Super Tip: How to Make Straight Cuts in Plastic Rod

I was browsing the FTW blog roll tonight, as I haven't been able to get on for a couple of days and came across the following post by Cannon Fodder over at Path of the Outcast:

http://exodites.blogspot.com/2010/02/vostroyan-infantry-melta-tutorial.html

Yes I love his take of turning Flamer Troops into Melta Gunners. Simple elegance!

I couldn't help noticing that he mentions having to sand one side of his plastic tubing after cutting and I thought I would share a little something I thought of a while ago while cutting tubes to convert up my Shadowsword.

Having trouble cutting the tubing straight I though to myself, "I really wish I had a Mitre Box for this!"

So I made one...

The trick is to make it out of a firm material with slots that will; A) Hold your Razor Saw straight, B) Do so without damaging the saw as it slides, C) Be box-like so it holds the plastic tube in a slot so you don't have it moving around while cutting, D) BE able to clamp down to the edge of your work desk.

The first points two are a given as you want the stuff cut straight and you don't want to have to buy a new razor saw or blades all the time. Obviously you down't want the material you are cutting to slide around while working. The last point is all about comfort and control, which will give you better cuts at the end of the day.

The easiest solution I found was to use two pieces of an old computer case front, the plastic shell around a drive bay actually. I cut and filed the interior supports out and then pinned and glued the two parts together with epoxy. Lastly I marked a slot using a straight edge (the builder's tool), and cut a slot slowly and carefully with the razor saw, making sure to keep the slot at 90 degrees.

It looks like this.

from the side

From the Front

I clamp it down in my little bench vice via the "L-Shaped" piece on the bottom.

The angled cutouts at the top were added recently to accommodate a GW razor saw that I picked up one day when I killed my last jewelers' blade and needed to get a mini finished.

As you can see it has seen a bit of use, evident by the ware and tear in the slot. I think that before much longer I will have to make a new one.

There are two awesome reasons to make one. First you get repeatable straight cuts in plastic tubing. Second you have less wastage due to crooked cuts, meaning you save money.

So for anyone working with plastic tubing I can say this helps me out, feel free to make one and give it a whirl.

Another an upside it also helps prevent "Oops! Honey we need to make a trip to the hospital" syndrome.

Hive Tyrant W.I.P

So I have liked Nids for a long time, in fact I have had an army of them for every codex, plus a Genestealer Cult Army back in the far of mists of time. This time around I had planned to only do a small army, this was spurred on by the fact that I was given a couple of unassembled plastic Carnifexes in trade for some work, which I added some forgeworld Stonecrusher parts to for "the look." I already had one done up as a Screamer Killer which I added to a resin base. He came up so far I think.

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The biggest thing I wanted was a ridiculously cool Hive Tyrant. I know alot of people like the metal one, and the way things are going there will be a plastic one eventually. But to me there are two things wrong with it.

Firstly it is a serious pain to assemble, my buddy Luke almost cries tears of blood when you ask him how much fun it was to assemble his. I do not want that pain.

Second, beside the awesome that is the Carnifex kit and the sweet that is the plastic Trygon the meat Tyrant is like a wee baby man, in fact it reminds me of Napoleon with his little man syndrome.

So my solution was in the words of my mate Red "freakin insane!"

Behold the first snaps of the WIP of my Hive Tyrant.

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Yes it did start life as a Trygon kit, I modified the head and added a few spikes here and there, the head-spike and tail spike are the smallest digging claws in the arms set, I used the nowmal Trygon tongue with the T-Prime head and tail pieces. I used the ball socket part of the central torso where it joins the hips and bulked out around the hex attachment end this with cheap filler epoxy ribbon before pinning on the tail and some armour plates shaved off the upper tail section of the original kit. I then did the green stuff details. I also used green stuff to fill in the previously hollow tail sections and blend this smoothly into the hips.

The arms are all magnetised, with the scything talons stock standard, and the custom heavy venom cannon you can see half sculpted. I have built it around a piece of aluminium pipe I found in the local hobby shop that is kind of egg shaped in cross section.

Here I am using a new sculpting medium I hadn't tried before from Privateer Press' P3 range. It is quite smooth and holds detail well. My one gripe is that if it is wet with water it will not, unlike greenstuff, stick to another bit of itself that is still un-set. In fact it is difficult to get it to stick to anything when wet, but as soon as there is no surface moisture it will stick to everything. (you, its packaging, the sculpting tool, the table, the random sprue on the desk...)

Once you get used to it is is however quite good. A little tip is to keep it in the freezer so it will come out of its packaging, to which it is otherwise inseparably stuck.

I have also started on the legs, and with nothing large enough on hand I am slowly sculpting the individual sections, which I will double using resin castings as per the hoof that is already done. the thighs will have to be completely sculpted however as there is no way to mirror them. As you can see I have used my spare standard Trygon head pieces as the thigh carapace.

I am thinking of maybe extending the back vents/spore chimneys (what the hell are those things anyhow?), but I am not committed to it until I see how well the legs balance the rest of the figure.

What is the biggest tip I can give about sculpting Nids?

To get nice smooth organic curves use a burnishing tool, one of the ones with a little ball on the end of it, or as pictured use my preferred tool. A length of brass rod with the end rounded and polished. Using it you can more easily smooth off large areas of organic flesh, add the little muscle striations where flesh meets carapace, do the little round indents that there are on nids and lastly easily sculpt the rib detail.

Also do the cross ribs one way first and then when these have set do the perpendicular bone detail. As this will prevent the making of a real mess. Finally add you circular flesh indentations after you have smoothed out the flesh section you are doing them on but before the sculpting medium sets as they will be a part of the surface rather than an addition, making them look more natural/organic.

How do I rate the P3 sculpting epoxy?

About 7/10 as it is pretty good but is a pain to get out of that package unless you keep it in the freezer, you can overlook the other parts as it hold detail nicely.

How do I rate the new Trygon kit?

8/10 It has pretty limited poses, but with magnets and patience you can set it up so you can alternate between your beasties of choice. In the end I love it so much bought two!

Secret Men's Business

Generally during you holidays you would say take a bit of time off, me not so much. I have been a little lax in my posting since the holidays started. Still there are a few good things going on at the DSM homebase.

Firstly I got a new glass display cabinet for the sculpting room (although it often gets reffered to as "the Man Cave"!). I haven't finished filling it but this pic was snapped in mid December so there are a few more finished minis in there now.

Another important event that recently occurred was the rebuilding of the front hubs in the ol' Cruiser (affectionately referred to as the Battle Bus). We did the wheel bearings, king pin bearings, seals in the ends of the axles and the felts in the swivel housings. It was hot sweaty word but it was worth it cause now you can't smell swivel housing grease after a drive to the FLGS. The only advice I can offer about this is make sure you have two people doing the job, one of whom has done it before. I got the Old Man to give us a hand, and it took us about six hours to do both sides.

I started another project, it is super secret and you can see a WIP shot below. I will have this done in the next day or so (up to the painting part atm). Can you guess what it is?

The "Dude a Day Challenge" I set myself was successful, I manage to paint 42 points worth of minis in December around all the other stuff that went on. I even got my Ironclad Dread conversion painted for his birthday (Boxing Day).

I also have got in some time working on a pst for Ron over at FTW, I have a few chems to wet test and a bit of typing and it should be read to wing its way to him.

Lastly as a quick tip, when buying timber to make anything make sure you plan ahead! Don't get half into a job and discover you are short because you didn't CAD up the job beforehand (Like I usually would).

Cheers All

and a Happy belated New Year

Subby

December Dude a Day Challenge!

Ok for those who know me I am somewhat of a slow painter these days, this is why I usually only take single mini commissions. Add to this several things in my life going not so great in the last month I have been really struggling to "get my hobby on."

So to aid in the situation I have decided to challenge myself to getting at least one mini a day done.

How does it work:

Put aside at least 1 hour per day, usually you can squeeze in two if you can paint and watch TV.

At the end of each day you have to have at least one mini finished.

If you are batch painting squad miniatures, four half finished minis count as one fully finished mini.

Standard sized Vehicles count as one miniature. Super Heavies and large Miniatures count as two.

Clear finishes don't count towards the sum.

at the end of the month you should thus have finished one miniature per day plus a few extras on the days you get to put more time in.

Does it help? Yeah so far I have stuck to it every day this week, and I have deliberately chosen a month where time is difficult to grab.

Cheers

Subby

You Crack Me Up!

I was surfing the FTW links and saw this post by Drathmere.

I have experienced this a few times and while I commented on it over there I thought I would throw them up here for anyone else having similar troubles. So one with the show!

Contraction cracking, another bane that must be dealt with by painters.

Traditionally there are a list of issues that paints can suffer from, some which are inter-related, and these are below:

At the top of the traditional list are; Exposure, Elasticity Loss, Elastic Failure, Paint Adhesion Loss, Paint Blooming and Paint Blistering.

Paint Blistering is an easy one. It can be caused by a couple of things, most notably dirty or no properly prepared surfaces and moisture. Most of us are familiar with the two things we need to do before painting. First wash the Mould Release agent off, and then let the mini dry. These two steps will allow you to avoid paint bubbling 95% of the time. With resins it is also important to use a good primer. Also Using painting stands rather than holding the minis yourself will stop any oils from your fingers causing finishes and layers bubbling. All familiar things so one to the next topic.

Now we are all familiar with the Dreaded "Frosties!" and according to the painting dictionary this is called Paint Blooming.

"Paint Blooming - (blushing) - this is moisture getting into varnish, shellac, lacquer. This coating failure leaves a milky opaque (usually-white) cloud on (or actually within) the coated surface. Paint bloom may not wipe off with a fingertip as does most effloresence - so paint blooming is not the same visual effect as surface effloresence, many paint failure analysts use "bloom" for both cases and the cause might be the same - moisture."

Paint Effloresence is frosting on the surface that you can simply wipe off btw.

In some cases the Paint Frosting can be caused by Chemical incompatibility with the surface, this is very rare in miniatures as the traditionally used Matt Finishes we use are formulated for the job.

This is the topic of many many discussions and we all are familiar with it so I will move right along.

Exposure and Elasticity Loss don't generally effect us in Miniatures so I can probably skip these.

Elastic Failure is the point at which paint can no longer stretch and will crack. This can be cause by alot of things including paint too thick, many layers of paint and low elasticity of the paint. This last is important as generally we will use acrylics with do not have polymerisation compounds that allow them to stretch that little bit as they dry. This can lead to cracking very easily. Adding things like Paint Extender and Drying inhibitors can also change the elasticity of a paint, sometimes for the better (I notice that adding a little Retarder Medium to Reaper paints helps prevent them cracking when used over semi-gloss/gloss undercoats). This can also be related to Adhesion Loss.

Adhesion Loss is a big one and is when the top layers of paint loss their grip on the under-laying coats. There are a few causes of this. A big one is improperly prepared surfaces, this is caused by the same factors as Paint Blistering. Another primary cause is using incompatible paints such as Oils for automotive use under or over acrylics (in which case the solvents in the Oils will do nasty things all around). Using material specific paints like the PS line from Tamiya will also cause issues as they are formulated to peel of perspex. The last and most common reason paint will crack is using acrylics over a semi-gloss/gloss spray-packed undercoat. The top layers of paint will often have difficulty sticking to the smooth gloss finish underneath and will have a definite tendency to pulling away and cracking as the Matt Finish on top contracts while drying.

So what tips can I offer on possible fixes specifically for Paint Cracking:

First and foremost use a good primer; I use a light spray of Tamiya Light Grey "Fine" Surface Primer for Metal and Plastic before undercoating. It will even work on Resin. Be absolutely certain you get the "Fine" version and be very light handed with it as it will pool in detail really easily.

Also if you use a semi-gloss or gloss undercoat spray (like Tamiya Racing White or their Blue that is the same colour as Necron Abyss) you can try using a matt sealant after undercoating to stop the thin overcoats moving and chipping.

If you are using a semi-gloss, buy a slightly lighter tone than you want and once it dries wash the whole things with a pigment based wash with a little bit of dish-washing liquid in it, it helps and will play a dual role of adding down-tones to your base coat with very little work. I am going to guess that the Dish-washing liquid breaks up any volatiles left on the surface of the spray-pack but don't quote me on this.
A neat thing I found out was that you can use the Tamiya Perspex paints (the PS range), that will normally peel off (designed for painting inside the clear racing shells for remote control Racers). All you have to do it spray it on, let it dry and then spray some purity seal over it. There are some really different colours in the range that you don't normally see but are Great for really odd colour schemes.

Use thin coats and let them dry completely for at least a full day before Matt Finishing them. If you have trouble with a specific brand of paints try switching to another brand, there are a lot of companies making good paint, so experiment.

Finally sometimes you can get around the issue by using a Gloss Clear Finish first and when it dries a Matt Finish over the top. Alot of Gloss finished don't contract as much when drying. I recommend testing it out first.

Best of luck with your painting endeavours

Subby