But there’s a problem. The sprues only carry one infernus pistol! These nasty little weapons pack all of the power of a melta gun into a convenient wrist mounted pistol. Most people are going to want more than one!

Luckily the blood angels death company sprues include two of these weapons so today we’re going to show you how to convert death company infernus pistols for use by your very own sanguinary guard.Er, for Sanguinius!

For this conversion you’re going to need a death company infernus pistol and either a sanguinary guard plasma pistol or angelus bolter. Since we’re not plasma pistol fans here at GDMNW we knew ours would never see the light of day, so we’re using those. But the choice is yours.

Ideally you should use a hobby saw or a series of small cuts with a hobby knife to remove the front end of the plasma pistol. Be careful to avoid damaging the wrist mount beneath the pistol housing.

Next you need to cut away the plasma pistol housing itself. It’s best to cut through the pistol housing and then clean up the top of the wrist mount rather than risk cutting into the mount by cutting away too much at once. You want to leave a flat surface preserving the detail of the mount itself.

Next remove the infernus pistol from the death company arm. This is also best accomplished in two stages. First remove the hand and weapon at the wrist. This cut is easy to make as it is well away from parts of the model we want to preserve.

Second, cut away the hand and clean the area under the pistol housing and behind the heat sink. The designers who made the blood angel miniatures use standard pre-made weapons for all of the range so the death company infernus pistol is identical to the sanguinary guard one.

It’s a perfect fit.

At four cuts, some cleaning and two dots of polystyrene cement this is a straightforward conversion that meets the GDMNW standard for good conversions. (You can’t really tell that it’s been converted) When you put our newly made sanguinary guard infernus pistol next to the real thing you can hardly see the difference.

Here’s some we made earlier. With four of these vicious relics from the dark age of technology our sanguinary guard will be cutting through the oppositions tanks like hot knives through butter.

There you have it. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Tutorial provided by: Garreth at gdmnw.com

For this tutorial, I’ll be using Inkscape since it’s a free program available to anyone. If you’re not interested in creating a badge digitally, feel free to skip ahead to step 4 for the stamp making. As I said we’ll be using Inkscape here. You can get it for free at Inkscape. Draw Freely.

Basic Tools

• Super Sculpy
• Sculpy (optional)
• GreenStuff
• X-acto
• Good tweezers
• Smoothing tool
• Tape
• Some plastic (Plastic bag works great)
• Vaseline

A little more advanced Tools

1. Digital Art Program. Preferably something with Vector (Pen) tools.
2. Printer

I’ll take a second to explain why going down the sometimes troublesome path of creating a vector can be useful. As most people familiar with photo editing or digital art know. Significantly resizing an image generally looks like garbage.That’s because they’re pixel based images (rasterised). When resizing a rasterised image it tries it’s best to fill in gaps or cram too much data into a shrinking area, resulting in a mess As seen on the left side below.

A vector on the other hand is never really “printed” onto your workspace. It’s lines are mathmatical solutions connecting the points you’ve provided. Slightly confusing, yes, but what this means is you can scale up that vector to be the size of your house, or down to fit on a space marine’s shoulder pad and it’ll look exactly the same as your original. This is shown on the right side of the image below.

Step 1

So let’s crack open Inkscape and get to work.You’ll be presented with a blank work area. Start by pasting in your source image. A source is very important in all artwork, and it makes vector life so much easier. In this case I have a badge for the Raptors chapter from Lexicanum, but it could be anything like a photo or original artwork. I’ve sized the image up quite a bit to make it a little easier to work with. This is done with the selection tool. Click on your image, grab one of the corner arrows, and drag while holding CTRL to keep it from distorting. Then go up to Layer and Create New Layer. Name it whatever, this is where you’ll be putting your vector object.

Step 2

From now on we’ll be using two tools for the whole project. “Draw Bezier Curves and Straight Lines” (Draw) and “Edit Paths by Nodes” (Edit)

With the draw tool a single click will give you a hard point and straght line.
With a click+drag you’ll pull out a Bezier handle that can be edited later.

Take the draw tool and select your starting point. This should be an area with a flat edge or point. Start with a click and it’ll feed out your vector “rope”. On large curves like the beak, you’ll want to put another point on about the center of the curve.On small curves you’ll want a point at the start of the curve and a point at the end. I pulled out a bezier handle and matched the line to the curve of the beak.

Now it’s easiest to make the outline in one pass. So keep clicking away tracing your artwork, making sure to give yourself enough points to work with later, but too many and you’ll get a headache. Generally speaking give yourself 3 points for a big curve, 2 for a small, and a hard point for your sharp edges. If you’re not sure about a point, just be safe and give yourself a bezier handle, you can always edit it later.

Don’t worry! It’ll look like crap when you finish. Now it’s time to edit.

Step 3

Grab your Edit tool and start repositioning points to make everything pretty. The bezier handels in this program are a little finniky, but managable. If you’re looking for a sharp corner, push one side of the handle all the way into the point. Then readjust the other end of the handle to match your curve. With a little doing it’s very simple.

Now that that you have an outline, add any interior detail by starting a new vector object (just start clicking again). In my case I only have the eye. Once that’s complete and edited you can shift+click all your objects, go up to Path and hit Combine.

Now let’s go up to Object and hit Fill and Stroke. What a cool bird! Make sure your new vector object is selected. Note that I get rid of the eye and filled it with Flat color – Black to aid with my stamp making later on.

To size your badge (or whatever) go to File > Document Properties. Change your page units under Custom Size from px (pixels) to Inches or mm.Then click on the Grids tab and enable Grids with inches (or mm). I decided that 1/4 inch tall is a decent size for a space marine badge, so I changed spacing X and Y to 0.25. Now you’ve got a properly sized badge and can color it to your liking and duplicate it to high heaven for printing transfer sheets just like the ones on BoLS, or make a small sheet of different sizes to print for a stamp making aid

Step 4 – Stamping.

This entire stamping portion was done with an X-acto knife, a little bit of toothpicking, and smoothing with a silicone tipped clay tool. It’s pretty straight forward but I decided to include it anyway for the sake of completeness.

I printed out a little sheet to help guide me and taped it onto a plastic bag so it wouldn’t get mucked up. I flattened out a round of Super Sculpy to cover one of my pad sized prints. I use this as a loose guide to make my cuts. I just cut a little out at a time and keep matching it up to my print out. Super Sculpy is important for this as it’s much firmer and easier to cut at than just plain Sculpy. I didn’t worry about really sharp points as this can be cleaned up in the negatives. Once that’s done I stuck it in the oven to bake. A good trick I learned about sculpy in art school is ignore the cooking instructions on the back. Preheat your oven to 250-275, put your piece in, and turn the oven off. Then just leave it for a few hours or until the oven is cooled off. For very thick stuff just leave it on for 5-10 minutes then turn it off.

Step 5

Now flatten out a bit of Sculpy. I prefer this kind for the stamp as it’s much softer so I don’t have to worry about cracking or anything. Just push in however many times you want so you can be GSing several at a time. The toughest part is getting the original out. It takes a light hand and some pointy tweezers, but most of the time it comes right out. Now bake your new stamp. (Edited with a better stamp)

Step 6

Put a thin coat of vaseline into your stamps making sure it gets in all the corners but doesn’t build up enough to block the GS. I use a crappy old brush for this. Mix up a ball of GS and carefully push it in. Again, the corners are important. Let it sit in the stamp for a few minutes then carefully peel it out, trim off any excess, and slap it onto whatever you want.

I use this for a lot of random little things that I need a few of. Besides Chapter badges of various sizes I’ve done goggles for my Imperial Guardsmen and plan on doing some simple backpacks.

GS could be used instead of scuply of course, but I prefer the feel and endless working time of it. Plus it’s extremely cheap compared to most epoxies.

If I glossed over any important steps let me know and I’ll clear that up. I feel like I got everything in there.

For most detailed images just ask for them.

First of all the materials needed (some of them are optional, but they make life easier and I might not know all the names for the equipment needed, in those cases I will use a translator; anyway they will appear in the images so it is really easy to see what i am talking about) :

• Polystyrene: 3x 4′x2′ around 1.5″ thick
• Wood: Some parts are longer, around 1′ long, the square ones are about 6″
• Screwdriver: normal and electric (the lat is optional)
• Screws around 1″ or a bit longer

On to optional:
X-acto knife (around here it might be known as uttility knife but even a kitchen knife cuts this)
Hammer and Big nail to open small holes for preventing the screws sliding)
Wall fixing putty ( don’t know exact name but comes in the white/ blue jar in the next pic)

silicone (with red/ black gun)
Foam cutter (green thing on bottom image with wires attached

( This picture shows the table after filled, but more on that later, You can see the unassembled X-acto knife with the blade at its side)

On to actual building the table.

Pick one of the big polystyrene parts and onto the wider side place some of the wood; half supported in other polystyrene piece.

Then just start screwing like a madman. Take it slowly and very slow when you reach the polystyrene. You might use your hammer and a nail to create a small starting hole preventing the screw from slipping away. You can see the look of the thing when everything is screwed on the third image with material.

Due to hammering this photograph isn’t good but i am hammering the old nail

Cut the edges as they might crack, use the X-Acto knife or foam cutter.

The edge that will be cut is the preeminent part

You may put silicone on the screws and the wood at any part that will touch the polystyrene. I didn’t. But I regret it and on any next table I build, I will definitively do it.

Flip the whole thing. There are noticeable cracks everywhere. I didn’t picture them and when I remembered it was too late.

Apply the wall fixing putty on the junction of the polystyrene. With the blade from the X- Acto smooth it out. As with green stuff, keep tools wet. After putty applied (it could have been smother but it will get full of pva glue and sand so i dind’t worry too much) :

This will be updated, computer crashed and i lost part of the work ( the table is covered in sand which will be painted in black, probably using textured paint and drybrushed grey over that)

If you want to do a pool of slime, skip steps 2, 3, 4 and 5, and just pour the glue, and build it up in small layers, but it dries instantly with the spray, so it won’t take long.

1. First thing you need is this- Everbuild Mitre Fast JUMBO Bonding Kit – Adhesives & Sealants, Glues, SuperGlue

2. You then cut the top off the bottle of glue, and leave it for a few weeks(3 weeks is usually about right)

3. When you dip a stick or something in it, it should grip to the stuck, and rather than running off, should be quite rubbery, like this

4. You then attach it to where you want the slime

5. and drag in out, so it looks right.

6. spray it with the spray that comes with it. Done

Hope this helps some people

Now my hobby includes a lot of scratch building and general conversions.  Usually I keep these pretty simple so you won’t be to surprised to see simple conversions done like head swaps and added detail.  My main goal was to show you guys what I go through to really plan my army squads.  I’d also like to simply do something cool that I haven’t seen done before.  That’s really what the hobby is all about.

Now this first post might seem a tad boring because it’s all conceptual stuff.  This is going to outline my basic philosophy of, planning and what I want to do with these guys.  Then I’ll jump into the build next time.  So let’s follow through with the whole project starting with the mental hurdles I go through for planning.

My Fluff
“They descended ahead of the rest of them.  Soaked in the blood of enemies they had earned their crimson hued armor.  Each one was a ruby that called forth my deepest terrors.  Violently crackling swords of the most august natures lead their charge.  Flesh and blood and sinew and bone cleaved in twain at their passing.  I would have cried for the piteous creatures that stood in their path, but they were the enemies of the Emperor, and those scarlet armored dervishes were the Emperor’s Vanguard.”

— The Remembrancer Sorian Cul Rayoth, on the Battle of the Aceadian Bridge —

My Reasoning

I’ve always found veterans an integral part of an army.  In the olden days I filled one or two squads with soldiers with various sundry status advantages like Terminator Honors.  Veteran Sergeants never quite did it for me I had to have full squads to storm the trenches.  Armies are built on veterans and career military.  They feed of their experience and strategies to use their resources to the fullest effects.   I’ve been very pleased with my veteran squads in the past and the fifth edition rules feel even better than those old Terminator Honors squads from last decade.

My dissatisfaction of course comes from the models.  Don’t get me wrong, the metal citadel range of space marine veterans is pretty cool looking for individual models.  But as I might have mentioned in the past I really don’t like how all the veterans look different.  My brother is a career military man.  I’ve known the army for most of my life.  Sure veterans pickup some uniqueness but not that much.   To me the veterans are about the precision of the unit.  It isn’t one man that has fought a war, it is an entire squad.  Their armor is gritty and used with bullet marks and scratches.  They are experienced and ready with a dynamic stride ready to spring into action.  Their weapons are their pride, their best friend, and their very lives.  Citadel’s vision of a veteran involves lots of fiddly iconography, awards, and trophies earned for battles fought.  I’ve rarely met a veteran who wore their metals to the show.  They were business on the battlefield and anyone who wasn’t was a dead man, shiny badges or not.

I see veterans as being both sleeker and more uniform than the Citadel models and more stylistically unique than the regular troops.  My veterans need a dynamic pose to start, this adds the unique flair for a figure.  Each chapter would make their own veteran uniforms but really I don’t think they’d carry a chapter’s ceremonial badges into battle as awkward and ungainly as they appear.

My Decisions
So the first thing I had to decide was what to do about my squad’s weapon load out.  Now if you read the codex Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans are pricy point cost wise.  They are really spectacular on the first charge and after that they sort of go downhill towards the regular assault marine level.  Heroic intervention basically encourages you to deep strike them as close as possible to the enemy, descent of angels makes that reasonably safe now but not flawless.  To make them reasonably survivable you have to pump a lot of points into them which makes them a bull’s eyed unit.

So really to me the choice is between making them the veteran unit I imagine, one that eats up points but really makes them look awesome, or making them a reasonable load out that puts them basically one cut above assault marines for a few points more.  My personal choice will always be the cool factor.  That coolness factor is really why we play so why not, truth be told it’s why we play right?  Plus if you can’t afford to field the whole squad you can always grab a couple assault marines to swap in to bring the cost down.

A lot of people talk about Vanguard Veterans like they are completely useless.  As I said they spend a lot of energy on the first charge but they can still be very useful.  You really just need to keep them alive a bit longer.  They have to make it from the site of massacre A to the site of future massacre B.  Jump Packs actually help a lot, but so does a bit of weaponry.  People seem to think that pistols aren’t that helpful but they can be.  The suppressive fire technique is hard to pull off with veterans because of short range.  But you can clear 12 inches a turn which puts your enemies into firing range if you are in their firing range.

Now for me the survivability of this unit is the Storm Shield in the equipment list.  I picture a wall of storm shield and power swords like a roman phalanx.  That’s a damn good image but I think I can do better.  While I love uniformity I know the military loads out troops for specific purposes in a squad right now we have a lot of hand to hand but no fire support.  I know fluff wise the Vanguard guys choose their own weapons but I think someone would still choose a gun over a sword.  There aren’t a lot of great choices in the Vanguard armory but the Hand Flamer or Infernus Pistol are excellent options for those unforeseen opponents.  They require just as much close combat to be effective but they have their own utility of war.  The Infernus Pistol can hot knife through vehicles and the Hand Flamer is decent at witling down mobs.  Now both are off hand weapons so it’s a choice of pistol or shield, a choice I don’t understand.

The command squad champion comes with a pistol and shield but I have to choose for my veterans.  All the standard tactical marines get bolter and bolt pistol so they don’t loose their +1 Attack for charging.  I find it funny how modern marines can carry 110lbs of weapons and gear into combat including rifles, pistols, knives, and grenade launchers but the future super soldiers can’t holster a damned gun if they have a shield strapped to their arm.  But then rules are rules and while fluff would imply they can it is also important to remember the rules even the battle field and make sure Eldar monofilaments can’t slice through any non-energized armor as monofilaments actually would do.  This is the dilemma though, a single unprotected veteran with a hand flamer will get decapitated pretty quick but he really only needs to live long enough to soften an enemy on the turn before the charge.  Given the opportunity I’d do all storm shields and pistols but that eliminates the value of the power weapons and without those there are some enemies you simply can’t touch.  To my mind the best choice is to model a figure with a Flamer and another with an Infernus pistol in their off hand, then make the storm shield removable.  This gives me the option to lose the expensive defense option if it doesn’t work or I’m facing something to weak to scratch marines.

Now let’s talk sergeants for this rabble.  Among Veterans the sergeant is a needle in a haystack.  They get a free power weapon, or rather one paid for by the base squad cost.  Upgrading that is an extremely good idea since you can get a free Lightning Claw or Glaive.  Personally I wish my sergeants to stand out more so I want him to go all out and pick up a Thunder Hammer to go with the Storm Shield I was already buying him.  This means at the center of my line will be a massive hammer wielding guy to lead the charge.

Ok so someone out there has realized back a couple paragraphs I mentioned Power Weapons and not Lightning Claws.  I’ve had several people sing the praises of lightning claws constantly to me.  Since they are no more cost here than power weapons and the storm shield already looses the +1 Attack, one could say there is no sense in not using lightning claws.  The reroll wounds bit is good stuff and they do look pretty cool.  But I’m not convinced they are super awesome on this design.  Lightning Claws are bulky and hard to pose.  Either the model holds them up menacingly or they just sort of flop at his side.  Not to mention I always wondered how you’d scratch your nose with lightning claws on. So instead I want power swords, but ones that look unique enough to stand out and maybe counts as lightning claws if I’m desperate.  I was thinking a flaming sword would be good, it buys into the whole angel motif and I’m amazed it hasn’t been done officially yet.  So my “Power Weapons” will be flaming angel swords of doom.  Nice ring to it huh.

Last thing is I’m also looking at combat squads so I want two 5 man squads in total to make them more formidable.  So I’ll be looking to do 2 of the two special weapons I’ve chosen and a second guy with the sergeant’s load out.  This will enable me to field a full 10 man squad, or 2 combat squads of 5 men, or 2 identical 5 man squads.

My Needs

Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans project
Backpack – swappable Jump Packs and Power Packs
Chest – standard assault marine chests
Legs – Assault Marine Running Legs
Head – a signal uniform head, mark 6 or 7 would work best
Shoulders – Nameplate Shoulder Pad on the left and Command Shoulder Pad with Laurel & Skull on right
Details – head laurels, purity seals, custom tabard, custom armor rivets
Weapons – 8 flaming power swords, 2 custom thunder hammers. 6 bolt pistols, 2 hand flamers, 2 Infernus pistols, 10 custom swappable storm shields

Raw Materials
8” metal rod for pinning
10” Sq 0.060 plasticard for shields
3oz green stuff or other putty for scratch work
20 spacer beads various shapes for scratch building

So that sums up my thinking and what I need to get his project done.  Now over the next few weeks I’m going to post bits of the build itself telling you the details about how I did everything.  First up will be the least interesting part of the build itself, the main bodies. No spectacular conversions here but you’ll see how I make my backpacks swappable and we’ll get started on detail work on the legs and torso.  I’m sure you’ll agree a good place to start.  I look forward to guiding you through the process next time.

It’s so Easy, i thought i’d share how to do it.

Step one. grab yer materials.
Simple carboard, some plastic rivets or gel superglue, a ruler and a sharp blade. The cardboard is the same thickness as what is on the backs of small notepads. it is about the same thickness as the cardboard backing of a spiral bound notebook, maybe thicker. You can work with various thicknesses to find your perfect style.

Step two. Cut yourself a piece of the cardboard. I actually used the width of the ruler and the height of 3 inches.

Step three: Using the same height, I cut myself thin thin strips. maybe 3/16th of an inch or 2 mm. I cut myself 5 strips per door, per side.

Step four: Begin to superglue the strips on the edges of the door. The height is the same, so no altering there, but you’ll need three for the middle, horizontally.

Step Five: Trim all three to fit inside the two bordering strips, and you have yourself a segmented ‘door’

Step Six: I bought this baby online by simply googling for a “1/16th inch” (1mm) craft hole punch. Came out to roughly $9.00 USD + Shipping. If you can’t afford one of these, a nice thick ‘gel’ superglue will work the same way.

Oh yes…I said 1/16th an inch (1mm)

Step Seven: About 3 minutes of fevered punching..

And the rivets come out like magic!

Step Eight: Drop some glue in the corners, and then in equal spaced locations on the strips:

FINAL: You have yourself a door!

You can cut various bits and make a nice twist handle for the door, cut out circles and make a port hole, or any other plethora of things. These three doors went onto my Scenery piece and made normal boring walls….pop!

Have fun and good luck.

Sho: out.

So, what will you need?

• I find this conversion easier to complete with a ‘basic’ combi bolter (just the twin linked one). There is less wires and dangly bits in the way.
• Space marine Plasma pistol, its less clunky than the chaos versions.
• Bolter or bolt pistol, its just for the barrel so take any half cut up one.
• Sharp knife, VERY sharp, no ‘cut job’ goes well with a blunt knife.
• Green stuff and tools.

Use your knife carefully! There is alot of fiddly work.
After each cut, clean the area, smoothing out all bobbly bits and such to make sure you will have a clean fit.

So first thing is to ensure you have all the kit you need, trim all the mold lines off and drill barrels if required. Its much easier at this stage and it is not worth skipping.

Time to bring out the knife.
Cut off the arm of the plasma pistol and also chop of the barrels of the combi bolter.

Next check out the side of the combi boler you wish to cut out. Ive tried my best to mark on my image were to cut. It is to the barrel end of the face and just above the top of the arrow side.

And along the outside of the centre support.

Leaving

For the plasma pistol Cut off the hand and the underneath gizmos.
Then carefully cut along the line created and up the seam between the nozel and the casing.

Then as marked above by the brackets, cut of the end of the casing containing the cell at the very end of the coils.

This is were paitence comes in. You need to dry fit (put the pieces together without glue) the plasma to the hole and then cut a small amount of coil of at a time until the back of the nozel meets the front of the combi plasma casing. Make small cuts on this, better to take to little off than too much. repeat if needed
Dont worry if you make a little mistake it will be Green’d up later

Should look like this afterwards

You will notice the plasma pistol hangs over being to wide for the gap made. You must now tip the plasma pistol over and trim the other side.
Follow the seam up from the bottom of the plasma pistol and cut only halfway through, then cut along the coil cutting again only halfway through (This is hard to explain)

Note the above picture shows the WRONG side of the plasma pistol.

It should end up looking like this.

Dry fit, repeat if need be otherwise proceed.

Stick on the plasma pistol to the combi bolter, add on a barrel from the bolt weapon (im sure your capable of that on your own) and drum roll……..

Finally, break out the Green, youll need a cube at the end of the coil and maybe a little under the gun depending on how tightly you got your fit.

Sweet!
Apply Terminator. paint (Chevrons Cough!), and blast away at those Imperial Fists dogs (spits).

Model after chevrons and terminator have been applied

Enjoy all. Please ask if you have any questions.
Dan

Hello all you fans of Librarium Online. I was recently sitting in my apartment and pondering to myself “What is the next new ‘hip’ blog that could be written for LO?” My mind settled on magnetizing. Today I will show you my  methods for magnetizing a range of miniatures.

Magnetizing your miniatures is almost always beneficial. If you are a loyalist a five man Terminator Squad can have Thunder Hammer and Storm Shields one game and Storm Bolters and Power Fists the next! If you are a pawn of the Ruinous Powers a Terminator could have Lightning Claws one game and a Combi Melta and Power Weapon the next! The flexibility is worth the hassle alone, and even then, magnetizing is one of the quickest and easiest “conversions” that a hobbyist can do.

Let’s start with what tools you will need. A nice sharp hobby knife, also known as an exacto is a must for this project. Next you will need to obtain a file, preferably one that comes down to a tip, but a squared one will also work. A portable drill with drill bits! You will of course need glue, and finally magnets. The magnets you will need depends on what you are trying to magnetized.

I have three sets of magnets pictured. The first (and biggest) set is 1/4” radius by 1/8” in depth. The second is 3/16” by 1/16” and finally, the smallest pictured is 3/32” by 1/16”. Each magnet has a specific roll in modeling. The smallest (3/32 by 1/16) are going to be used on Terminators, Marines, and things of that nature. The next size up will find its home on plastic Dreadnoughts, vehicles, and any other equivalents. Finally the biggest will be used on metal Dreadnoughts and Titans. Now obviously you will need drill bits that are the same size as the magnet you are using.

Now that you have all of your materials, it’s time to get started! Let’s look at how to magnetize Terminators. Take you Terminator body, and both of the arms (I find it is easiest to put on the shoulder pads before you magnetize)

Step 1: take your drill and use a 3/32” drill bit and drill into the middle of the back about an 1/8” deep. Clean up the hole with your hobby knife and file.

Step 2: Do the same thing on the Terminators body.

Step 3: Place a dab of glue and your magnet into your Terminator body. You will not need much glue, a small dab will do!

**Step 4**: I put stars around this step because it is very important. You want to make sure that your magnet that you put in the arm has the opposite polarity as the one you put in the arm. If it doesn’t, then the magnets won’t work. They will not attract to each other.

Step 5: After making sure the magnets will be attracted to each other, place a dab of glue into the hole in the arm and place a magnet inside.

Finished Product: After letting the glue set, you will be able to put on the arms! So your Terminator will look like this.

**Note** Make sure that you make all of the pieces compatible. Otherwise you will have certain arms that won’t go on certain bodies.

Next, I will show you how to magnetize your Dreadnoughts. The steps will be almost identical for the Dreadnought from the Terminator magnetization. The main difference is the magnet size. For the Plastic Dreadnought, either the 3/16” by 1/16” magnet or the 3/32” by 1/16” (The same one used for terminators) will work. For Metal Dreadnoughts however, you will need to use the biggest magnet, the 1/4” by 1/8. The reason for this is the metal arms are too heavy and will hang down instead of being in a “battle ready” position.

Step 1: Depending on the Dreadnought you will need a 1/4″ drill bit (For metal Dreadnoughts) , and either a 3/16” or 3/32” bit depending on what size you will want to use. Drill a hole into the body of the Dreadnought, about 1/8” deep.  Clean up the hole with your hobby knife and file. (Regretfully all of my Dreadnoughts already have this step done and I can’t show a picture of it)

Step 2: Drill a hole into the arm of your Dreadnought. If you are using a Black Reach Dreadnought you can skip this step, as there is a tub that you can slip magnets into (You should see this in the picture). Clean up the hole with your hobby knife and file.

Step 3: Put a dab of glue into the hole you drilled on your Dreadnoughts body, then slip a magnet into the hole.

**Step 4**: Once again you may notice the ever so important ** next to this step. As previously stated you will need to make sure that the magnet you put into the arm’s polarity is the opposite of the one in the body. Otherwise you will have the problem of the magnets wanting to retract from each other.

Step 5: After assuring your magnets will attract to one another, put a dab of glue in the arm and place your magnet into the arm.

Finished Product:  After letting the glue set, you will be able to put on the arms! So your Dreadnought will look like this.

(From left to right: Multi-Melta, Lascannon, Assault Cannon)

**Note** Make sure that you make all of the pieces compatible. Otherwise you will have certain arms that won’t go on your Dreadnought body.

In this tutorial I will produce a nice raggedy banner to fit with my Black Guard Campaign army.
Planning is VERY important in this process, even more so with banners for fantasy models. First off I mocked up a paper banner, tacked it to the banner pole and then placed it in the unit. From this I can see the space I have to add ripples and curves caused by wind etc. You will need the mock up later on, so dont bin it.

As you can guess with this being in the middle of a rank infantry unit, there is little space to play with, some examples later show what can be done with more space.

What will you need?
As you can see, I have used some Green Stuff (this was rather obvious), talc (any kind of old man drying talc will sufice), a ‘rolling pin substitute’ (I used my cutting knife handle) and a SMOOTH surface. The smooth surface is very important (I used the other side of my cutting matt) as if you roll the green stuff onto any lumps or bumps this will impair the final result. I also used a single pointed sculpting tool, a sharpe knife and a metal ruler before curing, after curing I used some ZAP super thin glue.

Lets get on with it.
OK, before mixing green stuff ensure the area for working is clean. Then apply the talc. Dont be afraid to cover the whole area in talc, the more the safer!

The talc stops the Greenstuff from sticking to it when you apply pressure.
Rub the talc into the surface. It is critical that the greenstuff does not stick half way through, otherwise you will need to start again.

Dont forget to talc up the rolling pin. Just as important as the matt. its good to keep adding a bit of talc to the tool all the way through.

Mix the greenstuff and pop it into the middle of the talc zone and roll it around to pick up some talc. Then begin to roll out. You may need to apply a bit of pressure at first, but the thinner it gets the less pressure required, it can cause havoc!

I find the best way of rolling this out is to keep turning and flipping the greenstuff, this way it is less likely to stick to the matt or the tool. Remember after each flip to rub a bit of talc into the piece.

After a short while you will have a really thin piece of greenstuff. Its possible to get it that thin you can see through it! Paper thin is fine.

Roll out the mock up and compare to the green stuff sheet.

Then CAREFULLY(!!!!!) cut out.

After this I made the banner raggedy. If you want a nice neat banner then ignore this bit. I mae the banner all ripped up by gentley teasing away chunks of the bottom of the banner. As the greenstuff hasnt cured yet it will stiff be soft and will stretch in places. If this looks like it may cause a problem, rub it with your finger an it will slowly go back into shape.

Once you are happy, leave the banner over night to cure properly

After this I simpley neatened the banner with a knife and stuck to the banner pole with a small amount of glue.

To add curves and waves to the banner I used the super thin super glue, this also gets rid of any small giner prints and other defects. I add a small amount at a time to a small strip, hold in position with fingers or tweasers (dont stick them to the banner!) then move onto the next section once dry. By doing this you can add subtle or dramatic curves and waves.

The final piece

Here are the other, more dramatic banners.

Enjoy!

Dan

1. They have to be quick to make.  I’ll lose interest otherwise and they’ll sit somewhere half finished for months.  My wife will not approve.
2. They won’t need to be based.  Maybe, won’t know for sure about this but I’ll make them without bases and see how they fare on the table.  They’ll be dunked in glue/paint, flocked and then sprayed so hopefully they’ll have enough weight to sit still on the table.  If not then I’ll just buy some 0.5mm/1.0mm plasticard and use that.
3. I’ll need lots of it.  Sadly, in this case at least, 10mm allows for big battles and you can get more of it on a 6×4 table so in turn you need a lot more terrain.  Besides, you’ve seen photos of Western Europe right?  Hedges, hedgerows and bocage everywhere.

Step One

Grey or dark grey foam is an absolute must as starting point.  I won’t have to paint it and if any does show through, and it will, then it will be darker than the flock and add a little depth.

I cut strips and used a knife to rough up the surface a little, pick away at it too making sure to get rid of any straight edges and flat surfaces.  I wasn’t being too careful here.

While doing this make sure that the hedges aren’t bigger than the container you have your flock in.  I didn’t do this with the 28mm stuff and it was a massive hassle.

Step Two

Add water, white glue/hobby glue/mdf glue (anything water soluble) and paint.  I used as sponge dabber brush (?)  to mix up as it makes it easier to get stuff off the bottom of the container if it settled.

Step 3

Make sure your storage tray is right next to the dipping and flocking trays… I learnt this the hard way.

The finished hedge, maybe 15min from start to finish and I’m really happy with the end result.  Now I just have to make more… a lot more.

The benefits of the cooker is that it reduces the curing time of Green Stuff from 20-24 hours to between 1-2 hours, which you’ll agree is a much better time scale. The project is amazingly easy to do, and took me 5 minutes from start to finish, how’s that for a quick and easy? You could do this while waiting for your porridge to be cooking.

For the project you’ll need a container that either has a foil lining within it (there is a famous crisp brand that comes in a tube, or there is the example I use, or something similar) to reflect the heat to the miniature, or you can use a tin can, like a baked bean tin. As you’ll can see I opted out of using a metal variant for ease of cutting and because I’d forget that it’s pretty hot and grab onto it.

Once you’ve found a suitable cooking container you’ll need to mark out with a pen a square/rectangle, this is going to be your window to place your miniature in side or take it out. You don’t need draw out this lines, but I find it easier to follow lines when cutting with a Dremel.So once you have your window drawn out, get cutting with whatever tool you wish to use, as mentioned I’ve used a Dremel, but I’m sure with a bit of care a steak or stanley knife could be used for such a task, just take your time if using a knife as I don’t want people severing fingers.

So you’ve now cut out your window, clean away any frayed cardboard and foil that may be clinging to the edges of where you have cut. That is basically it for the cut, the only other thing to do is get a lamp that will produce enough heat to cure the Green Stuff. If you have a look around the Internet there are a number of different bulb suggestions ranging from 15 watts to 40 watts. It does seem that anyway over 40 watts is more than likely to have a negative affect and literally cook the Green Stuff and creating something that resembles Stay Puft Green Marshmallow Man. Curing times will probably vary depending on the watt bulb you use, but anything that drastically reduces the 20 hour curing time to no ill effect has to be good. Right?

I don’t actually have a model that needs speed curing at the moment, but the miniature above gives a good representation of how one would look inside the cooker, you’ll also note how much room is in a cooker of this size, so a number of models can be cured at once.

Until next time, happy cooking!

Provided by Greenstuffsculpting.com

This modification is better than most because it uses only ONE light as opposed to a confusing series of LEDs and resisters, and is much, much brighter. To give you an example, a fairly bright LED light puts out about 1000mcd (luminous intensity) … whereas this single tube light puts out about 40,000mcd (give or take 5000mcd). Plus, it’s pretty cheap.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Monolith (and associated modeling supplies you probably already have… clippers, hobby knife, glue, paint, etc.) $55
• 4” CCFL Kit (I got mine here)   $5
• 9volt Battery Connectors <$3
• Electrical Tape  <$3

So if you’re into the hobby already, you’ll probably end up spending around $10 in additional supplies to make this.

Let’s Get Started!

Since we have limited space to work with inside the Monolith, we’ll have to put the light in diagonally. I’ve tried other setups but found this to work the best. If it’s horizontal the inverter will block the light from either shining out of the portal, or out of the spaces we’ll cut in the bottom of the Monolith (more on this later)… so we’ll put
it in diagonally, with the light as centered as we can get it inside this beast. So first we’ll need to glue the CCFL tube to the side of the inverter. I used wood (PVA) glue for this. It takes a while to cure but is definitely worth it considering how strong it is. (You wouldn’t want anything inside here getting knocked loose after it’s all put together, right?)

Lay down a strip of glue like this:

and lay the tube on top of it.

*IMPORTANT!*
Make sure that the side with the wire coming out of the tube is on the same side as the plug for the wire on the inverter!

I had trouble with the light wanting to slowly slide off so I weighted it down with the nearest flat thing I could find…

You’ll probably want to let this sit overnight to thoroughly harden. In the mean time, let’s carve up our Monolith so all this glorious light can emanate from within. First stop, ground floor! Let’s cut out those stupid squares on the bottom that nobody’s going to see anyway. This will provide some nice, gaussy ground-effects.

I used a sharp hobby knife to outline where I wanted to cut… Then I retraced those grooves with the line again and again (each time with more pressure) until I was able to poke through and pop the whole piece out. If you can think of a better way to do this, then do it. My hands were killing me after I finished carving these up. Anyway, you’ll need to cut:

The 4 squares on the bottomThe pieces behind the 6 long gauss rods on either side panelThe pieces behind the 8 smaller gauss rods around the top of the model
Bore a hole behind where the circular gauss piece goes Saw the bottom of the area off underneath where the crystal goes.

I did all this, and then glued the 4 sides together… here’s the result:

Now if you’ve built a Monolith before you’re probably wondering why I didn’t put the gauss flux arc turrets in… Well, there’s a way to put them in afterwards, and I’d like to
prime them before the final steps of the assembly so they get a nice even coat. To pop them in afterwards, just lay the bottom piece in, and put the top piece ontop of it, but
don’t line them both up so they’re pointing the same way. Rather, have one pointing one way, and the other about 30-45 degrees off (Like a V shape) and push gently to pop it in place. You can then pinch the edges of the ‘V’ together to line them up.

The glue should probably still be drying… so let’s move on to something else. Along with the CCFL and inverter, you should find a switch on a PCI panel and some molex connectors. We won’t be needing most of this (but hang on to it). Let’s steal the switch and cut off those wires. First, start by unscrewing the switch from the PCI panel.

Give yourself a good amount of slack on the wires (better to cut them too long than too short!) and slice those bad larrys with your hobby knife or some scissors. You can keep the screws if you want to deal with it but I think I’ll just mush some greenstuff around the edges of the switch on the inside of the Monolith

Next you can either trace, or just eyeball the size of your switch hole and scratch it into the bottom panel with your knife like such:

It took a little bit of shaving down to get it just right…

And there she goes…

Don’t glue (or screw, or greenstuff…) this in place just yet! We need to finish our wiring and basecoat this thing first!

Now that the glue between your CCFL and inverter has dried, we can do some more modding. You’ll probably notice that the white wires going from your light to inverter are long.

Too long, these things are going to bunch up inside of your Monolith and probably block some of the light. We don’t want this. Let’s shorten them. This light (and everything else we’re working with here) has 2 wires: A positive (+), and a negative (-). Positive wires are typically red whereas negative wires are typically black. This CCFL has neither. Since we don’t know which is + and which is -, ONLY CUT ONE AT A TIME!!!

I left about 1-2 inches of wire on either side and threw away the rest. We’ll want to reconnect these wires, but how? We need the metal wire inside the rubber sheathing on the 2 ends to meet once again. We’ll have to cut the sheathing off. Electronics stores sell wire strippers but why pay for it? You can just as easily take some sharp scissors, open them to a V shape, put the wire down into the V (leave about 1cm or a half an inch of the wire sticking out), and VERY GENTLY squeeze the wire with the scissors while rotating the wire to slice the sheath a little bit, then bite on the end, and pull. VIOLA! a stripped wire!

You’ll take the 2 metal wire ends, twist them together, then wrap some electrical tape around the bare metal area to re-insulate them, and prevent the metal sections of your positive and negative wires from touching. This kind of touching is bad. It will result in sparks. Bad Sparks. Sparks that could burn out your inverter, light, battery, house, neighbors house, you get the idea. Don’t touch your positives and negatives together. After you re-conntect one wire, move on to the other. It will probably end up looking like this:

Remember the stuff we cut off from the end of the switch? We need some of it. There should be a small white connector which fits nicely into the other side of your inverter. We need that plug, and 1-2 inches of wire along with it. You’ll need to strip these wires (Again, about 1cm or 1/2 inch), the wires attached to the switch, and the wires on your 9volt battery connector (I find that out-of-the-bag they don’t give enough of a lead, so I took a little bit more sheathing off.

After you do this, you’ll want to take the ends of your 3 red wires (Battery wire, switch wire, and inverter wire) and twist them all together.
Then do the same for your 2 black and 1 yellow wires (I’m not sure why that one is yellow…) and you should have something that looks like this:

Wrap both of these bundles in electrical tape, attach a 9v battery, and you should have a fully functional light you can turn on and off by the switch!

This battery only has about 1/2 charge left in it. Yours will be much brighter.

The battery was getting incredibly hot regardless of the switch position. If I let it sit for a minute with the battery plugged in, and the switch off, it felt like the battery was going to burst into flames. It took a while to figure this one out but I came to the realization that GREEN STUFF IS A CONDUCTOR! Be careful with this stuff (especially around the switch) when attempting to follow this tutorial. It might be a better idea to just screw the switch into the plastic of the model.

I used green stuff to hold the switch in place on the inside of my Monolith (pics to come) and I guess it connected the + and – leads. The switch worked fine… it still turned the lights on and off… but the battery was scorching and running out of juice incredibly fast. If you attempt to follow this tutorial, make sure to test your connections by leaving the battery connected with the switch in the off position for about 5 minutes. If you can feel a noticeable heat coming from your battery, pull everything apart and start over. And BE CAREFUL WITH THAT GREEN STUFF!

Now that we have all our wiring taken care of, lets prime this sucker! I primed the inside white (kind of hard to see with the flash…) and the outside black…

I primed the inside white because I want the light to bounce off the inner surfaces of the Monolith and appear even brighter! I suppose if you were motivated enough you could pick up some of that chrome spray paint and really go nuts.

After you’ve got it all primed, lay down some PVA glue here

and put the inverter on top at this angle

You’ll want to make sure that the wires aren’t plugged in as this could cause the inverter to pivot on the glue and set incorrectly.

After the glue cures, you’ll want to connect your wire to the inverter, and make sure your switch is secured… However, DO NOT DO THIS:

See where the green stuff touches the circuit board on the switch? This caused a short for me could have eventually burned out my battery or house. GREEN STUFF IS A CONDUCTOR. be warned.

After you take care of all your wiring, glue to bottom section of the Monolith onto the top, paint it up however you like, insert your battery via one of the holes in the bottom like this

And tuck it up inside, resting on the ‘floor’ against one of the inner walls like this

Enjoy an 85% increase in the fear factor of your Monolith. (Warning: May cause loosening of bowels in opponents.)

Pictures by users following this tutorial

More Pictures

To start out you’ll need

Green stuff
A base within which to make the mould. I used a 25mm circle base.
The item you wish to make a mould of (in this case the skull-rune from the chaos vehicle sprue)
I also have a second base and the square 40mm one but I’ll explain them as we go along.

Mix enough green stuff to fill the recess of the base.

Smooth this out when you’re done. Then take the item you wish to make a mould of and give it a good coating in cooking oil or some such, this acts as a release agent for later on. Once it’s oiled up place it on the green stuff.

One of the key things to making a press mould is keeping everything straight when you press it in. To do this I used the flat side of another 25mm circle base (make sure to oil up this base too) pushed down by the flat of the 40mm base.

Now you’ll have to wait for the green stuff to cure.

Once it has cured you should be able to remove the item. You might need a thin bladed knife or some such to carefully lever it out if it’s a very flat object (as this was). Be careful as the knife can very easily slip as the item can sometimes be quite snug in the mould.
You should then have something that looks like this

Now to make a copy of this item you first have to cover the mould in oil, again to act as a release agent and stop everything sticking together and getting wrecked.

If you then roll out another ball of green stuff and you press this into the mould using the same method as you did with the item. Trying to keep it as flat and straight as possible. Make sure to use plenty of oil on anything that will touch the greenstuff to stop things sticking.

Leave this to cure again. Lots of waiting for this!
Once it’s cured you should be able to ‘peel’ away the green stuff from your mould and have a clone of your item.

All you have to do then is cut away the excess green stuff with a sharp blade as I’ve mostly finished doing in the pic below.

You can then repeat this as necessary. Hope that was of some use!

Provided by Elazar The Glorified

This article is provided by Col. Corbane . I thought I’d share with you a tutorial that I’ve posted recently over on From The Warp on making heavy foliage terrain pieces.I want to make it clear that this tutorial isn’t a masterclasses, more simple guide to making effective scenery both in looks and playability for the least amount of time, effort and money. If you’re looking for masterclasses, then the net has plenty to offer.

Much like collecting an army, building scenery requires you to build up a set of tools and materials. Quite a lot of these things, you’ll find that you already have as scenery building often requires some of the same tools and materials as building an army, some you’ll find around the house like tools and scratch building materials, and some you’re just going to have to buy.

Much like building an army, over time you’ll build up a collection of tools and materials, so don’t worry if you don’t have something right now, if you’re serious about building scenery, you’ll get these things over time. For this project, there a few things that are essential.

• Cake bases for the area terrain pieces.
• Small bases for the foliage pieces
• Modelling gravel for the bases
• Finally, your actual foliage. (We’ll be looking at the different types of foliage you can use later in the tutorial)

First off, we’re going to make up some area terrain bases. I have a ton of these as they make defining area terrain really easy. My main material I use for making these are cake bases. Yep, that’s right, those silver things you see wedding cakes on. Cake bases come in many different shapes and sizes, virtually all supermarkets stock them and they’re really easy to work with. They’re basically a rough fibre board, so it’s important you wear a mask when working with them.

First, peel off the silver foil, don’t worry about the odd bit of white paper left on, but it’s important to get all the silver off. If you get a stubborn bit, just use a bit of sand paper to sand it off. Once that’s done, mark out your basic shape with marker pen. For this project, I’m doing two corner pieces as I have quite a few round and oval shapes already.

Next, cut your pieces out, and remember to wear that mask as this stuff produces lots of little fibres that you don’t want in your lungs. I use a coping saw to cut mine but you can use a hobby saw or even a steak knife. You’ll see that cake bases are really easy to work with.

Then you need to bevel the edges so they look right on the tabletop and don’t end up looking like step. I actually use a steak knife to make the initial cuts and then sandpaper to smooth it down. Once you’re done, it should look like the one on the right.

Next, cover the whole top of the piece with pva glue and then modelling gravel. Leave it to dry for a couple of hours and once it is, shake off the excess.

Once you’re sure there’s no excess gravel, coat the piece in watered down pva. I use a mix of 1 pva to 4 water, which looks a bit like milk once it’s mixed. I find sitting the pieces on top of some paint pots on a piece of cardboard works well for stopping to pieces getting glued to your working surface as well as soaking up any excess watered down pva.

Leave it overnight to dry completely and once it is, paint it up. I normally paint my pieces with chaos black (best to use a spray can), then an overbrush of scorched brown, then a drybrush of graveyard earth and then a final drybrush of bleached bone.

Once you’ve got it painted up, flock it as you would your models making sure that you use a flock that’ll match your gaming table.

That’s the bases done, and as you can see, it’s really easy to tell where the borders of the area terrain are.

Next up, we’ve actually got to do the terrain pieces to put on our area bases. I tend to make lots of little round terrain pieces that I can move about as I need to rather than one big one. I find it gives me flexibility on the tabletop and makes it easier to store them after the game. In the rest of this tutorial, I’m going to show you how I make jungle, woodland and alien pieces.

There’s nothing more evocative than the image of soldiers moving through thick jungle, much like the photo at the start of this tutorial. You don’t really see much jungle terrain on the tabletop which is a shame as it’s really easy to put together.

First off, start with some 60mm flat bases, or any sort of base really, I’ve used large flying bases and even cut my own out of plasticard in the past. Avoid cardboard at all costs as it’s prone to warping. In this example, I’ve added some milliput so that my bases don’t look flat but this isn’t essential.

Next gravel and seal them in exactly the same way as the area terrain pieces and leave them to dry overnight.

Once they’re completely dry, paint them up in the same way as well.

Then, brush glue around the edges of the bases and then cover them in static grass. Make sure you put something underneath them to catch the overspill so you can put it back into the tub once they’re dry.

When they’ve completely dried, you’ll be left with something like these.

Next up, you’re going to need some jungle plants. You can buy these from GW but I highly suggest you head down to your local pet shop. Pet shops stock all sorts of handy stuff for hobbyists, from various types of gravel to plastic plants, which is what we need for this project. These are a few packets of plastic plants I picked up from my local pet shop, I got quite a lot for a lot less than the GW plants.

Get your plastic plants and then cut them up into individual plants.

Then, simply glue the individual plastic plants onto your bases and leave them to dry. Once dry, you’ll have something like this.

Once you’ve got your area terrain pieces and foliage bases together, throw them down on the table, add some models and you’re ready to go.

By far the most common foliage feature on the tabletop is the wood, whether it’s the GW plastic woods or ones made from various hobby trees, or even scratch built ones. I’ll be covering how to build your own trees in the future, for this tutorial we’ll look at how to base hobby trees as GW plastic ones already come with their own bases.

First off, simply glue the tree to a round base, in this case a 60mm sentinel base, using some pva glue.

Then simply cover the base in gravel and paint it up in the same way as we did the jungle bases.

Next, you’re going to need some scenic material such as static grass and clump foliage. Clump foliage comes in various colours and I find a mix of colours works best.

Glue the static grass around the edges of the bases like we did with the jungle pieces. Once it’s dry, add some clump foliage at the base of the trees using pva.

Once it’s dry, you’ll have some very simple but very effective tree bases to use to make woodland area terrain for your games. Once on the table, they’ll give you a great looking woodland scene.

It’s quite common to see woodlands on tabletops and even jungles but the one rarity is alien terrain which is quite strange considering 40k is a science fiction game. Making alien terrain pieces isn’t that hard, you just need to find the right materials.

As a starting point, I highly recommend pot pourri, yep, that smelly stuff the women folk like to scatter around the house, it’s perfect for alien terrain.

First, pick out some interesting pieces that you think would work well together. It’s best to get more than you need, so you’ve plenty to experiment with when putting together the terrain bases.

Once you’ve got a good selection, dip them in your watered down pva and then leave them to dry. This will give them a protective coating, stop them smelling and help with any painting you want to do.

Once they’re dry, gravel some bases as described with the jungle pieces and then glue them on.

Once they’re completely dry, paint up the bases and add some static grass. You’ll also find that since they were dipped in pva, you can quite easily paint the pot pourri if you like.

As you can see, even on the typical green grass tabletop, they do have a real alien feel to them.

And there you have it, a simple guide to creating heavy foliage terrain for your tabletop. I hope you’ve found this tutorial useful and I hope it inspires you to create some of your own.

Materials:
Gaunt Devourer Arm x2
Carnifex Barbed Strangler Gun Arm x1
Venom Cannon Feeder Tube Arm x2 (can be replaced by Barbed Strangler Feeder Tube)
Warrior Rending Claw Arm x1 (optional)
Unwanted Carnifex Arm x1 (optional)

Green Stuff

Super Glue, or Plastic Glue of your choice

Step 1:
Cut off the ends (the half strawberry “lump of flesh” part) of the Gaunt Devourer arms.

On the bottom of these, shave off the spiky parts of them so that it is as flat as possible.

Glue these together at the flat parts of each, so you have a cone, or strawberry.

Step 2:

Cut off the protruding parts on the end of the barrel of the Barbed Strangler so that the end is flat.

Glue the Devourer cone onto this so that the slim part and long part are lined up with the Barbed Strangler.

Step 3:

Glue in, or magnetize, the Barbed Strangler arm to your Carnifex, this will make positioning the Weapon Tubes much easier.

Glue in, or magnetize, the first weapon tube onto the Barbed Strangler arm as normal.

Step 4:

Cut off the tip of the second weapon arm, this will make a flat surface to make pinning and Green Stuffing easier.

Drill into the end of the tube and place your pin into it.

Cut to an acceptable length, shorter is usually a tad better.

Position this on your Carnifex to judge the length of the pin, and when you are ready drill into the point on the other weapon tube where you want the pin to go in.

Put in the pin and glue it on both ends.

Glue, or magnetize, the arm into its slot.

Step 5:

Use Green Stuff to fill in the gaps in the Devourer Lump, as well as smooth out the transition in between the Strangler and Devourer tip. Try to keep this smooth, and looking natural so that the Barbed Strangler seems to morph directly into the Devourers.

Once the glue on the pin has dried, use Green Stuff to continue to Weapon Tube into the other tube.

Step 6 (Optional):

To make the claw to fill the back right arm slot, take the Rending Claw arm from the Warrior and cut it diagonally along the “elbow”.

Make the same cut on the Carnifex arm that you don’t care about.

Glue the two together so that it looks as natural as possible.

Green Stuff the gap if needed.

Step 7:

Paint that badboy!

]]> http://www.librarium-online.com/?feed=rss2&p=3303 0 http://www.librarium-online.com/?p=2858 http://www.librarium-online.com/?p=2858#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:45:25 +0000 Big D http://www.librarium-online.com/?p=2858 It is time for another adventure in casting miniatures. In the past I have cast a few different things – resin bases, wax seals, and I even tried my hand at casting some long out of print models. I have had some really mixed results – the wax seal and resin bases turned out great. My attempts at casting miniatures ended in defeat. I have found a new product that simplifies this whole process.

In the past I have used a two part RTV Silicone compound that used a base and a catalyst to make my molds. This process was an absolute mess. Goop got everywhere, curing time was outrageous, the cost was high and it was just really hard to work with.

In my searching endeavors I have come up with a new way to make silicone molds that I am really excited about. Instead of using a catalyst and a base I am now using a two part putty.

If you are thinking about starting out in casting / mold making this stuff is the way to go. It is super easy to work with. You just pop open the tube, scoop out equal amounts from each, and then mix together. This stuff mixes together a lot easier and faster than green stuff. It is a good thing too that it is fast to mix – you have about three minutes from when you start mixing until it is no longer workable. I mixed up too much on one batch and was going to cast another piece, but the putty had already set. You definitely need a game plan when you decide to mix this stuff together.

One of the best parts of this method is the price. A one pound kit cost me right at $30 shipped. One pound is quite a bit of silicone. So far I made the sandbag terrain mold and a few smaller detail molds and I still have about %20 of the product left. This is a really good value.

The mold you end up with is very tough. You can use it for resin casting, plaster casting, and even pewter casting. I’ve never tried casting a pewter miniature but I figure it is good to have the option.

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t get a good cast when I squashed the putty onto my mold. I was casting a pretty large piece for my first attempt – a sandbag wall piece of terrain. I mashed the putty onto the terrain piece and made sure to smush it up tight. I then flipped over the piece to kind of level it out and to have a flat surface to balance it on for when I cast the pieces.

After about thirty minutes my fears were relieved – the mold turned out great. The mold picked up detail as well as using a pour in silicone.

The first thing I tried to do with my new mold was to cast it with resin. This ended up not working out very well. The resin that I had was a bit old and had been out in the cold garage. I gave both bottles a good shake (I think this was a huge mistake) and then mixed it together and poured away. It ended up being a disaster.

Here is what I think happened.

When I shook the bottle of amber resin it turned a milky white color. Since there wasn’t much resin left I think I aerated it by shaking it. When I mixed the two components together I don’t think they mixed well because of all the air. I stirred and stirred until it looked right but I know something was wrong when I poured it in the mold. It was like the two parts had separated. I had a nice mixed part on the bottom and a clear part floating on top of that.

I grabbed a stick and started trying to mix it inside the mold but at that point it was already too late. I let it sit for a while. After a few minutes the resin began to set. After about half an hour it was as done as it was going to get. I pulled it out of the mold and it was terrible. The resin was still goopy in places. The whole thing was sticky and had a very marbled look to it. I threw the piece away in disgust and started cleaning out the mold.

I next tried casting the piece in Plaster of Paris. The casting process went very smoothly. The only thing is the pieces are pretty much unusable on the table. The plaster of paris is so brittle that just rubbing your finger on the terrain piece will rub the primer off. I had to find something tougher.

Years ago when I was casting Hirst Arts molds I used Merlins Magic plaster. I got to looking around for something simliar and I came across Excalibur plaster. I ordered in a box of this and have been using it to cast with. So far I have had really good luck with it. In the next few days I will have a post up that goes into pretty good detail about how the casting process is going. There might even be a video…

I got an email about a link in one of my old posts. It was a link to a cut-out template that I had used to make the above Eldar Warpgate. This template was hosted on GW’s site, but is no longer there.

After a bit of searching, I decided to reconstruct the template myself, using my finished gate as a stencil.

Below, you can see the cutouts. You can click on the images for full-size. As far as the material, I used 1/4 inch poster-board.

Have fun, guys:

In this tutorial, I will show you how I used gathered materials and a few household items. I’m not sure if I mentioned this enough, but this case is a “Cheap” – Cost effective – way at making a carrying case for your models. So the entire point of this case is to be able to make this case using found objects and very few items that you have to buy.

The reason for reinforcing this is; if you have already made your case, you will notice that if it is not reinforced, the bottoms sometimes fall into each other, which could be potentially dangerous for your pieces. We will make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Let’s get started!

Ingredients:
1. Your all ready-to-go Cleaners case. This should already be fit to the size you need and have the objects you want in each “Floor” ready to be fitted. (represented by the large lower portion of a land raider box)
2. Some sort of padding. The padding can be anything from bubble wrap (found in almost any package you recieve from anywhere), airpocket padding (GW actually supplied me with this! Free Materials!), foam to tissue paper or even regular paper. I am going to begin using the airpocket padding and I will explain why when I get there.
3. Glue OR Tape! Anything adhesive. If you don’t have glue or tape in your house… well… I can’t help you. I just moved in so I happen to have some leftover packing tape. Works wonders.
4. Scissors… maybe, if you’re strong you can just rip whatever your padding you have.

Step 1.
Pick the type of padding you will be using and do a test fit. In the case of these two Land Raiders, I will be using the “AIRplus” padding. This Airplus padding came with an order I made from Games workshop. They padded the box so the shipping company cant break stuff… Lucky for us, this airplus padding is exactly the right length to fit inside our boxes. So, as you can see, I did a test fit – and wow – These two land raiders fit snug inside of this box now with padding underneath and front and back of them. I am not too worried about the sides, they will not be moving too much anyways.

Step 2.
Now we need to secure the Airplus to the box so it does not move. In the picture below, I have outlined the tape piece in red. Obviously the tape is clear and very hard to see. Lucky for us, this particular padding has an amazing fit inside of this box. We don’t need to worry about taping the padding to the bottom of the box because… well.. really, there’s no reason.

Step 3
a.
It’s now time to make these boxes Stackable, so they do not fall into eachother all of the time. The way I accomplished this is to go find my old sprues from castings of random things. I happen to have some bits off of an Eldar army. Don’t worry if you haven’t de-sprued anything yet, we are going to use the edges of these sprues to create a sort of shelf so everything can still stay on the whole casting. (Just pick your sprue edges correctly)

b.
All we need are the edges of these sprues, so as you can see here, I cut the edges off and cleaned them up a bit. Make sure you get them as long and straight as possible so you have extra room to cut into.

c.
I started by laying out the sprue edge on the top of the box. Make sure it’s at about a 45 degree angle to either side of the box. This piece is actually what holds up the box above it.

d.
Now mark or just cut the box straight down on both sides of that sprue about the same height as the sprue itself (We are effectively ‘countersinking’ the sprue, making it recessed in the box so it all has the same plane). This may take a couple practice shots to get it right, but don’t worry, everything can be glued back together. (I am very sorry for the extremely dark pictures… I thought the flash looked too washed out being this close)

e.
Then fold those new ‘tabs’ inwards. This will create a ledge for the sprue to sit on and be glued to. (Again, sorry.)

f.
Now we need to cut the sprues to be flush with the side of the box and then glue the sprues TO the box. I use side cutters, but you can use whatever means necessary; scissors, razor, xacto, etc. Just make sure that the top and outsides are flush with the box in every way. The red line on the second picture is showing a bit of what I mean.

This picture is extremely hard to see, but I have a pair of side cutters (top right) cutting the sprue flush with the side of the box.

g.
Here is the Final product of our new land raider floor with the sprue pieces on all four corners.

–
Now that you know how to reinforce the box so the boxes on top of it will not fall in, do that to all of your boxes. You can opt to leave out the top box as long as you know that will definitely be the only thing on top. That should save you some time.

Next, I will show how I used the bubble wrap to create sections for different types of units.

Step 4.
a.
Do another test fit with your bubble wrap and pieces. Again, my bubble wrap just happened to fit just about perfectly. If you need to, just cut it down and make sure it’s long eough. As you can see my bubble wrap has plenty of room to move out of the left side there.

When you know it fits snugly at least on one side, go ahead and tape the side, just like you did on step 2 with the Airplus padding.

b.
I create sections by folding the bubble wrap and taping in between. It is a bit hard to see, but i made tape doughnuts (you could also use glue. I would highly recommend rubber cement.) and placed them under the wrap so that it would be held in place on the bottom and each side of the new ‘divider’ would be taped together.

As you can see here, I made sure the wrap fit my Rhino’s snugly then folded it back down. I have three Dreadnoughts, but I don’t know if I will be adding more tanks soon, so I am just going to leave it for now with two sections. I can always go back later and tape/glue more sections in with more bubble wrap and this becomes an ‘all units’ tray or even a tray for bits.

c.
If this is not your top floor, then I recommend reinforcing the corners again.

Step 5.
Remember those “Collars” we made back in Cleaner’s Case part 1? Well those collars got a little annoying for me to keep trying to remember where I put them. So I decided to tape them to whichever section they went with. I would make sure that the collar is taped the box below it. The picture should clear up any confusion. I do this for 2 reasons. 1. It makes sure that all of the weight of your pieces are actually weighing down the bottom of the box, instead of a taped flimsy collar. and 2. When you look at your bottom floor inside the upside down lid, you can see it starts the trend of the collar being above the box that’s holding it. Again, the picture should clear up any confusion.

As you can see, the tape is outlined in red. I taped it here because it does not go over any bubble wrap and it gives the box a nice center spot where I can lift on the collar. You can also tape on the outsides of the box, just make sure the tape follows the lip of the collar.

–
Now our case floors are all reinforced and ready to be stacked. The picture below shows all four of my floors and the lid to the entire box. You may notice that I have one entire floor dedicated to codecies and (you actually can’t see) dice, and when I find my templates, they will go in there too. That is a good floor for putting some random things in there that aren’t necessarily your pieces. It’s a perfect fit for anything up to the size of a piece of paper.

Starting from left to right is the order I have my floors in. I might switch it up so my infantry is switched with my codecies, but it really doesnt matter too much, that’s all personal preference.

Final Product!

Numbering Convention:
1. Infanty
2. Land Raiders
3. Codecies
4. Rhino’s and Dreads / random
5. lid

I hope you enjoyed this part of the tutorial and I hope you find my case to be easy and convenient! Remember, a nice coat of black primer and some gloss will make this bad boy stand out! Or, even better yet, Paint it the same Scheme as your army!

Go forth and customize!

From the moment I had my first read of the new Beasts book, I knew I’d be fielding a Cygor pretty regularly.  While it isn’t the close combat monster that the Ghorgon is, and doesn’t have the movement of the Jabbersclythe, it can mess up a magic phase pretty well, and more importantly to me, it’s a stone thrower.

The question became how to convert one.  I had a Giant kit, and figured that was a good place to start, but wanted him to be more “Beastish”.  Green stuff seemed the only answer.

The first step to was to fix the legs.  Beastmen have a hock; that is, the “backwards knee”.  You can see it in this awesome goat illustration:

So I wanted my Giant to have one as well.  I build it up just below and behind the knee.

Next was the fur.  I wrapped thin bands of green stuff in layers around the Giant’s pants.  As soon as I had everything covered, I took a hobby knife and just started slashing away, tearing at the green stuff to get little fur strips going.  This took a little while, but I think the results were pretty good.

Finally, I needed to work on the head.  I wanted my Cygor to be completely blind, like a monstrous seer completely dependent on the Warp for his vision (and reflected in his awesome Weapon Skill of 2).  So I built him a blindfold using a small strip of green stuff, and then used another twisted strip in the back to show where it was tied together.

Overall, I think it came out well, and I look forward to painting him and stomping magical opponents all over the place.  What do you think?

Lousi Taylors Drop Pods

At his blog you can download the Blend raw files and his templates in hig-res png format. Next step is to start printing

(News Source: Louis Taylor)

It will look something like this when complete:

Cheap is relative. We all think “Cheap” is a term to describe how much something costs or how well something is made.

Cost wise, this is a ‘Cheap’ case. It uses boxes made by GW that you already buy and possibly even throw away. I am just showing you an idea on how to use those boxes.

Building wise, this is definitely only as cheaply built as you want to make it. I have reinforced my case with materials given to me in every GW package and all of the sudden, it’s not very cheaply built anymore

LETS GET ON WITH IT!!

To make this simple 2 stage case, we will need two different sized boxes. The first is a Land Raider box. The second is a Rhino box (you can also get any type of box depending on your army, assuming they were the same size as the Land Raider and Rhino). The reason we need two different boxes is because of their height, which I will go into later! Other materials only include the things you want to make this box great! I am only showing you the simple two stage case.

Step 1.
Grab both of your (empty) boxes.

Step 2.
Open both of your boxes and put the lid to the shorter box to the side. That will be the last step.

I have numbered three of the four components 1 through 3.
1. Bottom of the Large Box
2. Top of the Large Box
3. Bottom of the Small Box

I have already started the customizing on the small box. Here is just an example of what I have done so far. I took a plastic sprue casting (the thick edges that are usually worthless and tossed in the trash) off of the Land Raider raw castings. I cut a couple of notches out of the lower box and glued the sprue castings as shown below. I also grabbed some bubble wrap from a package I received and made some padding for my soldiers.

Step 3.

Turn the top of the large box over and place the bottom of the Small box inside of it. It should leave a nice lip as shown. This lip is to hold the next section of box. If we did not have two different sizes of boxes, this would not be possible.

Step 4.

Now Place the Bottom of the Large Box ONTOP (right-side up) of the bottom of the small box. We are now stacking the two bottoms ontop of eachother, using the upside down Large Box Lid as a lip to hold them both in place ontop of eachother.

Before I “Reinforced” my lower small box bottom, the large box had a tendency to fall into small box. Not a big deal to most, but for me, it got a bit annoying.

Step 5.

Place your big stuff (Tanks and whatnot) into the top floor of your new case

and now place the lid of the Small Box on top.

Make sure to poke some holes in the top of the box. Not because your soldiers breathe air (HA) but because you will notice the suction that the lid makes to the inside of the box. It may lift your upper layer up and out of place… you’ll see.

Congratulations, you just made a new cheap carrying case. No more looking for empty boxes around the house. Here is your work-all.

Now some of you might be saying “I have more army than that!” well, here we go.

ADDING NEW LAYERS!

You will need another Land Raider box (or the same size) and another Rhino box (or the same size)
We will just continue with step 6.

Step 6.

Cut the top off of your NEW Large box. and throw away the middle section. All we need are the sides around the box.

Step 7.

Instead of putting the lid on your two floor box, place this new “Collar” around the first large box bottom (see Step 4.)
it should look something like this. Notice the lip it makes again, just like the first set of directions.

Step 8.

Now place the bottom of the NEW Small Box inside the collar, ontop of the first large box bottom.

Step 9.

You COULD be finished right now and just place the old lid ontop. Effectively just making one more layer.

But let’s go on and use ALL of the parts of the NEW boxes.

Step 10.

Repeat Step 6 but this time, we are cutting the top off of the NEW Small Box Top. Making another “Collar”, although, this one will be a bit shorter than the first collar because we are making it from the smaller Rhino Box.

Place that collar around the last section you added (Step 8.) and now we have another spot to add another floor. Guess what goes there… Yes, the NEW Bottom of the Large Box.

Congratulations! Now you can do anything to that box. Use up that leftover black primer and spray the entire thing, then paint it up. Make it say your army name on it, reinforce it with more plastic, glue the collars to their respective bottom layers and whatnot. Remember, the more you customize it, the more people will want to take a look at it and admire what you did.

I Hope you enjoyed this little, simple tutorial on how to save money by making your own case! Feedback here or e-mailing me would be GREATLY Appreciated.

With multi-layered PDFs, each model becomes a customizable, unique creation that you can print over and over, each time with a different appearance. Many of the models I offer include multi-layered PDFs to give you a huge range of options and a great value.

For convenience, I also offer some models with single-layered PDFs only, so you can easily get these printed at your local print shop. Some of my sets include a full set of multi-layered files, and a single-layered set (or two!) so you really get the most out of them.

Most of my models are priced under $4 US, and the ability to print them several times means that you won’t have to spend a lot of money to get a whole lot of buildings.

30mm-scale models will work just fine for 28mm scale games, but if you prefer 20mm or 15mm scale, you can easily adjust the size before you print, and the necessary percentages are included with the easy-to-follow instructions.

You can order these models for instant download at Ecardmodels, as well as Wargame Vault and its sister sites DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

If you’re interested in papercraft models, be sure to visit DavesGames.net to see my entire collection, and get the latest news on new releases and upcoming designs.

Tools & Materials

• carpet cutter
• pencil
• ruler (I recommend metal)
• try square
• “sturdy” felt (thickness 4-5 mm)
• boxes in appropriate size (e. g. for tools)
• glue (I recommend Pattex)

Cut the felt into shape
This is the most difficult part. You will have to be precise at measuring and cutting. A little patience and a sharp cutter will show up to be very useful.

Think carefully, how many trays you need, how many pieces you have to cut and how to keep the amount of leftovers small. In the end I will give a detailed list of the pieces I cut.

Keep in mind, that you have to fill the whole box with trays so they stay in place.

When the felt is cut, draw lines to know where you need to apply glue (red arrows).

Apply glue
When “Pattex” is applied it has to dry for 10 to 15 minutes (refer to instructions for details). The pictures show the amount of glue applied and which parts should be glued first. The lines will be very useful here. The lower picture shows, how the parts are put together.

Apply glue – second step
When the “grid” is ready, apply glue to the bottom plate (here the lines will be useful again) and the “grid”.

Press the pieces together

Separators for single miniatures and cover
I use pieces of foam and felt to separate single miniatures from each other. A thin layer of foam is useful as the cover for the trays (look for the foam from “Feldherr”, it can be cut easily).

Some sizes of felt pieces, plans and tips
Felt pieces I used

Bottom plate size: 16 cm × 22 cm

Inner Box size: ~10.6 cm × ~22.5 cm × ~32.5 cm

Side view of the trays

Trays of the given heights (add 0.4 cm everywhere, the thickness of the felt) are combined to fill out one box. The white squares on top just resemble some appropriate cover, felt or foam.

How to draw lines to apply glue

Costs

Felt: 1m × 45 cm = 7 €

Box: 5 €

Glue: You will need a lot! I paid 6 €

Large Miniatures

They are better put into cardboard boxes with some foam. Even cheaper! They can replace a felt tray

THANK YOU FOR READING!

I’ve never done a tutorial before so if there’s anything i can do to improve this let me know and i’ll do my best.

Step 1:

1. First of all cut off the legs at the hip.
2. Cut off the toes on the leg you want trailing behind. (you don’t have to do this, I’ve not done it on the Far right Warrior on the 1st Pic)
3. The forward leg you’ll need to cut off the foot as it’s at an odd angle this can be repositioned later.

Step 2:

• On the forward leg bend the knee so it’s almost straight. If you warm the plastic a little with your fingers it’s easier to bend and wont snap. Once you’ve done that add a little bit of super glue to the back of the knee to stop it going back to it’s original form. Then glue the foot back on making sure it’s straight.
• On the trailing leg glue the toes back on at an angle. The toes will be flat to the base while the rest of the foot will be at an angle, like so……

Step 3:
Glue the Legs back on to the hips. You’ll need to remove or reshape the remenants of the ball joint so the legs fall into position. The best way of doing this is to remove them all together and pin the legs to the hips. You can then use Green Stuff to recreate the Ball. If you want these for gaming i recommend pinning them otherwise the whole model is too brittle.

Step 4:
Stick to a base and hope the toes are aligned properly.

A back view

Their first delivery is expected in Mid to Late December and price lists will be provided on request to Traders that raise a helpdesk ticket.

Products will shortly be uploaded to store. Check out their announcement here

I’m no pro at this, I just went with what made sense but hopefully this will help someone that is stuck or just wondering how its done!

Material list:
-Flexible magnetic film
I traced the kind I have back to its manufacturer. But I purchased mine from a company that makes signs for businesses, cars, street signs etc. I even got the technical specs for the film, stats for those that want to be specific. It’s 0,75 mm thick and has a pulling force of about 46 grams! It’s best to keep it rolled up to preserve its magnetic properties, or if your piece is small enough, just slap it on your fridge! Take care to note the thickness of the film you purchase. you can get magnetic film that is half this thickness but only has 21 grams of pulling force. The thinner film is cheaper, but yeah…half the magnetic strength. Just a heads up!

-Super Glue
I just used the regular GW super glue for this.
-Hobby knife
GW issue gear once again, any sharp exacto style knife will do.
-Scissors
Just your basic scissor
-Pencil
Not really needed, but nice for when you’re starting out.
-Cutting board
Since you’re going to be doing a fair bit of cutting I suggest a even and sturdy cutting board.
-Metal movement tray
These may be the most trouble for people to get, but around here they’re not that hard to find. I can’t speak for other countries but here we have loads of independent tinsmiths and smithies that have lots of metal and metalworking facilities. Look for places that make and install ventilation systems or do roofing, those will have this kind of stuff. It just so happens that my friendly local gaming store actually carries these metal pieces for standard regimental sizes so I got lucky there. But looking at the metal it’s the exact kind of stuff you’ll see ventilation shafts made out of! Take care to clean your metal tray well with soap and perhaps even something like car degreaser. They use a type of grease to keep the metal plates from sticking, this plays havoc on modelling glue and primer, heads up!
-Emtpy model base
This should be the same size the models you are magnetizing, you’ll be using this to check the size of your magnets.
-Models to be magnetized
Kinda makes sense, right? Here I’m magnetizing my Vlad von Carstein conversion.
Total price:62 x 100 cm magnetic film + metal movement tray ~$23 (Mind you, this much magnetic film is enough for several armies. I used a total of 3 strips to base my entire army, which was about 8 cm of film, meaning I could do 10 times as many and still have some left. The magnetic film isn’t expensive so I just got plenty. The trays are really cheap too, especially if you find a decent place that won’t mind if you go through their scrap metal bits and then pay them some nominal fee for them to cut it for you. ^^)

So we start by rolling out our magnetic film. This thing is really thin as you can see here and it feels kinda rubbery. Only one side is magnetic, this will be important later.

Take the empty base and check it against the film. At this point you can mark the film with the pencil if you want to be very accurate. I did this all the way first, until I could just start eyeballing the width. Do it the way you feel is best. Then take your scissor and cut the strip all the way across. The reason why I’d recommend doing the entire strip is to be as efficient as possible with the magnetic film. Continously stop/starting a new strip will leave alot of useless tiny magnet strips, it’s not alot really, but it all adds up! You’ll find that the film cuts very easily, just make your cut as straight as you can.

Now we have our magnet strip!
You can see that my cut wasn’t entirely straight, but that’s ok as long as no part of it is smaller than the base size.

Here we just cut the magnet using our empty base to check the width. I find that being exact here helps alot since then you’ll generally need to tidy the magnet alot less later.

And there it is! When doing multiple models I’ll just slap ‘em all on there! This is very handy. Since only one side is magnetic it’s a nice reminder which is which. When you’ll start gluing later you’ll want to avoid gluing the non magnetic side down, otherwise the model won’t stick. I had that happen twice, and it’s a pain getting the magnets off again (which I guess is a good indicator =D)

Take the model and apply superglue to the rim and in case of slotta bases, the diagonal slot as well. If you have superglue with a little brush like this, a handy tip is to do your strokes from inside the base and out. That way you avoid glue settling on the outside of the base and warping any base painting you may have done.

Fit the magnetic film underneath the model. If you were exact when cutting the strip you’ll find that the film will fit really nicely against three sides, with abit poking out on another. This is the best way I’ve found, since that means you’ll just need to do one cut to tidy the magnet. Once you’ve placed the film under the model, place it back down and press down onto the base to make sure it has full contact on all the glued points. When I did large regiments I’d do all the models to this stage and then tidy them all at once. Saved some back and forth with the knife.

Once you’ve let the glue set for abit (a few seconds seemed to be enough in my case, but take care to note the settling time for your particular glue type) take your hobby knife and locate your untidy edge. Then just cut across, taking care not to damage the base. Tidy around the base if there are any bits of magnet that stick out.

Model magnetized and looking nice and tidy!

As you can see, the magnet is quite strong and holds the model!

Total time: About 3 min, with the picture taking ^^
I did my entire VC army, about 100 models, in an evening.

Here’s also a picture of a skeleton regiment I magnetized.

I just love doing that! xD

If you have any questions I’d be happy to hear them!
Hope this helps!

Thanks to Kuffy for the inspiration for this tutorial =D

Note: This will work for 40k bases too, it’s just takes abit more fenagling to cut the magnet to the right shape.

My Imagination got the best of me, along with Camel-aid and Jons unoffical painting contest!

In this tutorial I used.

• A range of Citadel paints
• A range of oil paints
• Thinner (High grade white spirit)
• A sharp knife
• Sponge
• Scissors
• Masking tape and Selotape
• Matt Varnish
• Colourless art masking fluid
• Chaos black spray
• Hairdryer (optional)

Most of these pieces are available from Gamesworkshop or any leading art and crafts shop.

Here is the base to begin with along with the model to be based upon. The base was a normal 40mm large base, with plastic card over the top to give a smooth surface, I decided to have an area where a few plates met, with edges on. I also added some small details in the form of rivits, I robbed these of spare pieces lying around. All sorts of vehicles have lots of rivits on, you can carefully trim them with a knife and stick them in place. This can be rather fiddly but looks good!

As Im going to be doing alot of work on the base, I thought it best not to stick the model to it before painting.
I gave the base a spray coat of chaos black, then in my example I chose a base coat of mixed Iyandan dark sun and Bleached bone, for some yellow internals of a space craft.
Between painting layers of the base, I frequently used the hairdryer to speed up drying times of paints, varnishes, oils and masks, it saves time and allows you to get on with the real job!

Then a barely visable highlight was drybrushed to the base, mainly around the edges. I simply added more bleached bone to my origanl base coat.

Now the fun begins! Begin with the masking tape and mask of a small parrallel area. Ensure that the edges are pressed down tight as you dont want any paint leaving this area!

And apply a amount of masking fluid to the area with a sponge, try to create a realistic weathered feel. Try to concentrate this around the edges of the line.

I next painted a line using mechrite red over the area once it was fully dry.

Then, once dry, I removed the masking fluid. As you can see in this picture Ive not used enough, nor concentrated enough around the edges. Silly me!

So I removed the masking tape and sponged and freehanded some more scratchs on there.

Here comes the sneaky bit!
I went on the PC and, in Arial size 30 bold, I printed of 2C. roughly cut it out and put it on my cutting mat, then covered it in selotape.

The reason for covering it in selotape is that if you put the masking tape over the paper, even though its low tack, it might still mess up the paper.

Then, once this is stuck down nice a smoothly, add the masking tape over it, again, ensure its smoothly on and free of wrinkles. I then VERY carefully cut this out and removed the masking tape from the matt, which came of easily because of the selotapes glossy surface. Dont pull it too quick because you dont want to tear the masking tape.

Now, apply this to the base, ensuring that its positioned evenly and in line, use the other end of a paint brush or similar blunt object to press the edges down just like with the masking tape before.

Again, add masking fluid, applying as before, with a sponge. Then once dry, paint and remove.

I then went around the edges of the base with a 80:20 mix of scorched brown and chaos black with a sponge to create some rough scratchs and scrapes.

Next apply some varnish, I chose to use brush on varnish as it was quicker than waiting for a spray one to dry and it was cold outside!

Make sure this is really dry before going on to the next stage.
I mixed up a wash of raw sienna with a large amount of thinner (20:80 should be fine) and gave the whole base a light wash. I dipped the brush, whiped it clean and painted across the base to make it appear wet, but not painted. This is called filtering.

After the filter was dry I then added heavy washes of oil paints to the model, the gloss varnish helps the washes flow with capillery action, concentrating around the rivits and recesses. Oils washs are much better than the other washing forms as they can be added to, blended and even completely removed with further thinner. After several layers and slight mixes, the base was complete.

I then added the final model and sealed with varnish.

Instead of using the masking fluid you can replace this with salt and hiarspray. Spray the hiarspray over the area to be masked and then sprinkle salt over that. Once painted over the salt can be removed by lightly rubbing it with a cloth. It might save you all a bit of money.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Materials and tools usedA broom head, note this must be the old style of broom made with coconut fibres not the newer man made plastic bristles.

• Thin wire, I used some galvanised garden wire I picked up from “the range” which is a cheap discount store that stocks everything.
• Pistol drill,
• Vice,
• Wire cutters,
• Scissors,
• Black spray paint,
• Miliput,
• Flexi bark, available from Antenociti’s workshop. It is a kind of plaster that when applied looks like bark and covers the Miliput.
• Tree foliage, again from Antenociti this comes in various shades.
• Scatter Grip, also from Antenociti this is a very tacky glue.
• Scenic cement in spray bottle,
• An old strip of thick cardboard or off cut of polystyrene,
• Thick Card or thin MDF board used for basing
• File/ sandpaper,
• Jigsaw (optional)
• Hot glue gun,
• PVA glue,
• Flock and other standard basing materials.

Step 1

Cut a length of wire basically two times the height of the tree you want plus 2 inches (the bit you will hold in the drill chuck) i.e. if you want a 4 inch high tree cut a piece 10 inches long, a 6 inch one cut 14 inches.

Fold the wire in half.

Step 2

Cut the broom hairs using wire cutters and fit them centrally into the top part of the gap between the folded over wire. You can pack the hairs in, as the more you put in the fuller the tree will look, it may take you a couple of goes to get the correct amount for the look you want.

Step 3

Pinch the bent up end of the wire in a vice. Be careful when doing this as if you don’t keep the tree level all the cut broom hairs will fall out.

Step 4

Grip about an inch of the two ends of wire in the drill chuck and slowly pump the drill. Don’t just squeeze the trigger because this could cause the wire to go too tight, bend and eventually snap. Again this step does take a bit of practice to get right. The two inch pieces you held in the vice are ideal to use for “roots”¨ when basing. Sometimes a small piece of wire is left where you held on to in the vice, I usually just snip that off and drip some superglue on the top just to make sure the fibres are held in place.

Step 5

Using scissors trim the tree to shape. When doing this make sure you look all round the tree even from above to ensure you get a good and even shape.

Before trimming.

After trimming.

Step 6

Mix up some Miliput and roll it around the wire to form a trunk, you could sculpt some texture to make the bark at this stage but I’m going for the quick option of flexi bark.

Apply the Flexi-bark make sure you use and old brush when doing this. Poke the “root” part of the tree onto the off cut of polystyrene/card this will stop you getting your fingers covered in Flexi-bark and also gives them somewhere stable to dry. I usually give the trees a couple of coats of bark.

Step 7

Spray the whole model with black spray paint and allow to dry. Remember to do this outside or in a very well ventilated room.

Step 8

Paint Scatter Grip over the outside of your tree, try to get a good even covering. Avoid getting any on your fingers as this stuff is really sticky.

Pour your chosen colour tree foliage over you tree, I tipped mine into an old take away box and just kept picking the flock up and sprinkling it over the tree. Keep rotating the tree until it is covered you could just dip the tree in but be careful not to get too much onto the tree as it could look lumpy. (If you got any Scatter Grip on your fingers now you will realise why I told you to avoid it).

After the Scatter Grip has dried spray the tree with scenic cement. You can buy this stuff or make it easily by mixing roughly a 2/3 water 1/3 PVA glue. This will protect your trees and stop the foliage falling off when being handled.

Step 9

Dry brush the trunks of the trees. Up to personal taste what colours you use. I wanted a standard dark brown look so used Scorched Brown from GW.

Step 10

For this article I’ve based my trees in two ways. First up is the easy way. Just cut a circle out of some thick card, Make it a little larger than the diameter of your tree. The other option is cut out a random shape in some thin MDF using a jigsaw. Using this method you will have defined shape and boundary to your wood when using them in a game. Using a file put a small chamfer round the edge of the base, this makes the base blend into the terrain better. Stick the trees in position using a hot glue gun, you will have to hold them in position for a while until the glue cools.

Step 11

Next add any features such as rocks or ruins to the base on these I’ve just stuck a couple of pieces of slate to one of the bases. Cover the base in PVA and dip into your pot of flock, shake off any excess and allow to dry. When dry paint around the side of the base to match in with you terrain boards. (Note I didn’t paint the MDF base and it sticks out).

Step 12

At this point you can add any other terrain items to the base such as bushes, tall grass or fallen leaves to make them look more realistic.
Spray the base with scenic cement to hold all the flock in place.

Finished Trees

Here is a couple of photos of the trees in action well not action just standing there really

Reproduced with permission from Conrad Stockey, the dark rider from TheLastAlliance.com

So here is a simple guide to building quick realistic looking rubble bases.

OK, you should really start all projects with a realism check. I looked through various sources at rubble and broken buildings. Taking into account the spread of derbis and the materials that make it up. Looking at the image below, you can see this close up not only has broken masonary in it, but also other objects that may have been held within the building, or on the street outside. Items like these add character and life to your models, putting them into a situation rather than on a plastic disc.

Watch for the spread of debris, is the rubble fresh or has it been there for years, while forces battle over the area. Areas further from the blast site will, obviously, be less covered with the debris, but rubble may have been cleared by occupants to provide additional cover or allow access.
Note the cleared pathway on this photo

Many 40K battlefields will have buildings that have been smashed apart and opened to the elements, for this reason much of the interior that may have once been bright wall paper will be worn and dirty. Look at the image below, you can see much of the material is brown and dusty, but there are a few spots of reds and blues in there.

This boyo here is the old OOP Heresy miniatures Netherlord. Its been sat on my shelf for a VERY long time (2 years or more) and, as you can see, is yet to be completed. Im intending to paint this chap up to be used as a Summoned greater daemon for my Iron Warriors if I ever decide to use one.

I found a suitable CD to use as a base and stuck a few small plasticard tiles onto it after scoring the surface to add extra grip for further layers. The tiles are 1cm squares cut using a metal ruler and knife. Simple to make. The plasticard is 1mm thick. This was stuck using PVA glue. I also pinned the model to the base at this point, but you can wait till the end and have the miniature stood tall on the rocks!

Now for the sneaky bit. To make realistic building rubble I am going to use a material called stone powder. This is very similar to plaster of paris but sets slightly firmer. Plaster of paris will work fine as a substitute in this tutorial.

I mixed up a few pieces the night before (following the instructions ofcourse) and left them to dry. I used a blister pack and a section from the metal models tray as molds, try and ensure you dont have any odd pieces in there as these will print onto your plaster.

Once the mix is fully dry (you can heat it gently with a hairdryer to speed up the process but Id wait a good 12 hours) tap out the pieces and wipe away any dust.

Next step. Wrap up your newly cast pieces in paper, I used kitchen towel but newspaper will do fine. Take these pieces outside and give them a good old whack or two with a hammer. The bigger the better! You want these to look like broken pieces of masonary, walls and what nots.

I then applied PVA glue to the base in areas I wanted large rocks and started to stick them down. I placed smaller pieces around these to give a sloped feel. I dropped a tiny amount of superglue over these pieces to ensure they stuck frmly to the base.

Dont put too much on otherwise it may look to busy.
You can see I also added some extras at this stage. In the larger chunk of the plaster Ive added some renforcing by using some thin pinning wire or paper clip, Ive also added a space marine helmet (Die Imperial Fist!) and some bent metal pieces from thinner grade plasticard bent into odd shapes. Let your imagination run wild!

Next I got some of the smaller pieces of my broken up rubble and popped them into a spray lid. Then I crushed them up. Id advise using anything firm to do this with. I used a screwdriver handle. Leave some reasonable size chunks to scatter onto the base.

Next add some fine sand to this mix. You want about 60:40 sand to plaster. Make sure you mix this up well.

Now add some PVA to the uncovered areas of the base and around the lower areas of your large chunks. Then sprinke this mix generously over the areas. I covered my base in small sections at a time as its so large. With small bases you may be able to dip them into the mix, which will save on cleaning up time later! I made a mess!

As you do this leave the area to dry for a short while before tapping to remove the excess. With small bases you can do this on the side of the mixing pot to save making a mess all over your desk like I did! Also scrape of any of the mix that finds itself over the edge of the base, or any chunk of plaster that is over hanging too far, these may break off during gaming or in transit and can damage the base.

I then went around and fixed any gaps with additional layers.

Leave to dry over night and now you have your completed base!
Netherlord striding across a rubble strewn courtyard.

Enjoy

Dan

Materials
Super Glue, Squadron Green Putty (see below), Rounded Base, an old piece of plasticard, sculpting tool, and a rough small rock.

NOTE: Not pictured here is a piece of scratch paper, a reference photo taken from the Internet, and an old beat-up toothbrush you will never ever put in your mouth again.

The equipment

If you are new to the hobby, some of these items can easily be replaced with more common items you already have.  For example, the plasticard can easily be replaced by a blister-pack shell from a miniature and the sculpting tool could be replaced with a toothpick or old butter knife you will never ever use on food again.

Step 1-3

Step 1-3

Step 1: Simply cult a small strip of scratch paper slightly larger than the slot in your rounded base and glue it down with super glue.  Allow plenty of time for the super glue to dry.  This step will prevent the putty from flowing into the slot and causing sag in you base… seriously, it just makes life easier later on.

Step 2: Place a small glob of Green Putty into the well of your base.  Remember, this well is really shallow.  You don’t need a lot of putty to fill it in.  The blob in the picture is almost twice as much as I needed. (oops!)

Step 3: Use the old piece of plasticard to scrape the putty level with the rim of the base.  Work in a circular motion by slightly turning the base as you smooth the putty with the plasticard.  Use the rim of the base to keep the putty level and smooth.  Once the well of the rounded bases is filled, immediately clean up the black plastic rim of the base in any areas overlapped with putty.  You will find that this brand of putty dries quickly, so it’s best to tidy up right away.  The sculpting tool will easily remove the messy bits.  Let the base sit and set-up for about 30 seconds… hey, I told you this putty dries quick.

Steps 4 & 5

Step 4 & 5

Step 4:  The putty should still be pretty soft at this point but have a ‘skin’ formed over the top.  Take the rough small rock and begin to texture the putty.  Be sure to simply press into the putty and not drag or scrape it.

Step 5:  Check your work.  You want to be sure to get a fairly heavy amount of texture going on the base.  If you find that the rock has picked up some of the putty a little water and a paper towel will clean the rock off and allow you to get right back to texturing.  This part of the process is pretty subjective.  However, Image 5 above gives a pretty clear indicator of an appropriate amount of texture for this arid earth application.  For something like cobblestone you might want less.

Step 6

Making the pattern

Step 6:  Have your photo reference handy and begin by dragging and pressing the pattern into your base.  By dragging the tool you will create the ‘peeled away’ effect common to this type of ground.  If you notice the putty clinging to the sculpting tool too much simply wipe it off and continue on.  For this arid earth patter I recommend making larger shapes than you might initially have thought necessary.  It’s easier to cut smaller cracks into larger shapes if need be.  Notice the consistency and general shape of the design in the reference photo.  Most of the shapes are roughly 5 sided and not all of the cracks are complete.  Additionally, the plates created by the cracks are of a reasonably uniform size.

Steps 7 and 8:  (almost done!)

Almost done

Step 7:  Once you’ve finished cutting cracks into your work check it out and see if your happy with the results.  I usually find the initial arid earth pattern to be too rough and jagged at this point.  If this is the case on your base too, simply take the old toothbrush (the one you’re never ever going to put in your mouth again) and lightly brush across the top of the base.  This helps add a little more fine texture to the base and knocks down some of the higher points.  The more you brush, the smoother things will get.

Step 8:  Check your results one final time and see if your happy with your 10 minutes of work.  Seriously, this whole process should take you 10 minutes or less.  At this point if you are happy with the results simply allow the putty to fully dry (about 20 more minutes) then primer and paint as usual.  I recommend washes of color for painting these bases since there are a lot of nooks and crannies to get into.

Here’s the results I’ve come up with:

Final Result

A Note About Squadron Green Putty
If you aren’t familiar with this product, here’s a brief review.  Most RC and Model hobby stores carry it here in the US.

First off, a word of caution. Please read the manufacturers directions and follow them.  This stuff can be pretty caustic.  A friend of mine filled in the turret of one of his model tanks with it.  The putty melted the tank.  ‘Nuff said.

Squadron Green putty is somewhere between preschool paste and classic Green-stuff.  It dries much more quickly than green stuff, has a rougher texture, and doesn’t hold detail well.  Normally, all of these fine qualities would make it destined for the round file.  However, for basing and filling gaps it works better than any other product I’ve tried.  The rough texture is great for basing, since very few types of ground are truly smooth.  Because it’s runny, it flows into gaps easily and makes filling small grooves a piece of cake.  Squadron Green Putty is sandable once fully dried.  Furthermore, it sands to a much smoother texture than you might expect.  Finally, because this stuff dries quickly, it cuts down on the amount of time you have to wait  to get back to work on your newest favorite model.  For me, the quick drying time alone is valuable enough to make Green Putty a regular part of my hobby kit.

OK gang, I hope this tutorial has helped.  This is my first attempt at writing one, so any feedback you can give would be great.

Enjoy and happy modeling!
Pez5767

In this guide, I am assuming you have used GS at least a bit before, and I will not cover how to work with it. There are some great guides out there, have a look on Google, or PM me if you need some help.

The tools

Here are the tools I used for this technique.

• Scalpel – For cutting, and for fine GS sculpting.
• GW sculpting tool – For basic GS shaping.
• Rubber “smoothing tool” – For GS smoothing and shaping.
• Needle Files – For filing.
• Green Stuff – I’m sure you can figure this one out…
• Vaseline – Lubricant.
• You will also need an old brush, pencil, or piece of dowel or plastic rod.

I’m not claiming that you can only use these tools, or these are the best, but these are what I like to use.
I know a lot of people don’t like GWs sculpting tool, in which case use whatever you prefer.
I use vaseline as my GS lubricant as it is more effective and easier to control than water (in my opinion), but if you don’t have any, then use water (or whatever you prefer).

The process

First, mix up a small blob of GS, and apply it to a spare shoulder pad (only if you’re making badges for your space marines… If you want icons to go on flat surfaces, do it on some plasticard or something flat, if you want icons for something else, do it on a spare bit of whatever that it…).
Get it smooth and flat to the surface, about 1mm or so high.

Sculpted

Wait for it to dry a bit, then create the icon you want using the GS. This is the hardest bit of the entire process, so if it isn’t going well don’t worry. Keep trying, and don’t worry if it isn’t perfect first time. Just keep going until you do get one you are happy with. This is what we will use to cast the mould.
Wait for a day or so until it is cured (to cure completely takes about a week or so, but after a day it will be fine).

Mould

The next day, mix up quite a big blob of GS, and attach it to the end of your old brush (or pencil or dowel or whatever). Apply lots (I mean lots) of vaseline (or other lubricant) to the GS icon you carved yesterday. Try to get it so that it covers it evenly, with no lumps.
Push the big lump of GS onto the icon. Try to get some of the edge of the shoulder pad (if that is what you are doing) so you can always align the icon properly.
Pull your new mould away from the icon, and see if it is properly formed. If it hasn’t worked first time (mine didn’t), keep trying. Leaving the blob on the icon for 15 mins or so may help.
Leave your new mould to dry for at least 2 nights.

Negative

When it is finished, you should have something like this. Good huh? This is your mould. Guard it with your life.

Press

When you want to make a new icon, mix up a small blob of GS, and smooth it over a new pad, like you did earlier. Then, put plenty of lubricant in the mould, and push the mould into the GS hard. Leave it for a few minutes, then remove the mould.

The dragon

You should have something like this. If not, smooth it out, and try again. Wait for it to dry, the cut away the excess GS.

Congratulations! You have now cast your first icon/badge/whatever. You can now put the pad onto your finished mini, and paint as ususal. A painted and an unpainted example of mine are shown below. Both were made using this method.

Finished

Finished

I hope this guide has been useful for you, please feel free to PM me if you have any questions =)

-t.

Well, first a couple of shots of plan A, “the failure”. It’s not finished, but neither unfinshed enough to make a proper WIP of. The edges might seem a bit unnatural in the slopes but after trying to use my older more realistic looking scenery and spending quite a lot of time erecting falln models, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s far better to have a piece where the models can stand than to go all out on the aestetics. Function over form.

THe floor is made from matches, the ground is cork (I found lots of cork on a schol where I was working. They were about to toss all those 12″x12″ squares away. I saved maybe 30 of them They are perfect for making scenery. The inner walls of the trench are to be painted as metal and I only used common cardboard, the cereal-package kind and a few pieces of wires and cotton-sticks (ear-puryfiers). I’ll finish this later and post some more pics.
It’ll get a roof and some more bits and pieces. Oh, and mud of course, you can see the early stages of mud making on the floor. I am aiming for a high-tech WWI-theme on this one.

Plan B was the spacehulk, but due to a fortunate event this will become plan C and the former plan C will now become plan B which really has evolved into plan A. It’s nothing fancy, just a ruined building for an urban board.
My friend from past-times told me he’d be coming down and was eager to have a fight, though I do not have time enough to build a complete SpaceHulk board until he’ll arrive and I do want to fight his Eldar-army at home, not at the club. We’d fancy a glass of wine or a beer to those games see. I’m really looking forward to this, I guess I’m in for a spanking though, armoured Company against Eldar feels somewhat risky:/ I guess I could always paint up some more infanty-units though…
But anyway, back on topic.
I chose to make the model simple enough and to use only the most basic of materials, and to carefully document the whole thing.

First I started with a cardbardbox, one who was left from the move, it’s quite sturdy but also very cardboardy. I drew out a general shape and took some meassurement.

So I cut a few, six, wall pieces. The house will only have three walls, but I wanted them to be a bit thicker than scenery-walls often are. They tend to look a bit to obviously fake when they are too thin I think.

Some more lines in order to get the windows and doors where I wanted them.

Then it was only to cut the window-openings out and glue two pieces together.

This pic should really be in the right direction, but who am I to fight this computer. It’s far to late for me now… Just use your imagination folks or turn the screen if you feel an urge.
Here’s a first little dryfit of two walls.

On this pic you can see the sheet of cork I was talking about earlier as well as my daughter’s monkey-cup.

Now I’ve finished the basic structure and begun the adding of details. This is one of the most interesting parts I think. It’s now the house is getting it’s personality. I’ve decided to make it a quite gothic stone houseused as a dwelling or something. Nothing fancy at all. But during the fighting it’ll have become graduaterly more destroyed and also fortified so I’ll add damage and sandbags and such. But for a starter I began with making the windows just a bit more living by adding…windowy stuff.

Here you can see how I prepare the windowy-thingies. Same old cardboard, a knife and a pair of scissors. Cut a line halfway through the card and then cut stripes, bend and glue.

Here you can see how I prepare the windowy-thingies. Same old cardboard, a knife and a pair of scissors. Cut a line halfway through the card and then cut stripes, bend and glue.

That (and some sprues) makes the wall look like this. I know it has quite a hippie-flowerpower-air to it now, but once it’s been painted that’ll hopefully be all gone.

So what have happend since the last time?
Well I begun to make a topfloor, using coffestirring sticks from McDonalds. It’s not my No1 dining place, but when the kids force me to go there I might just as well add some of those to my supplies. They are like wooden, very thin icecream-sticks. Makes for a perfect scenery material.

They have rounded edges though so I cut them off to make it look a bit more realistic. I had to glue them to a pice of cardboard using PVA to add some stability, and I also make a frame using old sprues to give them something to rest upon.
I also finished the windows on the front wall (right wall in the top pic) quite late at night. I then completely forgot to cut the corners round on the stones, but I really liked that compared to the earlier version, so I had to recut the earlier ones into a more square-ish kind. It looks pretty bad at the moment, but I hope it’ll turn out better once the paint is on.

Here you can also see the base I’m making, well the early, sketchy base, but still.
You can also see the black pillar which was my initial idea of making use of a coathanger. I found a really nice hanger with a very pillar-esque thing to it, but I gave up on that idea as the pillar became quite out of scale. Who would build a really small house with a short and chubby pillar in. Nah. I will still be making use of that part though, but in a more grandios building.

Here’s a better pic of the pillar:

It also struck me that it would be quite irritating to have a pillar on that spot while playing. It’d maki it more difficult to reack any models hiding on the lower floor. So I swapped coathanger.

To this.

Look at the lower part in a close up. What more can a modeller wish for?

So I cut it up and also while having the big pliers in hand I cut one corner of the topfloor of, to make it look a bit more worn and blown to pieces. In the next pic you can also see the first layers of the crater I mentiones earlier. I just took a bit of a corksheet and broke it of to a round, crater-like shape. I made two such layers, one smaller than the other to get the sloped look.

Oh, and I added some window details too. I cut the top of some matches to make…things-of-wood-that-keeps-windows-in-place. I think I might add some glass to it later some small parts still left in th ewindows but mostly on the floor. It all comes in later stages though.

The early crater layers look something like this:

Next was to add some more rubble to the crater and for this I cut away some of the material from the base of the house, parts that will have been blown away in the fisnished piece. I think it makes the piece a bit more narrative, a bomb has hit it and it is easy to understand why it’s been ruined.

And, that’s where I’m at now really. I should have been working on it tonight, but now I’ve spent my time here in front of the computer instead. I do need more time…

So, I guess a deadline is a deadline, and this one I actually made. Sure, I’m not all finished but I guess I’ll never be, with anything. So, this is the end or rather my contribution to the IronChef III comp.
Oh, and I’ll upload some more WIPs once I get more time. Any questions or such are mighty welcome, as always.
Oh, and the pics are crappy, I know…I could almost say it’s one of my signums…

This is the complete piece, basically a bombed out house. The bending of the base will be mended.
The entrance

Left wall (from entrance)

Back left corner

back wall

Lost wall

Top floor

close up top floor

That’s it for now folks. Once again, thanks to you who replied to this and to my GF who said things like “You do know what a deadline is, right?” She should have some cred for this being posted at all…

Goto Forum Thread

Ingredients

• A coat hanger
• Plasticard 1mm thick
• Plasticard rod of varying diameter
• Cereal boxes and other thickness cardboard
• Soldering wire
• A single LED
• Lego gears/electronic gear sets
• A 3volt gearbox
• Electronics cost : 17$
• Plasticard cost : 10$ (but can be made entirely out of cardboard)

Instructions!

The Fan Box
First I started with a set of 5 different sheets of cardboard, roughly the same size and length to make the fan, adjust if you feel its necessary to have sharp corners. Cut a small block out of ONE of the plates for the gear to run through to the main building. Now start by using only small drops of glue to glue the fan pieces together, until all 5 pieces are connected at least one end.

Fold them all into a position that you are happy with then put glue on the top and hopefully it will cascade down into the join, sealing it properly.
Once its dried a little, cut a piece of card(plastic or regular) fairly thin and just a little longer than the inside of the fan in a position you are happy with. Keep constant measurement and cut it until it fits in there nice and smoothly then glue it into place.

The Fan Shaft
The shaft can be made out of coat hanger or plasticard rods if available, simply cut 4(or more, or less) pieces of very thin cardboad in a long triangle shape with the pointed end slightly angled off. Glue these to the shaft on a small angle, about 35degrees should be fine, so it can capture the wind as it races past. Also attach a piece of card to the end of the shaft that will sit at the top, just to stop it from dropping down when its active.

The Fan Box continued
Do the same again on the top side to give the fan shaft some strength while it spins around, glue heavily into position just to be safe. Grab a drill, size isn’t a big factor and poke a plasticard rod/coat hanger down there cut a little longer than the entire length of the box. Either a plasticard rod of slightly larger diameter or a piece of cardboard glue the end of the shaft to stop it from falling inside the fan box.

Cut another thin piece of cardboard and glue it to the top of the fan box to support the shaft, don’t be afraid to over-glue it as it will take a bit of strain during the operation. Loosen the holes if nesseccary to allow the fan shaft to spin freely inside the box

The Armature
I used a piece of plasticard rod but a metal coat hanger would do the same job just as well, the shaft was pretty simple, and I cut thin pieces of card up and glued them to the sides with a plank across the top of them. Then I glued soldering wire to the top and ran 4 separate lines along the insides of the gaps in a simple zig zag pattern, each one goes around the entire shaft 4 times and ends up on the bottom of the shaft opposite of where it started.
Then a simple lego gear was glued to the bottom.

The Building
This started off with some very simple cardboard shapes, cut 4 squares and just glued them together on the sides. at this stage the thin cardboard seemed fine for the “cat walk” section but I would prefer a thicker card if possible as it needs to be more stable than the one I made. Also cut a small block out of the front of the building and take 2 cuts off the front where the cat walk will be to angle down the front of the building.

At this point, before a roof is installed it is good practise to cut up lots of thick cardboard and use them as bracing for the sides and corners of the building to stop it from collapsing as the pressure of the rubber band and gearing system will take its toll.

Cut up two pieces of thick cardboard/plasticard and drill holes into them that will support the armature shaft, two of them should be plenty of support, but if you do decide to use cardboard, you may need to consider maybe placing metal coat hanger pieces INSIDE the actual cardboard to give it more strength, once that is done simply glue it to one or more of the support beams inside the building.

Take a scalpel and take it against the side of some thick cardboard, the rougher the better, if any of the cardboard starts to peel off, then let it, as it gives it a much rougher texture that can be used to show a rusted look, and if the right type of cardboard with the waves in between, take the whole layer off if desired and use it as a corrugated sheet look.

A thin piece of cardboard was used to make this temporary roof, which the real roof will be placed onto, to make sure it has a flat surface I propped up the space between where I wanted the roof and where this fake roof is, so it will sit nice and flat.

The Circuit
Parts needed for this will be a small amount of solder, a soldering iron a, a battery case, a switch, batteries and the gearbox.

A diagram of what we are after.

Key:

• Long and short vertical lines = battery with the longer line being positive
• Circle with M inside = Motor
• Small circles with diagonal line = Switch
• Circle with LED written inside = LED

The battery pack has a red and black lead, the red will be positive so remember that for the future, the switch will depend much on the TYPE you do buy, I bought one with 6 prongs and a simple 2 position swing, but only 2 of the prongs will be used.

If we make the assumption you buy a 6 prong switch similar in design to mine, we will label them all from 1-6. With the left side being 1-3 and the right being 5-6 then the positive lead from the battery pack will be soldered onto #3 prong, it is also a good idea to set up some heat shrink before soldering to prevent a short circuit down the track. With the positive lead done, a free wire that will go to the motor will be attached to #2.

Once the free wire is attached, perhaps you have either bought a fresh LED or decided to take one out of an old computer like I did, by chance the LED I took out was almost 3volts which is good, if you know anyone with a mulitmeter then it would be best to use it before attaching your preferred LED so it doesn’t burn out from being over powered.

You want to have an LED that matched the amount of power that your batteries are putting out, AA batteries are 1.5 volts each for the record and its better for the life of the circuit if you have most of your electronics flowing with the same voltage.

If you bought a similar gearbox to what I did with a 3volt motor and 5 steps each gear being 12 and 48 teeth, a very useful formula is RPM x teeth of smaller gear (divided) by the teeth of the larger gear, now if you have a teeth ratio of 4:1 like I did this means each step down will be a quarter in speed.

• Some simple examples are as follows
• 300 RPM x 5 teeth = 1500 / 20 = 75RPM
• 100 RPM x 10 = 1000 / 50 = 20RPM

I chose the speeds 187 and 46 RPM as I wanted the fan to spin much faster and my gearbox came with 2 shafts so why not make use of it.
With the “free” wires attached and the gearbox assembled, its time to attach the entire piece together and start revving, make totally sure that the gears do spin freely enough and if need be, glue them to the shaft so that torque won’t loosen them and make your entire system fail.

f you have taken an LED from a computer, the green lead is positive, and on a store bought LED the long wire will be the positive, motors do NOT have a positive or negative as depending on the way the electricity flows through them, they will spin one way or the other.

The advantage over a computer LED as to an old one is there will be wires already attached, otherwise you will have to solder the leads and heat shrink it before you go anywhere.

With the ends of the wire simply bite them off a few CM or half an inch away from the tip, or with the side of a blade, scrape away around the wire until the protection comes off, then you are ready to solder, with every wire end now free of plastic, its time to start the soldering!

[WARNING]
Be extremely careful with the soldering iron as they CAN and WILL cause bad burns, I myself am suffering a large 3 inch burn on my forearm because I slipped up.

The way we will set up the connection is as follows:

• Battery positive -> switch prong #3
• Switch prong #2 -> motor prong #1
• LED positive -> motor prong #1
• LED negative -> motor prong #2
• Motor prong #2 and LED negative -> battery negative

If this is unclear, refer to the video at the end of this post for a picture of the set up.

The reason for this is that when the two items are parallel it doesn’t slow down any of the functions to the speed which it would if they were all linear.

I found the easiest way to solder without either a friend helping or clamps is to curl the exposed wires around themselves to keep it together and then wrap them around the prong. Once you are happy and certain that everything is in its correct position then place the item in a comfortable position and place the soldering iron on the prong directly, after a few seconds it should heat up then you push the soldering wire into the tip of the iron, which should melt into a blog and ideally cover the prong and any wires very thoroughly.

If you don’t get it perfect the first shot, just place the tip of the iron back on the cooled solder and let it heat up again then add more or move it around as needed.

Repeat until circuit is complete, switch on and see your work come alive!

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The Action
So now that we have the circuit built, it comes down to the actual pumping mechanism now, which is pretty simple really as the movement comes around the shaft at the back, a gear is needed to divert it to the horizontal plane, this is where 90 degree gears come into play.

I’m not sure if these are available on the market at modeling/RC shops but surely they would be, just keep an eye out for it or ask around if all else fails, at the very least someone should be able to point you in the right direction.

With the circuit all hooked up, and room inside the building made for the whole gearbox 2 rubber bands of very different lengths were used, I measured the distance up first between where the motor would be held and where the rubber bands had to reach and aimed to find rubber bands a few millimeter smaller to provide enough tension to turn the shafts.

With a thicker piece of plasticard on the roof, I made a hole and used a small lego gear with coat hanger on the inside to turn the arm that will crank the pump. Make sure that you have the gear not sitting too hard on the angled gear or else the motor will freeze up under the pressure, so as a precaution I actually have the gear quite loose so although it can move around quite a lot it will always turn, as long as its support is still attached to the roof!

The pump support was made using just sprues with the ugly pieces shaved off the side and banged up a bit with a knife, I used a pulley on the top to give the middle of the support a more important appearance over a simple plasticard piece with a hole inside it.

The main arm was made from sprues again, with barely any work done besides a simple plasticard piece with a hole drilled in on each end to hold the pump arm and the counterbalance.

The pump arm I thought could be made of the metal coat hanger but that turned out to be very heavy for the gears and would of required a lot more balance of pieces I didn’t feel would be good to have floating around on such a flimsy support so I settled for a simple plasticard square rod with a hole in the end for the pump gear arm to sit in, also made of coat hanger.

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Now with all of the construction out of the way on the more tedious parts, its time to rig it up for play with much more detailing such as rivets, glyphs and other bits and pieces as they present themselves.

Still using the same method as always, I add a lot of plates in the most random pattern I can by cutting down the sides and pulling off cardboard here and there, bullet holes are also made with a tiny drill and a very aggressive scalpel, I think that with ork buildings/structures/vehicles, larger holes are easier to come by as their materials are all second hand, thus weaker to begin with, and for example the side of this building is made of corrugated iron, not exactly made for standing up against rocket-bullets, so the holes can be made as ridiculous or small as you want.

Teef have been cut out of plasticard, but cardboard still works quite well if you can find a thicker card without the folded waves inside of it, as I feel these take too much attention away. Teef are added to the catwalk section and also to the pulley and a few smaller ones line the pump arm to make it look a lot meaner.

I placed a small piece of cardboard around the armature section to sort of make it a bit more obvious that its not supposed to be tampered with.

The oil drum was a good choice for me personally, but as I think I mentioned before it did require some balancing, and if first grade taught me anything, its that weight is easier to distribute by simply moving the heavier end close to the pivot and it worked.

Some bad news, my batteries I have right now are seriously wasted, barely able to come to life for a full minute before dying, not long enough to setup and shoot some photos then chuck them on the computer..
I bought new batteries yesterday but they were so cheap they wont even turn the camera on to start with…
But here are the last samples of what I got.

All of the larger rivets were cut from sprues with a simple pair of clippers, thats why they are so damn ugly, the much thinner ones, I would normally cut from plasticard rods but I’m all out so they are just thin wire cut into very very small length pieces.

The barrel I think and a door on the back of the piece are the only proper sprue pieces, but could easily be replaced by any plasticard creation, the barrel for example could be : A hopper filled with random ork junk, an ork attached to the tower, or just a big block with no real sophistication.

Just a small bunch of rivets to go and this thing is ready to be painted! The base does look a little plain but I feel that I don’t want to take TOO much focus away from the building itself, and the good news is that the sprues located on the base almost lock the building into place, I wouldn’t want to go tipping it all upside down, but it holds well enough to keep it in position.

Here is a photo of the zzzap gun I just made (still WIP) to chuck on top, using coat hanger wire for the coils along the barrel it still has lots and lots of gubbins, and the gears below DO turn the gun up and down, but only minimally sorry.

Boom! shake shake shake the room!

And post-gubbins.

The kustom force field, I felt I could jazz it up a bit more but that would require more than just the pieces I have at my disposal, I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t sit flush with the plug I made but oh well.

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Anyway regardless my project is pretty much finished, I had to add some small pieces of plasticard to the gear at the top of the armature so it would always sit flush with the other gearing, which caused it to get stuck a few times.

The video is short because it got jammed, its very prone to doing it actually after the last time I fixed all the bugs then painted it, it started jamming up.

The base is fairly simple, I could of done better to be honest but I am lazy and its the last day.

Default generator, without add-ons.

With a kustom force field.

And a zzzap gun!

So really sorry guys that I didn’t paint it better but lately things have been crazy and this job search thing keeps screwing up on me, making me waste my time.

WEll then the basic structure is complete and the rokkit itself has been completely orkified.

Cardstock is by far the greatest modeling meduim that Ive come across so far toher then plasticard. Use it as it an be everything. The one sign will say ‘Da Controlz’ while the one covered by the space marine will saying something like ‘Must be this high to ride’. The control pannel will also have a gaint red button with go onto or next to it.

Just some of the wood details Ive made with the cardstock. Will look much better once painted.

And finally the otherside of the Rottik launcher. This is supposded to and will look like the smashed facade of the building that the launcher was built on. The cardstock will look like wood and steel holding the side together while the wall itself it rittled with meltagun marks, bullet holes, an undeatonated rokkit, and a whole crap load of smashes and craters.

Ok with another hour of work and alot of hot glue burns heres the basic look of things. Ill start the ‘how to” part another being that Im busy with a concert tonight, ect. There are still alot of details to be put on so dont think WYSIWYG applies to this one. Hope all you ork fans are looking at this.

The Whole kitcabutol

Just the Rokkit

The launcher

This is a tutorial on how to make both of these types of Units from basic Warriors..
Yes, normal Necron Warriors. 12 Warriors and some scarabs are in this box. It will instead make 6 Flayed ones, and 6 Immortals!

First thing I did was find a box of these: Basic Necron Warriors.

So I cut one of these Necron Warriors out and set him up: Then I took the Knife to it. I cut the gun off from the one hand, and cut both legs from the pelvis:

This is how the pelvis normally sits on a model: So when I reattached it to the legs, I tilted it like this:

I glued the legs back on in an approaching pose, and since the spine was tilted forward, the head had to be tilted up, (to look forward). I cocked it to the side to give it a more inhuman, more creepy feel.

Now for this next step, you could use anything. Greenstuff, other minis, even basic sprue bits. The right hand/fist from the gun arm is there, but the left hand is molded to the gun. We need to make a replacement for the left hand.

For myself, I fell into a huge collection of terrible, unused Heroclix© figures.

So I found a model within the box and cut myself a nice left hand/fist. A bit of drilling and some superglue and our new Flayed One-to-be has a left hand!

Next step, I cut some basic plastic card. 40mm worked here, but I guess you could go thinner, but the 40mm give the “fingers” some strength from being handled and stuffed in foam.

Rinse and Repeat six times, You will have yourself 6 Flayed ones. Don’t forget to get some greenstuff and make the flayed skin on them!

Section 2. Now you have 6 warriors left, and 12 guns.. What can we do with that?
We can make 6 immortals is what!

Step one. Cut em free.

Next, grab that plasticard or thick card or whatever you want to simulate this part. I used .40mm plasticard. Cut yourself off a thin strip, maybe a 1/4 of an inch.

Make yourself two 1/4 inch squares from the card strip and then bend the two pieces like thus:

Glue those two strips on top of the warrior shoulderpads, and then move to the guns.
Take a solid arm/gun and one of the cut off guns from the new Flayed ones. Clip the one bottom-hanging pipe off the loose gun, then fit it atop the arm/gun combo.

Make sure you file/cut down the molded left hand on the loose gun (the one on top)The guns won’t fit together without removing this hand.
Once it’s together, it should look like this:

When completed, it should look like this:

That’s it! Rinse and repeat 6 times, with the remaining warriors and loose guns and you have yourself 6 Flayed ones and 6 Immortals. Plastic, cheap, and very WYSIWYG. Don’t forget the greenstuff layed over the Flayed Ones for the human skin. How to? That’s a different tutorial.

Sho’Nuff out.

After seeing some of the work done on the other entrees I wanted to position my tanks differently then everyone else(laying down instead of standing up) To add some flavor to the scene I wanted to have one destroyed and leaking toxic stuff all over. And to finish the scene a power station building. Being that I play as the Imperial guard I later decided that I wanted to make this an improvised strong hold. This allows me to make the building and tanks to be dug in and add some cool little scene makers.

With out any further adue heres

“From Guants Workbench: Power Station”

Supplies:

• 12” x 10”, 3/16th” thick foamcore board
• Coffee can with lid
• 2 soda cans
• Blue insulation foam
• Card Stock
• Drinking straws, the bendy type
• Coton Balls
• Hotglue gun
• Wood putty
• Model Magic clay or any other air drying clay
• Assorted bitz

Numbers refer to the pictures under the sectional text only!
Building Layout

AS seen in the picture that the general layout of the buildings. 1 is the cooling tower made from a folgers coffee can with the logo peeled off. The lid will be covered in cotton fluff and painted up to look like billowing smoke. This was simpley hot glued to the baseboad. 2 is going to be the power station house which is just some blue insulation foam cut into a the right shape. The top of the building will be fortified with sandbags and razorwire. And the soda cans have been glued into place at 3. 4 is going to be where toxic sludge from one of the tanks has spilt out and 5 is going to be where a tank with a bulldozer blade smashed through the fortifications.

The base is roughly 12” by 10” cut from foamcore board. This stuff is sold at Craft stores and can be substituted as you see fit. I like the foam board becuae is light and doesnt warp much. Take a knife and cut the edges at a 45 degree angle so the there is alittle bit of gradual rise from the playing surface to the board. This is called bevelling the egde and allows for a realistic transition. After that jsut map out where you want the buldings and glue them down the board. Mind you though as you are doing this use figures as referance, always making sure the there is enough room around buildings and on top of them for figures to stand. I made the power building big enough for about 9 guardsmen to stand on.

Early Detailing

After you bevel the edges is best to take some wood putty and smear it around the bevel. This adds some detail and strenght(3). I also used this and some foam scraps to build up the area where the bulldozer blade cut into the defenses around the plant. this will take shape more so when dirt is added in the next major step. You can also use the putty to blend the bases of the soda cans and cooling tower into the ground. I also made two extra lumps that will be made into graves later for detail. (Take the Snonuff, there will be graves!)

The first thing to make this look like whats going on im head was the blown up tank(5). This was done by cutting out a chunk of the can with a scissor. This is dangerous and should only done with extreme care. To minize the chances of the can cutting anyone playing with the scenery I bent the corners over on themselves and then coated the edges with hotglue. The glue will be painted later to look like the toxic goop thats inside. To make a surface that will represent the liqiuds inside I cut a piece of cardstock to the right size and inserted it. Secure it with hotglue. You might need to put something to support it inside the can but thts easy as glueing in a piece of foam.

To make the piece of cardstock look awesome you need to then coat the top of it with a thin layer of hotglue. This will be painted later. Also try to get some oozing over the sides and one large patch that forms a puddle at the foot of the can.

For piping I use bendy drinking straws(4). They cost next to nothing and can be used everywhere. Just cut to size and glue into place. Dont worry about getting hotglue everywhere, mistakes can be covered up later with the snow effects(Ill show how to do that also!!) To make overhead pipelines just trim some of the many many sprues you have left over from the GW kits to size and glue into place. Then glue a pipe piece on top of that.

For the steam and smoke coming out of the cooling tower grab some cotton balls and hot glue them to the to of the lid(1). When the glue is dried pull them off and it should leave some cool effects of wisping smoke and steam. Ill show you how to paint this later.

Some of the details on top fo the building right now are a gun shield from a defiler, sandbags made from modeling clay, a portal to represent a hatch from a rhino, and some random ammo crates from the Ig tank set. Always remember to make sure there is room for figures to stand(2).

Ok so this is the final post about detailing proir to painting. To help hide the fact that the tanks are made from soda cans I installed a catwalk ontop of them. I made by forming abase on the top of the can out of spurs. These were hotglued in place and then a piece of cardstock cut to fit and glue in place. I made some cuts in the cardstock to resemble battle damage. The control panel is just a piece from some space marine kit(most likely a predator) glued to the side of the tank.

Here some plactic rods were made to look like pipes running on the ground from the control building to the tanks. These were made from plsticard pipe on spurs for bases. I made one pipe broken cuase it looked cooler that way. My fence posts are the same plasticard pipes cut to size and put in to the extra tread supports from the IG vechile spur. Im not putting up the fence yet cuase it might get broken while painting.

I also made graves here by lumping up some wood putty and putting dirt over it. Ill p[aitn it different later to make it look different then the surrounding ground. Finally I palced a grave marker behind it, I used a piece from the cities of death set. But anything can be used.

And here you can see the turrent gun that was put in as well as some extra details on th building and more sandbags.

Tonight I prime it and tommorow I should in theory start painting it.
Ill update this thread as more is completed, for now back to building.

Ok so here we have the base coats done all of the big things. The ground has been painted and the only thing left to prime are the plastic pieces on the foam building. I couldnt use a spray primer cuase that woud eat the foam so im going to have to use a paint on primer later.

Right now I let a freind use my massize amount of paint so Im colorless save three colors(red, green and grey) Ill be getting all of my paints back soon so then Ill start really painting everything up. Till then enjy the small update.

Ok now I started to dirty things up with my air brush. Everything was coated in a few layers of black for soot, followed by dark brown for dirty and such and finally a quick coating of rust. That is just general weathering, Im going to do more with brushwork later on after I finishing painting the base. Im still waiting on my paints from a freind which I will be getting tommorow. Then I can finish up that and the other detail painting needed. And then on to the snow.

This is the cooling tower with some wheathering. The smoke/steam made from the cotten earlier has started to be colored.

This is one of the soda cans with minor weathering done and the walkway detailed. I used the same screen that I made the fenceing from to make the metal grating effect on the top of the catwalks.

The fence is in and made from spare screen i had laying around. The white pieces are those that were hand primed and yet to be painted. Yay for making things look grimy and gritty.

Ok finally got my paints back from a good friend and that means my piece will be done soon. This is the final update before the final piece is revealed.

Everything on the base got another helping of weather now that I got my paints back. I started with a dark brown wash, followed by an offcolor orange to simulate corrosive leaching, brown, sand, rust, and finally a good helping of black. To make a wash just water down some paint till it flows like water and it slight transparent. Remeber this is supposed to be dirty and grimy, tis heavy industry.

To start off I went in and dry brushed the entire base with a sand color, this highlighted the sand and wood filler making it look alot more intersting and giving it some much needed depth. I also went over the graves and the are where the tank crashed through the fence with a much darker bornw to simulate wet and recently over turned dirt. To complete this effect I painted a gloss varnish over the dark borwn and dry brushed a lighter brown over that to give the effect of drying dirt.

These graves were easily made by placing a grave marker(something from the cities of death spur or anything you see fitting) behind the piles of dirt made from the wood filler. A little paint and a shovel in one of the piles and BAM, instant little scene that adds alot of flavor and effect the the piece.

Another crowd pleaser thats finally done is the toxic overflow. This puppy was base coated in a hunters green and then recoated with a lighter green. After that I started to dry brush a mix of green and yellow ontop, each time adding more yellow to the mix. The last high light layer was a mix of sand, orange, and yellow; just to add alittle flavor to the mix. Once all of the paint was dryed I alos coated this in a gloss finish with one drop of green and yellow added to the gloss. This give the impression of a wet surface and flowing liquids under it.

And well heres the final product after all the dry brushing, weathering, and minor detail painting. Note most of the pieces that were seen ealier with the white brush on primer where never painted, they picked up there awesome paint job from the many many many layers of weathering and washes. Hope you enjoy it and the next little blurb will show you how to make this dirty piece of scenery look even cool by adding snow and the likes.

Alright so here it is, the final product. Enjoy and hopfully learning something from his tutorial.
Comments and suggestions are always accepted and I look foward to taking place in the next Iron Chef of Scenery.

Snow effects: Ok I use a product called snowtex sold in Michaels Craft stores. It comes in a paste form and is easily applied to the scenery with a brush. Use real life referance pictures to help make the snow placement look natural. Also try drybrushing it over the base to get that flurried on look for the ground. To help add to the lack of snow covering everything on the piece of scenery you can add melt water coming off the towers and buildings under where you put snow. To do this take some glossy finish and brush it on under the snow drifts and run it down the side of things where it seems water would naturally flow. This can add some cool effects when done right. (That why certain parts of the scenery are reflective and alittle white, the gloss was still kinda drying)

And thats the end of another installment of From Guants Workbench

One of the best things about Cities of Death was the release of the building sets. These are easy-to-make, highly detailed and large, and the amount of plastic and the detail you get make them better value than many other GW products. They are designed to make ruined buildings, but sets can easily be combined to produce intact structures. What with Apocalypse having recently been released, it’s a good time to be building a city.

It’s likely that once you’ve finished making a selection of buildings you will have quite a lot of pieces left over. Don’t throw them away! There are loads of uses to which the remaining parts can be put. Here are a few suggestions, meant as much to get people thinking of new ideas as anything.

1. Shapes. The key to a lot of conversions is to look out for the shapes and styles that you want. Some parts of the building sprues look like other things. The half-doughnut-shaped “bumps” that come with the Manufactorum look rather like the sponson of a small tank, for instance, and could work as one with a gun barrel added.

2. Think about the look you want. The Sanctus looks quite medieval, as does most of the Administratum building. The eagle doors and buttresses from the Admin building look more “1930’s dictator”. The Manufactorum has a more industrial, Victorian feel. If you mix and match parts from different sets, you should think about the eventual aim you want. For some reason, the more industrial parts in a mixed building look better on the lower storeys and the more decorated bits on the upper floors.

3. Buy some plasticard. A bit of textured plasticard in place of a panel can make a building look original and suitably weird. Also, a balcony, spire or oddly-shaped lower storey made from plasticard can really break up the boxy look of the wall pieces stuck together.

4. Add some extras. The sprues are designed to make the ruins of boxed-shaped buildings. This can get a bit samey, so feel free to improvise. Walls don’t have to meet at right angles. A bog-standard box-shaped structure with half a ball on top could be the basis for an interesting observatory or gun emplacement. An arm from an Ork dreadnought could make a good crane boom.

5. Salvage the details. If you’re making a fully-enclosed building, or lying one of the pieces down so you can’t see the back of it, there will be some details that will no longer be visible to an observer. Cut as many of the details you can off the side of the piece that won’t be seen before you stick it together. Nobody will see that they’re not there, and you can use them on other conversions. It’s surprising how a few extra salvaged parts can make a plasticard box look authentic.

6. Looking for an unusual Space Marine helmet? Use one of the grilled lamps from the sprues. Cut the lamp off the building sprue, then slice the face off the marine helmet just behind the eyes. Glue lamp front to Marine helmet to produce a Bioshock-style diving helmet. Probably quite good for technological, Iron Hands-type armies.

7. A lamp post comes with the floor sprue common to all the pieces. By cutting off the round base (but leaving the “fins” on) and the cylindrical lamp itself (the bit that would be glass in real life), you can easily make a rather gothic missile. A good objective, or a hunter-killer for a tank.

8. Several of the “ruined window” pieces from the boxed sets have clearly been made by cutting bits off the complete window panel. With some careful cutting and GS work, two of the ruined pieces can be cut and combined to make one whole one if you’re running low.

9. Think outside the 40k Building box. Parts from other kits work well too, especially the Empire building kits that came out recently. They have a lot of gothic “twiddly bits”. The angels from the Warhammer chapel would look especially good on a 40k building, as would the statues from the fortified manor kit.

10. In the same way, parts from the building sets don’t have to be restricted to buildings. Big Imperial tanks can benefit from the decorations on the building sprues, and really massive machines could have entire buildings on top of them. Yarrick’s baneblade, the Fortress of Arrogance, incorporates some of these.

Obviously this isn’t a be-all-and-end-all list. There are loads of things you could come up with. The point I want to make, though, is that a lot of good conversions come from using parts in new and innovative ways. There are loads of ideas in real-life architecture, so keep an eye open!

Ill go from easiest to hardest.

1) Field Grave

I’m not sure how it came about but the end all of scape goats for my army is the one character Jenkins. No matter what happens it can somehow always be blamed on Jenkins so when he died(well at least one of the many many many times) I decided to build a grave for him. Its quite an easy build that can be used just to add some flavor to the field or represent sacred ground for Cities of Death.

Materials:
1 medium to large base
Some bitz from your army
Something to represent a grave marker(themed to your army)
Some foam

Sculpt a mound out of the foam and place it in the center of the base. Make it look like a pile of dirt. Then glue down your grave marker behind the mound. Cover the base with white glue and then dunk it in dirt or what ever else you’re going to base with. After it dries glue down something symbolic of you’re army or the character thats dead. In my case I used a spare helmet and las-gun. Then paint according to you tables color theme.

BASE PAINTING- First paint everyhting in a dark color, not black but someting that is very close. I use colors like bittersweet chocloate or Burnt Sierra. Next dry brush over that with a lighter color, some sort of brown. And finally very lightly dust over a sandy looking color on top. And presto instant good looking base.

2) Communications Array
This little piece is always a good objective whether you’re playing cities of death or just a regular game. And you’re friends will think your very crafty after seeing it.

Materials:
Dozer Blade and support from Imperial tank spur
Communication bitz
Medium to large base
Wood putty

Glue the dozer when it dries it get heavy and this piece of scenery is top heavy, it to the support piece as shown or however you want it to look. Then using some wood putty cement the pieces to the base. Use wood putty becauseblanches out in the end. The best stuff in my opinion is Elmers water based Wood Putty. Its messy but its awesome when it dries and don’t produce any bad smells. Next glue dodads and bitz on in any way or order so it looks important and communications like (Yes that made no sense but hey that’s life). I used some spare tank pieces and some backpack communication pieces. Base and paint accordingly to you army and table.

3) Heroic Statue
“But Michael” you say, “All I have at home is an extra figure and a peanut butter jar lid. How am I to make any of your cool scenery?” Fear not my friends for I have just the piece for you too.

Materials:

• Heroic looking figure
• Peanut Butter Jar Lid
• Foam
• Foam Board

OK to start off just grab the closest heroic looking figure that you don’t need, or anything else that would fit the bill. Glue it to the top of the lid with PLASTIC glue. Then glue the lid with WHITE glue to the top of a small piece of foam board or what ever you use for the bases of your scenery. Carve some foam to fit next to the lid on the base to represent a pile of debris, that comes into play later. *Paint over any exposed pink foam with any color NOW, or your primer will eat it away* Prime the base in a grey or white primer very important not to use black. Now to paint the statue so it looks old and worn start out with a quick dry-brushing of any grey. Then use washes of different browns, rusty colors, dark browns, a deep green if you want, and some sort of sandy color. To make a wash take a bottle cap. Dip your brush into some of the color paint you want. Then slowly water it down until it has the consistence of water. You want it thin, but not so thin that its see through. Brush it onto the mole and let it dry, even if it forms large beads. The water will make interesting effects with the paint after it dries, just give it time. The final step in painting it to use a black wash sparingly. This will destroy any color effects you created before so be careful. Only use it to bring in sharp detail around the face, skull motifs, and other large raised areas with allot of detail like chains or the edges of armor. Paint the lid in a similar fashion. Then cover the foam in dirt and glue and randomly add some dirt here and there on the base. Paint and there you have it, a kick ass center piece for any city or town square.

SNOW BASING- As you see my city has recently had a snow storm and yes Ill even tell you how to make snow effects. (Man what a guy Mike is) I use DecorArt’s Snow-Tex, found at any Michael’s Craft store in the paint isle, right next to the wood putty and other stuff I use. It come in 2oz. and 5oz. bottles and believe me that’s allot of snow. Make sure its wet before you buy it!!! Ok so then when you come home grab a paint brush and mix it up in the bottle, don’t worry about the brush because this stuff comes right off. Get some on your brush and drop it on top of any exposed surfaces. Spreading it out carefully to keep its shape. Push it around so it looks natural. Use reference pictures of real snow if you have to. Then when it comes to the base, just randomly brush in big globs of the snow and dry-brush it around the base to give it that just snowed lightly look. It even works on tanks and figures too. Then once happy put it aside to dry for 6 hours and there you have it. This stuff is durable and will last a pretty good knock so its great for scenery which has to be durable.

The final product Or something like that.

Materials
Pink or Blue insulation foam
A dull steak knife
Dark and light brown paints
Floral pieces(Ill get specifics later)
Masking tape

1) The pink brick
What you really want to do is go to home depot and buy a slab of pink foam. This stuff is about 15 for a 2′*8′ piece and believe me that goes a long way and can be used for everything. Then cut out roughly the shape and size you want for your rocky outcropping. Making several small irregular shaped ones can really add alot of depth and strategy to a gaming board or just your kitchen table. For the demo Ill start out with a small square block.

2) Stabby, Stabby
Next find a knife what you suspect you or your mom wont be using any time soon. Try and keep this knife by your side from now on as your modeling knife. Start by shaving off the sharp edges on top to give the block a less harsh look. Then comes the fun part. Randomly gouge out and stab the block to rip out odd shaped chunks. It helps if most of these are in the same direction but hey its your rock. Then just slice the block repeatedly horizontally, varying the placement and angle of the slices. *Here’s why you want a not so sharp knife, its easy to slice yourself while doing this so BE VERY CAREFULL. Put the rock down and put some figures around it, change anything you don’t like about the rock now. If it helps look at some real rocks for reference. This can be rather messy so just be prepared to clean everything up later. For the demo rock I didn’t do anything that crazy just your simple rock face.

3) Bust’n out the Paints
Now for the fun and even dirtier part. Your best bet is to go to your local arts store like Michael’s and buy some crappy quality paints for this. I suggest one big bottle of Americana Maple Brown for your base and a smaller bottle of Bittersweet Chocolate. Watering down the maple paint will help with coverage and effects on the rocks but don’t over do it, just a little water added in every so often will work wonders. Using a big brush just paint up the rock with the maple color or any other medium brown. Then with out rinsing your brush use he bittersweet chocolate and really ram it into the slashes and grudges you made earlier. You always want the recessed area to be a darker color. And while your at it mix some dark brown around on the surface to give it some natural variation. By now the brick looks like crap but that just how its supposed to look, later steps make it look awesome.

*Optional Step- The top of the rock formation can at this point in time either be painted like the rest of the foam or you can use white glue and glue down some dirt. Dirt is easy to get from your backyard but I suggest a small bag of medium grade concrete crushed stone. This will provide you with all shapes and sizes of rocks from dust to slate and miniature boulders. Take a good sized cup of what ever dirt you want and then put it on a cookie sheet and bake it in the oven fro 20 minutes. This will kill anything that was living in the dirt and your good to go. After the glue holding the dirt down on-top of the rock dries, just paint it up like the rest of the rock. This picture of the demo rock was taken before I used the optional step, but I did use dirt to add texture to the top of the demo as seen in later pictures.

And that concludes the first part of the tutorial on how to make rocks and Aspens. This is cause I’m still waiting for certain parts of the next part to dry. Stay tuned for next time when we finish painting our fake rocks and make some trees.

4) Make’in Mother Nature Proud
Anyhow back the scenery!! Now we’ll work on making some Aspens and then finish up the rocks. Youll want to go down to your craft store and buy some dried floral pieces that look like scale tree branches. Get a color that you feel will look good as the flowers or leaves on the trees. I picked a deep red but yellow or maroon would work also. Then separate a few pieces that have alot of foliage on top of them and grab a piece that has a thick central branch. You’ll want about 5 good sized pieces with foliage for one tree. Prune the extra twigs of off the thick piece so you have a big trunk to tape the rest of the pieces on to. You want the trunch to be big enough so you have something to grab onto with your fingers and still have enough room for the width of the tape.

Take some quality masking tape and rip of a good sized piece, extra can always be taken off later. Wrap the tape around the trunk piece once and then add one branch with foliage per time you wrap the tape around the trunk. When you have no pieces left or your tree is big enough just rip off the extra tape and smooth out the joints. It should look something like this

Now for painting! Start with a base of some sort of neutral grey. I use Neutral Grey by Americana. Paint as much as you want of the branches and all of the trunk. This will provide for a good base. Then use white to highlight the rest of the branches and dry-brush the trunk. This should give you a good looking contrast and really bring out the tree. If you want to add more detail to the trunk then go back with a darker grey and black to make slash marks and areas where the outer bark has ripped away. Use real pictures for reference. Here’s my demo tree with some highlighting. This tree should have taken you about 15 minutes to make from start to painted and ready to be planted. Making them in an assembly line fashion you could make alot in a short period of time.

5)Finishing Up
Now that you have a single tree or a whole forest, its time to put the finishing details on your rocky outcroppings. Take a big brush and grab a lighter color of brown then you used earlier. Anything as light as sand will work. Get some paint on your brush and then wipe some off. After you have done so, stroke from the top to the rocks down, highlighting any ridges and rough spots. Keep doing this until you as happy with the effects. Any areas that didn’t get the right high lights can always be painted on with the lighter brown manually. You will also want to drag some lighter paint across the top of the model to give the dirt there a good highlight also. As seen below:

At this point in time you can do what ever you want. Drop on more high lights with a lighter color or you can use black washes to bring out more details or you can just leave them they way they are. Game ready and kick-ass. I personally like to add snow to contrast the dark rocky colors but that’s only because I have a snow themed playing board. For my dessert one I use another highlight of the base color that all the dessert rocks are painted in, all depends on what type of board you are making.

*Planting TreesI suggest that you plant your trees as followed. Take a nail or something else that’s solid and press it into the foam. This will make a good sized hole for you to start off in. Then press the trees exposed base into the foam until you are happy with the way it looks. The tree can always be taken back out and put somewhere else or stored for when the scenery is traveling.

And here’s the demo rock and tree ready for some war-gaming.(Pushed the tree in deeper to hide the curled up masking take at the bottom of the tree int he picture) Bring in the heavy bolters and flamers!!!

I hope that you enjoyed the first of hopefully many “From Guants Workbench” tutorials on how to make scenery. I wanted to keep this simple enough where any newbie to the hobby could grab some paint and a knife and with a little practice make some good stuff for his friend and himself to play on. As a veteran model railroader, there is plenty more where this came from.

First you need some sprues, so I pulled out one of the boxes full of sprues. They had been collecting dust for quite some time and now its time to put them to use.

I picked one with nice round edges and cut it almost as clean as I could get it with my scissor, then I took the rest with a knife so it looked like this

Then I needed to put them together. At this time I didn’t have glue (yes that’s right) so I tried melting them together and that worked better than expected

after I had melted them into one piece I took a piece of cardboard and put the sprues on top of it and painted around the edges with a pen, then I cut the cardboard with my scissors to fit onto the sprues. Then I glued them together like this. I used something we call “wood glue” for this, but you can use any glue.

I poured alot of sawdust on top of the glue, waited a white til it dried, shake off the rest, then I spray-painted it all with some green color

If you use a little more time this result can be much better, but I hope it helps you get rid of your sprue collection

Equipment
Dust Mask
When filing or sanding resin components, it is usually a good idea to wear a face mask. Like any fine dust, breathing resin dust is not particularly good for you. These masks can be cheaply bought from most hardware stores- a simple gauze mask with rubber-band straps to hold it in place are the bare minimum requirement.

Hobby Knife
Recent governmental legislation in some parts of the world has made it increasingly difficult to obtain good craft knives, but nonetheless you are going to need one. This is usually a handle with interchangable blades. Scalpels and models with retractable blades are also available. Get one with a fine handle and one with a heavier handle. They are available with all kinds of plastic, metal or rubber handles. Pick one that feels comfortable in your hand. If you only buy one tool, make it a good knife – it will be necessary for cleaning up “flash” prior to assembly.

Glue
There are many different types of glue. In order to work with resin kits, you can use only normal modelling glue, although this is not really a worthwhile option as it wont bond properly, so the parts will eventually fall off. Ideally, you will have different glues for different kit materials. Buy some cyano-acrylate “super-glue” – both the thin quick-setting and the thicker gap filling types for strong “longer-life” sticking. Also for the eventual basing (if you base them), get some white glue (PVA). For some resin kits, a two-part epoxy might be necessary.

Files and Sandpaper (medium, fine and extra-fine)
After a knife, a set of files is the most useful part of your tool kit. They are used for cleaning and smoothing castings and filing pieces ‘to fit’ where necessary (a necessary step due to the nature of resin castings). Files come with several different profiles: flat, round, half-round, and several other shapes. These can be worked in tighter areas than sandpaper and will be easier to work around cast surface details. It is a good idea to have as wide a selection as you can afford. Sandpaper or sanding pads (I use my Girlfriend’s disposable nail-files!) are also useful for sanding larger areas, or getting a straight finish over a larger area. Purchase a selection of papers from 220 to 600 grit.

Saws
There are many types of saws. Probably the best for working with a resin kit is a jeweller’s saw. A jeweller’s saw gives very fine cuts but the blades are quite fragile.

Pin Vise and Drill Bits
You will need one of these if you want to drill holes in your components. This is usually only necessary if you want to add strength to a join with large and/or heavy components by pinning them with metal rod, or if you wish to hollow out openings or gun-barrels on solid resin castings.

Clippers
Clippers are useful for removing pieces of plastic,metal or resin that are too large to safely remove with a knife. They are also faster and easier to use than a saw so make a good middle ground tool. Start with a sprue nipper and a fine pair of scissors. Get a few types that are well made and they should last a long time.

Tweezers
These are great for picking up and holding small parts, and (for some of us!) necessary for placing decals exactly where you want them. Get at least one pair of extra fine needle pointed tweezers.

Clamps
Clamps are very useful for holding parts together while the glue dries, as well as to hold parts in a specific position while they are being worked on. I actually use clothes pegs which are very useful and work really well.

Pliers
Pliers come in handy when you need to hold small parts so that you can work on another section of that part. The most useful ones are “needle-nose” pliers.

Toothpicks
These come in handy when you need to make small wedges, or to hold small parts while painting them, or to apply small amounts of glue…

Paintbrushes
Get a varied selection. Purchase some inexpensive brushes for broad coverage and for applying washes. These are also good for setting decals. Don’t skimp on good brushes for detail work or your finish will suffer.

The next step is to start preparing the Model for assembly. As this is a multi-stage process, which I’ll go through step by step.

1. Washing
Clean the parts thoroughly with a mild soap in lukewarm water. The reason for doing this is to make sure all traces of mould release fluids are removed. It also gives a very slight abrasion to the surface of the model that will help with paint adhesion. Use a sponge or soft brush. Be careful not to damage or break off any cast-on detail parts. I usually leave the components to soak for a little while before scrubbing, and again for a little while after. Then remove the models, rinse thoroughly and allow them to dry.
This isn’t always necessary but I find it’s generally better to be safe than sorry, especially as it will be that much more difficult to do once you have assembled the kit and begun painting it!

2. Removing the parts from the Sprues
Just like with metal and plastic models, there will be excess material that needs to be removed from the parts of the kit before you can assemble it. The main difference is that, with resin models, the bits needing removal can be larger and must be removed with more care. These are the result of the casting process and unavoidable but all can be easily dealt with.
The mould plug is the area where the resin is poured into the mould. This is the biggest piece of excess resin. A mould plug can appear in many different shapes, depending on the shape of the model. The most common are V shapes that are on the side of a detailed or odd shaped component or a large rectangle going onto a squared component. These will need removing and may take some effort with a larger part.

Check the instructions again to be sure that the items you see are actually mould plugs and not part of the kit. To remove the larger parts from the mould plug, especially when it is too large to use clippers easily, cut them off with a saw. Unlike with clippers, this can be done as close to the model as you like. It’s usually best to do it slightly away from the join though just to make sure that any deviation in your cutting line doesn’t affect the model. Again after the mould plug has been removed, use a file to ensure a smooth finish to the surface.
With smaller components, a pair of clippers and a file should suffice. Don’t twist the parts off the sprues – this is the best way to damage them.
Be careful not to apply too much pressure whilst using clippers – resin is brittle.

3. Removing Flash
First check that what you are removing is not part of the actual model. To remove these lines, use a modelling knife, file or sandpaper and carefully scrape or file away the line. This shouldn’t take too long and makes a big difference to the finished model. Repeat this process for each part, paying special attention to small detail pieces.

Assembly

So, now we reach the point where we actually begin assembly.

Glues
You will need cyano-acrylate (CA) glue to assemble your model. CA glue, also known as superglue, bonds just about anything very strongly (including skin), but the bonds formed are weak unless the mating surfaces are clean, absolutely dry and fit well. Superglue is best applied with a small toothpick. The better the fit between the parts to be joined, the stronger the bond. Be extremely careful when working with superglue glue. It contains some minute quantity of cyanide, which is a toxic compound. Use it in a well-ventilated area and don’t breathe the fumes. Never, ever heat it to make it cure faster.

Pre-assembly
Once the components have been washed and all excess resin has been removed, the model should be ready for assembly. If the model has any interior detail, now might be the best time to paint it, as it could be difficult once the model is assembled.

Dry-fitting
Before gluing the components together, it is a good idea to dry fit them. This just means placing the parts together to make sure they fit okay. This is useful, as it will point out any potential problems such as uneven joins and slight gaps in the joins. Unfortunately gaps are unavoidable with some joins. If there is an uneven join just quickly take a file to it and make it flat before gluing. Or if you are planning on adding extra detail with Green Stuff fill thes gaps with it too.

Warped Parts
Warpage can easily occur with thin components as thin resin components are susceptible to temperature just after casting. To get a warped piece into the right shape (or even to just reshape a piece like a piece of track) just immerse it in hot water and gently bend it. With a larger piece it is best to do this in stages. Bend it a little, allow it to settle and repeat until it is in the correct shape. Larger pieces may also require longer immersion to soften. If you don’t want to use hot water then a hair dryer should give the same results, just don’t let the piece get too hot (or blow away!). Do not heat resin with any kind of flame.

Assembling Resin Parts
Glue the components together straight- don’t worry if there is an occasional gap, those can be taken care of in the next stage. It may be an idea to leave off some of the more fragile and smaller parts until after you have painted the main assembly. If this is the case, make sure the joint won’t be too apparent afterward, since you won’t be able to apply putty on the painted surfaces.

Occasionally there may be gaps where parts meet, or where a small bubble (void) is present in the resin. It’s best to glue all your components that will need filling at the same time as it will save you time and Green Stuff.
Green Stuff is a malleable substance that hardens when it dries. Green Stuff comes in small, packages from Games Workshop, and several brands are available at your local hobby store.

Finishing Assembly
Once the entire model is assembled, apart from the odd little bits that have been left off to simplify the painting process, we need to wash and rinse the whole model again, in order to remove any oils left by our fingers and whatever tools we have used.

When you’ve reached this stage you are now ready to prime and paint the model!

All credit goes too http://mainly28s.com/how_to/resin_kit_how_to.html

I hope this will be as useful to you guys as it was and still is to me

I decided to use the spare sprues I had to model out some walls of a traditional red-brick city, similar to that of the Old Town part of the city where I live.

After some work I got this:

I liked it, so I went on to create a few more pieces, including a flag pole:

I’ll walk you through it’s creation step by step because even if you’re not building a display, it should be able to help on just about any piece of terrain.

Step One (sort of):

The first step really is deciding what kind of bases your guys will be standing on. Here’s what mine looks like. I was digging through my dad’s collection of Hirstarts (www.hirstarts.com) plaster molds and came upon the cobblestone texture – I loved it so much I decided to build all of the bases in my army using it. Since I was building a display for my guys standing on these bases, obviously I had to use a lot of cobblestone. If you don’t feel like learning to pour plaster or don’t have the cash for one of Hirst’s amazing molds, then any basing materials would work.

This leads us to the real step one:

I found the wood at Michael’s (A craft store chain in the US) for $6.99 and made use of my dad’s drill press to create the holes in the wood where the plastic GW basesould fit in. I wanted the plaster cobblestone to be flush with the wood so that required a little drilling… I’m sure any Lumber/Home Depot type of place would be willing to do this for you for a nominal fee if you just bring them a GW base to show how big the holes need to be. If you were just bulding terrain, that step would be skipped entirely, obviously!

Next I just started gluing my cobblestone onto the board using standard Wood Glue. I wanted it go to from left to right but then stop before reaching the right side so I could put some battleworn earth in there to vary it up a bit.

The next picture comprises a few steps in one, so let’s move onto Steps 2, 3 and 4:

After gluing down all the plaster I wanted, the next step was to fill all the gaps between the plaster pieces and raise the areas where no plaster existed, so enter “Minwax Wood Filler” available just about anywhere hardware is sold. It’s like spackle, but it comes in a tube and you just squeeze it out like toothpaste where you want it while using a butter knife to smooth it out. After a few hours it’s hard as a rock and paintable, sandable, and everything else you’d card to do with it.

After the Filler dries a bit, it’s time to texture up the base some more using white glue (I used the same Wood Glue as before) and sprinkling sand where needed.

This isn’t pictured here, but I wanted to add a little something extra for my piece and had the idea of an old Land Raider tread in the mud. Using greenstuff, a Land Raider tread piece and a little cooking spray I had my LR imprint and placed it on the earthy section of the board, sprinked some sand around it and I was ready to let it sit overnight.

The next morning, I handpainted over everything in black. I didn’t bother using my good GW paints for this step. I bought the super-cheap apple barrel paints for big stuff like this. Colors run about 79-99 cents, depending where you go.

For the cobble stone, I just mixed black/white to make a “Codex” grey type color and heavily drybrushed. Next, I added a little more white to make an “inbetween Codex/Fortress” grey, drybrushed a little lighter towards the middle of each piece, and finally added even more white to the color and just hit spots where I thought it would look cool.

For the mud and in between the stones, it was pretty much the same steps but with the earth colors.. Mixed a muddy brown (like dark Graveyard Earth), then went to Graveyard Earth, then started mixing in Bleached Bone, then ultimately I did lightly drybrush Bleached Bone.

After the display was painted, I took some glue and static grass and went wild. Putting patches of it in the mud, between cobblestones, and inbetween the cracks of the stones. The muddy parts that the grass was sprinkled on I drybrushed over with bleached bone to give it a “dead” look.

Now for the final step, I just painted the border of the wood in black and here’s my finished model:

The first thing I did was hit the local shop that sells GW stuff, but instead of checking out the GW brand items, I made a beeline to the plastic model kit area. Tamiya and a few other companys make tons of WWII era model kits ranging from Paratroopers to Tanks. They also make several kits designed to spruce up dioramas. Ammo boxes, Gun encampments, Medic Pits, Command Bunkers, Oil and Gas cans, Barbed wire, etc. Gosh… sure sounds like stuff that would work for Stratagem counters too! 1/35 scale seems to be a good size when paired with GW’s 25mm models.

I decided to start with some Tank traps.

Assembly was quick and easy, but there is literally one picture for “instructions”. And you though GW assembly instructions were sparse. Still, it’s not difficult to glue 3 poles together.

I’m using masonite for a base. It’s cheap (a few bucks for a 4′ x 2′ piece at hardware store), doesn’t warp with glue, is not flexible, and isn’t very thick (1/8″). The group I play with owns a nice assortment of buildings and roads for our City fights, and the roads are 6″ wide, so I started with some 6″x5″ squares. I then cut the squares into slightly more interesting shapes, and finished by sanding all the edges, including along the top and bottom lip to “round” all the sides.

Just having the tank traps glued onto a flat base will be really boing to look at, and since all our building are bombed out, it makes sense that there will be rubble in the street. Or perhaps the traps are in the courtyard of a blown up building. Either way, I need some rubble. GW’s idea of cutting old sprues into pieces is a good idea and looks well enough, but I don’t have a bunch of sprues at the moment, so I needed to find something else.

One of the other side projects I’ve got taking up space on my desk is interior building for a 40K Space Hulk-esque board. I have some mold from the fantastic Hirst Arts sci-fi collection. Before I bothered to read about proper plaster mold making, I ran out to Wal-Mart and bought some cheap-o plaster of paris. The stuff is absolute trash for making a quality cast. The pieces take forever to set, break as they leave the mold, disintegrate into powder if you rub it, and crack and chip like no tomorrow. Wait…. they break easily? Hmmm…. I made a few casts and when they were “dry” popped em out and lined them up. I took the bottom end of my fat exacto knife and smacked a piece hard. To my amusment, the piece cracked clean through right in the middle. Waalaa! Insta-rubble! I made a whole bunch of various sizes, ranging from very large, almost whole chunks, down to pretty much dust.

Just to get a rough feel, I put some traps and large rubble on the masonite. I’ve also got some cardboard squares, a GW idea that I like the look of.

Next I remove all the piece, and squirt a whole ton of wood glue onto the masonite. I’m sure white glue would work as well. Then, remembering roughly where I want the tank traps to sit, I fill in the other areas with the larger rubble pieces, and then sprinkle some the biggest chunks of rubble “bricks” on.

Before the glue begins to dry, I start sprinkling (over a trashcan!) some GW chunky sand basing over the whole base. I love the way this stuff looks!

In order to cover the entire base, you’ll need to dump on waaay more than will actual stick to the glue. Since I don’t want to waste a bunch of my $8 dirt, here’s my solution: take a piece of paper and roll it into a cone-like funnel, then hold it back over the GW tub and tip the masonite until the loose sand falls back into the tub. Depending on how long you wait, or how fast you work, Be Careful… the glue is not dry, and the larger chunks may come loose if you tip the thing completely upside down!

At this point things look ok, but I’d like to build up more debris around the bases of the larger rubble. This time I squirt glue into specific, concetrated areas. I sprinkle on some of the smallest plaster chunks, including the stuff that’s pretty much just plaster dust. Then more sand. Then dump the excess back into the tub.

It’s looking better now, but I’ve got one last idea I’d like to try. I went and found our office pencil sharpener…. yeah, you know where I’m going with this! The pencil shavings are very interestingly shaped, and really seem like the urban version of static grass!

I use some thin super glue on a few areas and then sprinkle on the pencil shavings. I don’t care nearly as much about the shavings as I did the dirt, so the excess goes into the garbage.

After the glue has had a little time to dry, it’s outside for a blast from the rough texture spray paint. (at this point the multicolored texture paint kills the shape definition in my pictures, so it’s a little harder to see.)

We’re not done yet, but I’m letting the dry overnight while I work on other things. Here’s a few more pics, including one with a Land Raider for some size comparison.

Tomorrow I’ll be adding some machinery debris, the tank traps, and painting the whole thing! Stick around!

Ok, I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted to. Spent alot of time helping my wife assemble her first army… Tyranids!

I started today off by scrounging around the house for suitable junk to use as broken bitz. I came up with some straws, toothpicks, wire, small gauge tube, some resistors and transistors, stuff from my bitz box, and a big empty sprue from my wife’s first unit of Genestealers :yes:

GW had the idea to use trash sprues as structural beams and bricks, the straws made good pipes, and the wire and tubing stick out of the courigation in the carboard and out from under a transistor box I broke off an old (I mean OLD) 14.4 baud modem :w00t: Glued em all on in interesting places. I also glued the tank traps at this point.

Next came another layer of glue and sand, this time much more controlled. Just select areas to help bury objects like the new bits, and some of the tank trap “feet”. Yesterday’s layers of dirt and rubble made great foundations and I think the texture spray worked ok on it. However, I think it “muddied” the overall base a little. My hope is that with this new fresh layer of untextured sand, and some paint that’s different shades than the texture spray, things will pop out a little more.

After the glue and sand dried I started the first bit of painting by hitting all the newly added bitz with Boltgun Metal. The straw pipes, sprue beams, and tank bitz. All the tubing and wires were painted Chaos Black. Of course these things won’t stay just one color. These are just bottom coats to prepare for rust like colors with hints of metal showing through. The tank traps themselves are still unpainted as I decide what to do with them. I was thinking about trying one of those Insta-Rust kits… dunno.

And that’s about as far as I made it today. Once again, I’m not real impressed with the pics my camera is taking, but as you can see in the first picture, I was actually one step ahead of you Dizzy. The base with only two tank traps has some GW barbed wire running across it. I didn’t want to use a ton of it because I’d like these to accurately reflect the CoD rules… I’ll be making dedicated Barbed Wire bases after these tank traps are finished. One thing I am proud of that doesn’t show up in the pics: One of the Tamiya kits I bought has little stakes that look like wood. They’re part of the barbed wire fencing posts. So thats what I used them for! I took some 30 gauge :ninja: wire, and made it look like the barbed wire is tied to the stakes. Then the stakes are jammed into the rubble from yesterday. I think it looks nice… but I really doubt anyone will see it without being told It’s the little things that make it fun.

You will need:

• PVA glue
• Sand flock
• Snow flock
• Leaf litter
• Milliput (or any other modelling putty that you are comfortable with)
• Toothpics (for modelling the putty and spreading the glue)
• A good (large) brush
• 3 brown paints

The root (look closely) and the stone I made out out of milliput. Then I flocked with sand, basecoated and drybrushed. Then I added “leaf litter” and finally I applied my self made “snow paste”. Tadaaa!

How it’s done:

1. Put some putty on the base.
2. Sculpt the putty into roots with a toothpick or a needle by drawing longitudinal lines.
3. With a modelling knife make little transversal “cuts” in the roots to simulate cracks in the bark.
4. Spread out some PVA and flock with sand
5. Basecoat
6. Drybrush with dark brown (Marón cuero or Scorched brown)
7. Drybrush with light brown (Uniforme Inglés or Snakebite Leather)
8. Drybrush with beige (Arena Oscura or Bleached Bone)
9. Apply leaf litter
10. Apply “snow paste”. Done!

Making snow paste
50/50% mix of PVA/Water. Add snow flock until you have a thick paste.

More fun at Toms Mordheim Blog

Tools

The first tool I will be using is similar to Games Workshop’s one but of higher quality. Yes, it is just the humble sculpting tool. There are many variants of the standard tool just with different ends. This has a single edged knife blade and micro spoon burnisher. These are used to pull, push, smooth and in a variety of other techniques. This tool cost me a little bit more than a GW one but is worth it.

The second tool is a X-acto knife or for some of you a craft knife. Used for cutting and trimming Greenstuff and also for cleaning up your mistakes as I will be doing for a while. It is advisable to also buy a cutting mat as you do not want to destroy a table or desk. A sharpening stone comes in handy to keep the blades nice and sharp so you don’t have to apply pressure which may break the blades causing a piece of metal to fly across the room at breakneck speeds to be imbedded into the wall. (While I haven’t had that happen to me yet, it was a good explanation of why to keep them sharp).

These tools are called files. These are used to remove mould lines for some people who don’t know what they are for and can be used to remove parts of a model you wish to sculpt over so they don’t get in the way. Files are great as they can be used to file down Greenstuff and to rid yourself of wire nubs off the bottom of an armature.

And some dental/soldering tools, I picked up for 5 dollars or so. These will be used for helping me solder together armatures when I get to that stage and for adding details to the sculpt like chainmail.

Vaseline or other lubricant like water needs to be used at all times to keep the putty from sticking to your tools and sometimes other layers of putty.

Rulers and other measurement tools are great for seeing if your scale of the sculpt is correct and if the model is the right dimensions. Google for “Scale checker” if you want a fancy one.

Clay shapers or erasers are useful to smooth the putty as the pressure spreads more evenly. I need find some of these of these for myself at the moment.

You may also like to make a putty oven, so that your putty can cure faster. You can get a metal can and put a light above it, but remember plastic parts may melt as they have a low melting point so be careful. I will be making one shortly so will post another article on to make it.

Pliers and Side clippers which should be in your modelling kit anyway are great for bending armatures and cutting wire and unwanted pieces of your models. I also use a modelling saw for larger pieces and other jobs.

There are many other tools that would work good too, you will just have to find out what they are. Many household items are good for textures of cloth, wood and other types of materials. If you can get art books of the subject you are trying to sculpt these are great references of information. Human Anatomy books are useful in there own right so the sculpt will not look out of proportion.

Conclusion

That’s all for this issue and article, if you wish to contact me about any questions or ideas you have feel free. Either PM me on Librarium Online or email me. Part 2 will be coming once I receive the rest of the tools and some Greenstuff. It will include a tutorial on how to sculpt tabards step by step and tips that I have learnt so far. Also will include answers to any questions you ask. So ask anything and I will try and answer it.

Thanks for reading,
Aaron/Pickle

First we need two things; carboard & scissors. Yeah I told you it was easy!

I took one of the many boxes I got when I buy catfood. Excellent thin cardboard. Then I cut the cardboard into small pieces like the picture below.

After cutting a few thin pieces like this, then we have to cut them some more. Look at the picture below to see how you should cut

Dont try to cut them all similar, difference is good and make your roof look better. In the picture below you can see I have made two, but you will probably need alot more.

When you are overlapping them like this it starts to look like a roof, but you need to paint them too. Im not very good at painting, but this is how my “finished” roof looks like.

Well, thats it. A short tutorial on how to make roof the easy way! The roof would probably gotten better if my painting skills was better, maybe they are now, but this roof is 10 years old now I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and I hope you enjoy your stay at Librarium Online too

There are two methods for creating swappable weapon options for Eldar (and any other race, really) vehicles. Firstly – magnets. I’ve used magnets for my Falcons and Wave Serpent. Secondly, pinning. Pinning does not support the weapon as effectively but works fairly well on my Wraithlords, War Walkers and Guardian Heavy Weapon Platforms. For the Guardian Support Weapon platforms I plan to use a combination of the two.

Magnetising weapon options for Eldar grav tanks

Ok, so the first thing you’ll need is an unassembled Falcon/Wave Serpent/Fire Prism. The Falcon these days ships with an extra sprue that has all of the five heavy weapon options – Starcannon, Shuriken Cannon, Bright Lance, Scatter Laser and Eldar Missile Launcher. These weapons use a rod/hole mounting system (the weapons that are used with the War Walker, Wraithlord and Heavy Weapons platform use a tab/slot mounting mechanism, which I’ll cover later). The Wave Serpent has two of these sprues and the Vyper comes with one as well. Basically, I use magnets for rod/hole weapons and pinning for tab/slot weapons.

The second thing that you’ll need are some magnets! I use N45 (this is a grade of their strength) gold-plated (the plating is irrelevant really) Neodymium rare-earth magnets. I would recommend getting 3mm-diameter, 0.5mm-thick round magnets. The thickness/height makes them pretty inconspicuous and has some useful side-effects that become apparent later on. The diameter is perfect for mounting seamlessly on the Falcon and Wave Serpent turrets. It’s easy enough to buy these magnets off eBay (now you know what you’re looking for!) and I can get them for ~9 pence each, making buying 50 or so a viable option.

They should look something like this:

Let’s start with the Falcon’s turret. Assemble this as normal – I tend to glue the Pulse Laser in place rather than allowing it to rotate, but that’s down to personal preference. The Pulse Laser comes on the end of a rod that passes through the turret – where this emerges on the left-hand side is where the heavy weapon is attached. Remove the thinnest part of the rod using a pair of wire clippers or a craft knife. Now, use superglue to attach one of the magnets to the mount. These magnets are fiddly but here’s a great tip for glueing – take one magnet and use the butt-end of a needle file to pick it up. Put a small blob of superglue on the other side of the magnet and then use the file to put it in place. Wait for the glue to dry a little and then just pull the file away, leaving the magnet behind, glued in place with precision! It also helps to mark one side of each pair of magnets with a permanent pen to remind you which side to stick down!

You should now have something that looks like this (I’m using the Forgeworld Type II conversion kit, but the principle is the same for the regular GW kit):

This looks pretty subtle to me! Now the weapons. There’s a bit of a difficulty here unfortunately, because in its wisdom, GW elected to only put one left- and one right-hand side weapon guard/casing on the heavy weapon sprue. Since you only need the left-hand guard for the Falcon, this means that you can only choose one weapon from the five on the sprue to assemble! Unless of course you use magnets to attach the weapon guard – I chose not to do this and instead ended up buying some spare weapon guards off eBay in a fluke auction… Whatever you choose, attach a magnet to your chosen weapon(s) over the hole where the rod would normally pass through. The results should look a little bit like the bottom weapon in this picture (the Bright Lance above it shows what I mean by the weapon guard/casing, which makes it look a bit prettier):

Interestingly, the weapon guard does not exactly match the guard that is moulded on to the Pulse Laser, nor the guard that was supplied with the original Falcon’s Scatter Laser (which itself is slightly different to the new one on the extra sprue). It doesn’t really matter though, because you can barely tell the difference and you can swap weapons between the Falcon and Wave Serpent.

Now for the under-hull weapon options. The Falcon only comes with the standard twin shuriken catapults, however the Wave Serpent comes with the Shuriken Cannon so it pays to be able to swap these around. Take your half-assembled Falcon/Wave Serpent/Fire Prism and glue a piece of plasticard (a.k.a. “sheet styrene”) inside the hull across the round hole where the weapon mount usually goes (this sits underneath the pilot’s cockpit. It should look like this:

Turn the hull over and use the butt-end of a file to glue a magnet in the centre, like this:

Now, take the shuriken catapults/cannon and glue them (again, personal preference – you could leave them to rotate up and down on the mount if you like) to the mount with the “X” shaped piece at the top. Remove the “X” using wire clippers or a craft knife and glue a magnet in the centre instead, like this:

This is where the magnet’s thickness turns out to be spot-on – the two magnets will touch and provide a decent level of attraction, but the mount sits perfectly on the hull and even allows you to rotate the weapons around with ease. Perfect!

Now, the Wave Serpent turret (again, I’m using the Type II Forgeworld kit but the steps are the same). I was never that satisfied with the peg/hole method used to balance the turret on the hull, so I decided to use magnets instead. Funnily enough, the 3mm diamater is exactly the right size to fit into the hole at the base of the turret, so what I did was basically a repeat of the method for the shuriken catapults, only with a smaller hole. Cut a strip of plasticard and glue it inside the turret. Then, glue a magnet into the hole. Remove the peg from the round piece that sits on the top of the hull and glue a magnet in place. BE CAREFUL – make sure that this magnet is properly attached to the hull as it is next to impossible to retrieve a magnet from inside that hole if it leaps in there! This solution is elegant, holds the turret in place firmly but still allows you to rotate it with ease. This is what you’re aiming for:

For the turret weapon mounts, the procedure is pretty much exactly the same as for the Falcon. Make sure to glue the rod in place this time; the magnets allow for fairly easy (independent) rotation of the weapons so there is no need for the rod itself to rotate in the turret. Cut off the ends of the rod, attach magnets and you ought to get something that looks like this:

And here is the (sort of) finished product:

And now with some upgrades:

Pinning weapon options for Eldar walkers and weapon platforms

Magnets are, sadly not a particularly viable option for the tab/slot weapon options. This is mainly because it is impossible to find magnets that have the right dimensions to sit in the slot and since I prefer subtle solutions, I decided against trying to affix the round magnets somehow to achieve the desired result. That leaves pinning – now this will probably never be as good an option as magnets in terms of securing the weapons in place (unless you get a very snug fit) but it looks a lot better. The method is identical for War Walkers, Wraithlords and the Guardian Heavy Weapon Platform. I will use the War Walker as an example.

The tab/slot weapons have no guard/casings to worry about so you can happily use every single one on the sprue. Each weapon has a small tab protruding from the base, which fits snugly into a receptacle slot. Using a pair of wire clippers or a hobby saw, remove this tab. Now, drill a pair of holes into the base of the weapon (make sure that the holes are not spaced too far apart or else the pins won’t go into the receptacle slot!) using a 1mm drill bit. I use standard, common-or-garden-variety paperclips for pinning material, so cut up one of these into small (straight) lengths using your wire clippers and insert one into each of the holes and glue in place with superglue. Trim them down so that ~3mm is protruding. This should be the result:

You can either put a dab of paint on the end of the pins or judge it by eye, but you’ll need to drill corresponding holes in the slot on the War Walker. Make sure not to drill these too deeply, as you’ll drill straight through the detailing on the underside of the Walker’s weapon mounts. You should just about be able to see the holes in this picture:

And that’s pretty much it! If you’ve got a snug fit and the pins and holes are the right length, the results should look a little bit like this:

Far more elegant than trying to use magnets, I reckon.

Now, you can start buying up all the spare weapon sprues and guards you can lay your hands on, and end up with something like this:

I have a few more lying around too and all together I have enough weapons to kit out 4 War Walkers, 2 Wraithlords, 3 Falcons, a Wave Serpent and a Heavy Weapon Platform with *any* weapon combination. I could give every single one of them Bright Lances, for instance. The eagle-eyed may also notice in the bottom-right-hand corner that there are some Wraithlord shuriken catapults and flamers – this method easily extends to those options and since the slots are the same on the Wraithlord’s arms it means that you can mount the weapons wherever you want.

I hope that this guide proves useful – please let me know if it could be improved in any way or if you have any questions about the methods that I’ve used. I pretty much made this up as I was going so I’m sure there’s better methods out there!

You will see elmers glue, realistic water and snow from woodland scenics. They have a website you can order from. I also find this stuff at most hobby stores. To start I find a rock that I think will work well. This one my dog found in the back yard. I paint it light grey then a wash with black ink about 1:4 parts water. After it dries I dry brush the rock with the same light colored grey and then again with a bit of white. Finaly the use a touch of ivy green here and there. (I did my final dry brush last so u can see it in the final picture.)

Next I get a base and I prefer the ones with the raised lip on them but any base will do. I paint the inside of the base a sienna brown color and let it dry.

Then I glue the rock onto one side and position it the way I want. Once it dries I toss in a few pieces of static grass and some gravel. This is going to be the river bottom area and I want it to look as such, You can put whatever you want down for this effect. Also I dont use glue here because the water effect will keep it in place.

Next I pour in the water effect. This stuff is great and I highly recommend it for making water bases. It is the consistency of thin hair gel. I think it costs about $12 or so. I just fill the bottom of the base making sure there are no bubbles (approx. 1/8 inch deep). This stuff will shrink down quite a bit so I often put in a second layer. When it dries it is crystal clear.

Now for the snow. First I mix the powder woodland scenics snow with PVA glue. The powder snow is about like baking soda but slightly larger grains. When you mix it with the PVA I go for a consistency of toothpaste. Its very thick stuff. I then place in on areas I think snow would settle like the top on the rock or falling off into the water. When you first put this on it dosn’t look right but when it dries it looks like slushy snow.

Finally I might add some reeds or anything else you want to. I glue the mini ontop of the rock and then paint the base (outside) black. Let it dry and your ready to go.

First off – What supplies did I use when putting blood on a snow base?
Aside from the large lord sized square base:

• Techstar Snowflakes (for the snow base of course!)
• Tamiya Clear Red Acrylic Paint
• Water

Am I forgetting anything?

Bloody Snow Effect
This is a very easy effect to achieve. First thing you want to do is make sure the snow base is dry. Once it has completely dried all you need to do is wet the area you want the blood to go pretty good with water. Go ahead and saturate it. Next take a grungy brush and dip it straight into the Tamiya Clear Red paint and touch it to the watered down snow. The water will help the Tamiya red ink spread in a realistic manner.

The initial dab of red will be fairly pale. This is good because in the outer reaches of the blood pool it will start to fade. I added several more dabs to the central area to give the middle a deeper red. Also on rocks and other areas where the snow won’t dillute the blood I added thicker dabs of pure Tamiya clear red to give it a coagulated look. (See rock below for a good example).

That is it. This is a very easy thing to do.

Well that wraps up this painting guide. I had a lot of fun putting this together and would like to do more of these in the future. It took quite a bit of dedication to write down notes on every step but overall I think it was worth it. If you liked this guide and want to see more or you just have a question don’t hesitate to e-mail me at: slorak@curdledmilk.com. Thank you for visiting.