RuneBrush
Rune's Painting & Miniature Blog

Sadly my afternoon & evening didn’t go as well as hoped.  I didn’t start until later than I’d planned and got interrupted with a problem from work, so even working till 11-30 I didn’t get the mini to a position to spray.  However with a little bit of work this morning the torso is now primed.  As expected, there are a few bits that need green stuffing to tidy them up and a few glue seepages that need scraping down.  The reason the photo looks shiney by the way is that this was taken less than five minutes after it had been sprayed – the final finish is very matt.

I think my next task is any filling on the arms, then secure all of the base together.  Although my original intention was a number of assemblies, I’m not going to do this now.  I realised that the weight of the torso, legs and arms is far too much to practically hold and paint, so this is going to get glued along with the base and tackled as a single entity.  I shall be keeping the fur/cloak separate however for ease of painting.  Once the cloak and torso are airbrushed, I’ll glue those together as well.

I started off yesterday evening with the best intentions.  I cleared an area to work in, got my rivet maker out, lit a candle for the heat and got a load of sprues ready.  All I can say is that if anybody can get a Greif Rivet maker to consistantly make uniform sized rivets, please tell me how the hell you do it.  I spent over an hour and a half faffing around and managed to make around twenty ‘OK’ rivets.

So I decided to revert back to Plan A and use 0.79mm ball bearings instead.  Though more fiddly and more difficult to manouver due to being glued in place with super glue, the end result is at least more uniform than different sized plastic rivets.

As you can see from the image I’ve got the front of one side done.  The photo picked up a number of glue spots and one or two ball bearings that need popping out and re-positioning.  Before I hit the sack I managed to drill all of the marked positions on the other side, which went more quickly than the first ones.  With hindsight (the most wonderful of things), I should have worked out the positioning on the computer and printed off a ‘ruler’ for each strip of rivets.  This would have resulted in a better distribution of rivets along the length of the edging – that said, providing it looks OK, I’m beyond the point of caring.  I also got two loops cut and drilled that will allow me to ‘fix’ the cloak on, this biggest annoyance is that the holes need a bit of filling after the loops are glued in – which is going to complicate the fact that I wanted the cloak as a separate assembly.

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Just a very minor update post.  Despite going to B&Q last night to collect carpet tiles (the growing saga of my brothers flat), I actually got a little more work done.  I’ve redrilled the hole on the base that will take the foot – this is the third time – and ended up with a much more balanced arrangement.  Basically I always felt that the model wasn’t stood centrally on the base, but this latest tweak has fixed my concerns.  Instead of doing more filling on the gun arm, I glued a piece of plasti-card onto it.  Although filling is needed, this will give me a better finish with which to paint.  I do need to add some detailing to this though – mind you the same applies to the other shoulder!  Oh I glued the ForgeWorld power fist together and got that stuck on, it looks fantastic, but currently unbalances the model a little

Tonight I actually have an unexpected evening to myself, so will begin to make the rivets for the torso – with luck I’ll even get them stuck on   I also want to bend the toes of the feet – notice plural, as the foot that is flat on the base now has one toe over hanging the base :s  I’m planning on cutting them from underneath and bending them.  These bits should stand me in good stead for tomorrow afternoon, where I’m going to have to go at the project full tilt.

Running Totals: Time – ~ 75 Hrs; Cost – £38.92

What is it they say “The best laid plans…”.  It has transpired that we have some kind of blockage in the waste pipe at home, which resulted in a pretty substantial flood from our downstairs loo – the water from my sisters shower.  This has meant that we’ve currently got the plumber in, dismantling our fairly new downstairs toilet area.  We’re struggling to get some of the carpet tiles for my brothers new flat (that I have to fit) which means that I’m having to travel farther afield to get them.  Oh and Monday evening got almost completely obliterated with computer jobs.

On a plus point, I have Thursday afternoon, Friday and all of Monday off as holiday where I need to seriously crack on with things.  Last night I managed to squeeze in a bit of filling of the gun arm.  This can be sanded tonight (with luck) and a bit more filling/packing which should result in the shoulder mount for that arm being largely finished.  The Chaos Marine has had both feet repositioned and filled (fingers crossed it’ll look OK as I’m not that great at sculpting).  In order to stand a chance to getting this project done, I need to be in the position to sculpt the cloak on Thursday afternoon, to allow it to dry overnight – giving me Friday to begin spraying the whole thing.  Quite scarily, if I begin with a coat of grey primer, it could be Monday before I actually airbrush anything (ideally 24 hours drying time on the primer).  What this does however is to quite dramatically focus my attention on getting the torso finished.  So it’ll be a matter of adding the stud rivets around the edging tonight or tomorrow and drilling the holes for the wire that will hold the fur/cloak in place.  I also need to make a decision on the exhausts and power plant.

Now if things actually do go to plan (unlikely to be honest), I could potentially get the cloak shape knocked out in an hour or so.  I can then position it near a light in order to cure it more quickly.  If I can get it solid in time to prime it on Thursday, I could potentially grasp back half a day – and airbrush on Friday afternoon.

Deep breath moment…  I’ve been concentrating on getting some websites finished off for customers as they’ve been outstanding for quite a while now.  I’m writing my own PHP back office to provide content management and such like, so it’s been a major undertaking.  Sadly this has absorbed most of my potential modelling time over the past week or so.  My brother is moving flats in the next few weeks as well, so I’m going to have to assist him there as his new flat needs a little bit of work done before he can move in.  On Monday I worked late on a server at work, so late that I pretty much came home and almost went straight to bed.

This has kind of forced my hand as to how to get enough time together in before Games Day to finish my entry.  So I’m taking a half day next Thursday (time owed from working late this week) and the Friday & Monday.  Even if I have to do stuff round my brothers flat over that weekend, I have this Sunday (hopefully), all evenings next week and those two and a half days – plus hopefully some of the weekend.  If that’s not enough to get my Dreadnought done then there isn’t any hope!

Oh, bit by bit the new Space Wolves released are being leaked onto the internet.  Warseer seems to have the best pictures currently.  The basic concept is that they’re releasing a sprue with enough components to make up a squad of ten heavily customised marines, but has enough bits on it to be combined with regular marine boxed sets (tactical, assault, devastator and scout!) to make the various packs in an army.  There is a five man wolf guard terminator boxed set (that looks awesome), plus a couple of redone characters (Njal & a new character).  Sadly it seems that they’re keeping the old Logan, Ragnar and Ulrik.  However conversions should be much easier, plus I actually prefer to not use characters.

The weekend’s work wasn’t quite as productive as I’d hoped – bearing in mind that I really should be starting to apply paint this week.

The torso is largely done.  I need to fix the head in, rivet the whole assembly and add wolf pelts over it.  I’ve begun work again on the arm shoulders, the close combat arm will be pretty simple in comparison to what I was intending, although I’d like to add some runes and totems to it to make it a little bit more interesting.  The heavy bolter arm I’ve decided to simplify by having the guns simply glued together, rather than cut up and set within a box.  Although my original idea is still better, too many things could go wrong and I’m concerned that I could end up messing the whole thing up and having to resort to something different.  The spindle for the heavy bolter arm has also been fixed into place.

Although both arms can have work done on them I’ve relativly little that I can do on the main body & legs until I have completed the base and know what actual pose the Dreadnought is going to have.  As such I’ve now begun to assemble the marine that is being stood on.  I’ve had to repose both feet to make him look like he’s struggling, and with luck will have one arm grabbing one of the toes of the foot.  I’m not quite sure how to bend the toes of the Dreadnought, but I’m sure that I’ll work it out :s  Once the marine is in place, I’ll bore a hole in through it into the foot & leg.  This will mean that the Dreadnought will come away from the base, but more importantly I can actually glue all of the items that require directionality on – the wolf pelts, trinkets and most importantly the wolf fur on the Dreadnoughts back.

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So I had a fantastic weekend away, still feel quite chilled despite the fact I’m still flagging from lack of sleep   Looking quickly at the mock up of my dreadnought, I’m still very happy with the overall appearance.  My new rivet maker arrived yesterday, so I can put some rivets onto it soon as well.  Watch this space…

I had today off, but went off to The Hawk Conservancy today and had a very nice relaxing day there, chinese takeaway for tea and have just chilled this evening.  However (and onto the subject of the post), I’ve decided that due to time constraints that neither arm will be clad with the ribbed plasti-card.  Current thinking is that I’ll ‘edge’ the shoulder blocks with the plastic strip I have – perhaps thicker card on one side than the other.  I am still going to do the conversion for the heavy bolter arm though.

I’ve also just won a rivet mold – basically you heat up a piece of plastic sprue and ram it into the metal mold.  Then when cooled, you cut the rivet off the sprue and glue it on.  Not sure how it will work, but £5 is worth a trial.

I ordered the bits to make up a Chaos marine last week and these arrived on Thursday.  Have just done minor tidying and blue tacked the pieces together to make a mock of the whole Dreadnought.  Still needs a lot of work, but personally I think that it’s going to end up being very nice piece.  I’ll put the photo of the mock at the bottom of this post.  There is a larger gap than I expected around the waist, so a few wolf pelts are going to have to be added to disguise it.  As I said on an earlier post, I’m aiming to have three basic assemblies – the Dreadnought, the giant fur and the base.  I’m going to get the Dreadnough torso finished and attached to the legs and then will sculpt the fur again, as I’m not happy with the actual one I’ve done – though the exercise did prove the principal of what I wated to do.

Yes that is a tank in the background.