretty quick...

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Ultramarines...

I've been building Ultramarines for a couple of years now, and like a lot of players, I didn't really have any rhyme or reason to what I was building - I wasn't building a particular list.  I started the hobby with a handful of models that lars4life generously donated to me, then I picked up the Assault on Black Reach box, and after that... well, I just bought what I thought looked cool.  (Not that there's anything wrong with this method - you should always enjoy what you're building.  It's just not a particularly cost-effective way to approach the hobby, especially if having a competitive list is one of your goals).

Well, I finally got around to figuring out the points for my models and started looking towards list building, and I was short some Ultramarines - three, in fact.  Given that tactical squads are a maximum of 10 marines each, and I had 27 tactical marines.  I decided to remedy this, and went to my bits collection - unfortunately, I had no legs.  I resigned myself to buying some legs from an eBay bits seller, and a few days later these arrived in the mail:

...then I grabbed my leftover marine sprues, and started chopping parts off:

I just threw them all into a bag (I was on my way out the door) along with a large bag of bits I bought at a convention a couple of years ago:

After fiddling around with some options, here is what I wound up with:

The un-helmeted marine will be the Sergeant, and the other two will be troops.  I'm glad I had an extra "beakie" marine head, I like to mix those in to keep things interesting... 

New Tools

...so I had a little extra money a few weeks ago, and decided to treat myself:

I have two hobby knives I've been using: a plastic-handled one that I've owned for, oh, twenty-one years or so, and a heavy-duty aluminum-handled that's more or less worthless - it takes the blades with the wider shank, which are almost impossible to find around here.  I've wanted one of these nice sets for a long time and had a "40% off" coupon, so I decided to bite the bullet and pick one up.

I also got some plastic cases:

...these are actually exact matches for a few cases that I've had for years, but I haven't been able to find any more until now.  I wanted some because my tool kit (which I'm going to document in a future post) is a complete mess - I'm going to organize all my tools by type in these cases, which fit into a carrying case...