Stormbird scratchbuild - progress update

I haven't made too much noticeable progress but have completed a couple tedious tasks that were outstanding.

The engine nozzles we're foremost in the list tedious items to build. Again, taking lessons Blackadder's Thunderhawk scratchbuild, I started with some generic Target brand mouthwash caps. After a little sanding I measured the cap into three segments and made a guide mark every third ridge of the cap. Then about a weeks' work of meticulous cutting and gluing of 1mm by 1mm styrene bar, first in half inch pieces down the length of the cap followed bending and wrapping with the same size styrene around the cap at the base of these half inch pieces. Yeah it was as tedious as it sounds.

I also added a cone to the inside of of the completed nozzle, just in case anyone looks in there. Eventually there will be some LED effects so this may be seen at that stage.

Finally, I was able to get the pivoting arm for the front landing gear built and integrated into the gear housing. There will need to be an arm that runs the length of the vehicle and ties into the rear gear so I can control it with one mechanical operation. Bearing in mind that this finicky piece may have problems down the road I decided to make it removable via screws. I built some recessed screw holes for the outside of the gear housing and wrapped the nuts with styrene so they could be glued in place with plastic glue on the inside of the Stormbird. 

Not a lot to looks at but this stuff sure took a long time to get together. The next tedious task is to build the rear landing gear which will be a lot harder since I need to make the same components twice and keep things as exact as possible. Hopefully I'll have that and the final engines build before the new year.

Stormbird scratchbuild - progress update

I've made a little more progress on disembarkation ramp doors and the interior area that will be exposed once the doors are open.

I've also begun building the landing gear feet and hinged arms. Ultimately the landing gear will be servo controlled so I'm going to begin building the mechanical components that will raise and lower the gear. I want to have a single servo control the front and rear landing gear so I'm going to have to figure out a lever system to get a longer range of motion since the rear gear sits higher on the hull. I won't be adding electronics till most everything cosmetic is done but I've left enough room to run wires for servos and LEDs and I'll be managing the rods and gears to run everything now.

Once the landing gear is built completely I can work on the 4 ball turrets. They'll be the last big piece to build before I can do all the detailing and layering that will make this look like a finished model.

It's not technically Stormbird progress but also bought a cool Tamiya motorized hobby drill. It comes a a model kit that requires assembly but was a fun little side project as a break from plasticard fabricating. It'll probably be really useful when i start adding the fine details.

I hope to have another update in about a week once I have at least the front landing gear mechanics working..

Thunderhawk Gunship Scratchbuild - The Beginning

"A beginning is a very delicate time." - Frank Herbert

After shopping around on the Forge World website I realized I wanted some sort of super heavy to go with my many Imperial Armies. I wanted some big powerful centerpiece and I thought a titan would be awesome but it would have to be at least a Reaver or larger and it's just more than I can rationalize for my hobby budget. I then made the foolish decision to attempt a superheavy scratchbuild project. It was either going to be a titan or a Thunderhawk Gunship, and  after some deep thought and introspection, the latter seemed a lot more of a reasonable prospect for me to actually complete someday.

After digging around in some google searches I stumbled across the infamous Blackadder's Thunderhawk scratchbuild and it really spoke to me. Instead of trying to match Forge World's now somewhat archaic sculpt and dimensions he worked from some very detailed resized digital renderings. These images were much more inline with what I thought the proportions ought to be, and Blackadder is an awe inspiring miniature scale engineer. Having made my decision I dug in and got to work.

I scaled the images down to a size that seemed appropriate to me in terms of overall size. The 3D images I was working from had a much sleeker shape than FW's Thunderhawk with is just too short and stubby for me to be happy with. I think the official model clocks in at 19 inches in length, where mine will measure about 24 inches. The height of the fuselage will probably be a little shorter but it should look less like a shoe box with wings and more of a vaguely plausible flying machine. I had some old foam core floating around the workshop so I used that to build a rough hull matching the dimensions I wanted to go for. In retrospect this created a lot of extra work for me since the foam core I was using was slightly warped. There was a lot of bending and irritating glueing that had to happen to fix this but I've risen above to create a much more fleshed out hull.

My primary source for sheet styrene is from cheap $5 parking signs I purchased from Home Depot, they measure about 20 x 24 inches so you really get a lot for you're money. The only down side being the miscellaneous printing on one side of the sign. I've covered the foam hull with  this budget plasticard and have begun building out some of the structural portions of the hull like the nose, tail, and upper-hull turbolaser mount using only plasticard. It took a little while to collect all the materials I need for this which only cost me about $30 for enough various thickness plasticard to build almost everything but the engines and turbolaser, but now I'm making pretty rapid progress. I'm trying to get the basic hull shape built, then I'll be building the wings and various sub assemblies (engines, landing gear, cockpit, etc) separately and attaching them as I go. I think I'm also going to build the wings to be removable so I'll be able to move this beast around without snapping anything off.

In this last shot you can see how I'm building some of the structural parts of this model. Hopefully I'll have more to post soon.

Scratch Built Orbital Cannon for Apocalypse

Our local gaming group has been playing a lot of apocalypse lately, and in preparation for our upcoming 12,000 point game, the biggest we've tried yet, I decided to build a special terrain piece.

It's obviously inspired by the fortress in the Apocalypse supplement book, and I really hustled to get this built in about 2 weeks. While it lacks loads of detail that the Apoc fortress has, I'm happy to have built something on this scale to completion.

Here are a few WIP shots with some models for scale. I'll be getting paint on this eventually but for the meantime I need a terrain break, time focus on the Iron Hands.

Grey Knights Land Raider

After being on the receiving end of the banner of Devastation, I've decided to try fielding an Inquisition Land Raider Crusader with psybolt ammunition to enhance its shooting. I was only able to fine the standard pattern at my FLGS but I decided to pick it up anyway and make a modeling project out of it. Here's a WIP shot of my scratchbuilt hurricane bolters. They're magnetized so I can swap them out for other weapons.

Army of the Future part 3

In a previous post I had talked about an inquisitorial army I intend to build along with an Adeptus Arbites contingent. Well, I've begun the HQ as seen in this post, and thanks to some Instant Mold now I've got the troops started too.

If you've never heard of instant mold, let me just sing it's praises for a minute. Its a rubbery plastic materials that you drop in hot water to transform into a malleable putty. You can then use it to make press molds like a lot of people do with greenstuff. It's permanently reusable and nothing sticks to it so its great for making your own greenstuff bits. I used it to make casts of some old Adeptus Arbites models I had. 

I'm really just making casts of the shoulder pads so I can convert my own Arbites with the help of some Maxmini Space Police heads. They look a little different from classic Arbites but they're great for my Judge Dredd inspired sensibilities.

I'm going to be fielding them as marine scouts that will be allies to a larger Inquisition Army. I haven't settled on a final list yet but there will be 20 Arbites in total, at least 5 of whom will be snipers, with Chaplain Cassius (playing the role of Judge Dredd) as their leader. I may also include an Adeptus Mechanicus thunderfire cannon as well to provide some much needed long range be firepower. I'm thinking of building a Arbites style bastion too. They'll be backed up by 2 or more Inquisitorial retinues loaded with hellguns, meltas, plasma, some crusaders and a few Jokaero! 

I hope to have these guys all built and "greenstuffed"in the next week or two so hopefully they'll get some airbrush face time along with the 20ish stormtroopers that are waiting for paint.

Army of the Future

(One of the many nice looking armies encountered at the NOVA Open)

I attended the NOVA open recently as a spectator and I learned a few things I hadn't figured out about tournaments yet. First, the theme of most of the armies that are successful in a highly competitive atmosphere like the NOVA is simply 'Winning'. Second, I care more about a good theme and background for my army than winning. That being said, even if I abandoned the 'fluff' behind my arguably powerful Grey Knights army, and built a list to win I'd probably still come in at the bottom tier (I was in the meat of the bottom quarter at the NOVA last year).

What does this mean for the future of my armies? I'll be trying to build a successful tournament army, it will have redundancy, firepower and most of all it will fit in with the style of army lists that seem so popular at tournaments since the addition of fliers. It will be called 'Operation Douche' and will be an IG forced focusing on getting the maximum amount of Conscripts on the board and choking up my opponents with corpses. We'll see if I can keep up the steam to get it ready for the NOVA next year.

The more imminent focus however will be an Inquisitorial Task Force from the Grey Knights codex with an allied contingent of Adeptus Arbites (who will be played by Space Marine Scouts).  I've always wanted an Arbites army ever since I first saw the 2nd ed models and with the recent release of Maxmini's 'Space Police Helmets' I decided the finally take the plunge.

I've begun work on my Judge Dredd look alike who will be a counts as Chaplain Cassius, and he'll soon be followed by about 20 scouts of various types and maybe an Adeptus Mechanicus Thunderfire cannon as well.

Seeing him blown up this large makes me see how much of a hack job I did with the greenstuff. I'm going to have to do a lot of cleanup.

I hope to bring this army to Adepticon for the 40k friendly this year so I'll be trying to use blog posts as a motivator to keep my momentum going to get this assembled by about February.

Thine arms shall be forged in resin - Part 2

A while back I had my first run at trying to make some resin casts of scratch built autocannon arms for my Dreadnoughts (check out the previous post). I was very optimistic but had less than impressive results.

This was the first box for the mould

This was the result, worse than finecast.

This time I built the mould use the proper technique, covering a half of the arm in clay and pouring latex on top of the clay half. Then, I remove the clay and poured the other half of the mould. I followed this tutorial from War Frog's Hobby Blog where he does a much cleaner and more precise job, but nonetheless here are my results from the second try.

Here you can see that the mould wasn't quite right resulting in some barrels that are malformed.

The new resin arms covered in flash.

The final product is satisfactory but by no means perfect. They required a metric shit ton of sanding and greenstuff filling. All but one needed to have the muzzles rebuilt using plasticard tubing as well.

I definitely want to make another mould and try again having learned from my recent mistakes. I think the key is how the item is placed in the mould and making sure the vents are large enough.  

Lose the Fear: Working with Greenstuff, an Adepticon class review

Last weekend was the first Adepticon weekend I've attended and knowing it was such a big event I really wanted to try a little bit of everything so I made a point to register early for a class. I've taken two separate weekend long masterclasses with miniature painter Mathieu Fontaine so I'm confident with my advanced painting techniques but I really feel like I have a lot to learn in terms of sculpting, especially using greenstuff, so Joe Orteza's class seemed perfect for me.

Learning basic painting tips from someone that paints at a professional level has revolutionized the way I paint models. Things like using a wet palette, pulling paint to the darkest desired area and using the flat of the brush instead of the point are all simple but necessary painting tips that are integral to painting like a pro. I'm happy to say Joe's greenstuff class offered me the same crucial basics that I believe will allow me to develop my sculpting to a useful and enjoyable level. 

We started the class by getting a 5 sculpting tools (only 4 pictured) and a mirror on which to create relief sculptures as well as a small batch of greenstuff and a packet of step by step instruction with illustrations to accompany the various tutorials. Right there I was content with the $20ish dollar cover charge for the class, the right tools go a long way. Since everyone in the class had some exposure to greenstuff we moved right into creating basic reliefs, a purity seal, a chain, laurels, tassels for a rope and a feather. Once Joe covered have to get your greenstuff to stick to the mirror but not your tool, and other stuff like that, I was surprised by how easy it was. I really can't say often enough how easily you can improve when a skilled instructor can look over you shoulder and say "no, like this..." when your dumb hands are trying to do the wrong thing.

We spent about 90 minutes sculpting and finished with another 30 minutes of discussion over how to fabricate other common wargaming articles like capes and banners. All told, I'd got a ton out of the lecture and now would feel confident trying to make some of my own items. I wasn't sure how much I'd get out of a 2 hour class since it's such a short time to learn some very in depth techniques, but it was plenty of time to cover the basics and still ask a few questions. Joe was a nice funny guy and was able to clearly explain what we should be doing so that I was able to get results I was happy with on the first try.

I would highly recommend that anyone looking to up their modeling game look into classes like this, whether they be at Adepticon or any other event.