Tag Archives: Drop Pod

From the Skies

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20130819-080001.jpgNot sure what happened but everything seems to have “come together” over the weekend.  I’ve done all of the edge highlighting (and pushed that further than I normally would) and got a coat of varnish on everything.  I spent a bit of time yesterday evening gently scraping the two pieces where the fins slot in so that the fins fit properly.  They were always a tight fit and the layers of paint and varnish had made some of them a little too snug, so rather than force them together a bit of work with a flat needle file and knife has meant that they’re all fit properly without any resistance. My biggest annoyance is that I didn’t shave off enough of the bottom of the doors, which has meant that when I put them in situ and closed them, they’ve now scraped off a little bit of paint on the base.  Bloody annoying, but I’ve now shaved those down too – just need to repaint that with some black.

I’ve only a handful of things left to do.  I need to apply decals and the door Aquilas (which need painting).  The gun mount needs to be varnished and glued in place.  The two weapons need to be sorted so they fit properly on their magnetic point, one is too tight and the other too loose (and then painted too).  Everything needs to be glued together and the non-metallics need start edge highlighting along with any oils applied along with shadow washes where things meet.  This then needs a light seal with varnish and a matt varnish applied.  Finally it needs stark edge highlights on the metallics so that they look “shiny”.

Getting Closer

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Well the drop pod is almost at the point where I can begin to assemble it.  All of the blue has been airbrushed and just needs some edge highlighting with a brush.  The fins has have their red tips airbrushed and again just need a edge highlight.  Once the edge highlight has been done I intend to give everything a coat of satin varnish to seal it all in.  Red is a notorious colour as it remains absorbent if it’s been airbrushed on, so if you touch the surface you’ll end up with a finger print.  Whacking a coat of varnish over it is just enough to stop this happening and means that I can apply various weathering techniques and decals.

Outer side of the doors Doors open with harness Fins with red tips Doors closed

With the exception of managing to scuff one of the fins and get red paint on one bit, everything has gone pretty well and when I get round to putting another one together I’ll likely do things pretty much in the same order.  With luck I’ll get the edge highlighting done this evening and possibly the varnish too, which means it might even get glued together Thursday.  Drop pods are quite fiddly models to get lined up and glue together square, but they’re not hugely detailed and being able to have the various components as separate entities means the paint job is fairly straightforward.

 

Drop Pod Progress

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Just a couple of quick snaps of what I’ve got to hand.

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You can see the extra bits of sprue glued into place and if you look carefully, should be able to make out the odd bulge that’s hiding a magnet underneath

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And here is the central harness assembly, floor and top section. Pretty straightforward paint job in truth!

Release the Pods!

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Ok, perhaps a slightly inappropriate title considering how hot it currently is in the UK 😉  The past week or so had seen me beginning to put together a Space Marine Drop Pod as it’s been far too hot to paint or do very much at all.  If you’ve never put a drop pod together I’ll start off by saying that it’s not for the faint hearted.  A drop pod has five ‘petal’ doors that due to the 6th edition “true line of sight” rules need to be constructed so that they will open.  This means that you can no longer glue them shut to ensure they all line up and the interior is so highly detailed you’re forced to paint it all up in multiple sub assemblies.  This added to the issue that you need to square everything up (in multiples of five), just makes the kit a complete mare, and I’ve seen many photos where the central console is glued together wonky or things glued together that are misaligned.

However I have persevered and it’s looking pretty good.  One tip I discovered is when gluing the door sections together, you need to do a lot of “overgluing”.  This is a technique that I use fairly frequently on plastic kits.  The principal is simple, you apply more polystyrene cement than you need, and allow it to “overflow” or squidge out from the two pieces when you put them together.  Once this has set fully (12+ hours) you can trim it off with a knife and scrape/file/sand it smooth.  This really only works with flat surfaces as polystyrene cement melts the plastic together, so overgluing something that is detailed will result in that detail melting away.  For the drop pod doors, I overglued all round the edge of the door and “hinge” and used five clothes pegs (the ones with the silicon grip) to secure everything in place overnight.  It’s critical that the pieces are lined up perfectly else you’ll have a bugger of a job when it comes to getting everything flush.  A bit of liquid green stuff sorted out any odd little gaps that appeared and smoothed everything together.  End result is the doors look look like they’re a single solid piece rather than two pieces glued together.

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