Promethean Sun, Basecoating finished, brush work underway

Last month Black Library released a collectors edition novella for the Horus Heresy. It is called Promethean Sun (do you underline or italicize novella names?). I believe that it is primarily about Vulkan and the Salamanders Legion, battling against Exodite Eldar; however, two other primarchs and their legions also feature. Not having read it yet, I'm not sure how the focus breaks down.

I bought one for myself and one for a friend who plays Salamanders Space Marines and Eldar. The novella will make the perfect b-day present for him. I myself am not a huge Salamanders fan. Of course I think they are a cool legion, but I would say the same for any of the legions (except for the Imperial Fists, who I would rate as freaking awesome). It's just that I don't have any special appreciation for the Salamanders, relative to the others. My desire for owning and reading the book comes simply from it being a collectors item dealing with the Horus Heresy.

                                                   Novellas with and without the sleeve

                                                                     Author's signature
                                                               

In other news, I have solved the problem with my airbrush. It wasn't the airbrush at all. The compressor I was using is not suited for prolonged use. After 20 minutes, it would overheat, the air coming into the airbrush would be hot and dry the paint, clog the nozzle, and shut down my spray painting fun.

I borrowed a much higher quality compressor from a friend. The thing turns itself off when you stop spraying with the airbrush. Awesome. It also has a vapor chamber to keep moisture in the air from diluting your paint and changing the consistency of the paint coming out of your airbrush while you're painting. Doubly awesome.

As a result, I finished basecoating everything (that was primed) on Monday night. Didn't take long to do at all. The army is coming along nicely. Below is a quick preview. The lighting was was poor, but I promise that the models do, in fact, have light blue grey paint on them. Once I get a model completely finished I will borrow my friend's photo booth thingy.

Converted Vindicator, Summer time!

One year of law school is now under my belt. The last term was busy, and while it has been 4 months since my last blog post, it has not been four months since I last worked on something for my Space Wolves. I have assembled most of an 1850 point army, including this:

Leman Russ found the STC for the tank bearing his name, and damnit, my army is going to include one! And there it is, in converted form. I wanted a Leman Russ tank and a vindicator in the army, and this covers the both of them.

The siege shield, cannon, and vent at the back are from the Vindicator sprue (thanks ebay). The hull is from the old Leman Russ kit. No idea if the new kit would result in any difference.

Looking back, this conversion would have been fairly easy if I had known what I would be doing before I did it. As it happened, I put the Russ together, and then did the converting work. Made things more difficult, and next time around I would do things in reverse (proper) order.

I tried doing a rope on the side of the tank, similar to Night Runner's wolf tooth necklaces.  You can see his excellent tutorial here.

I managed the rope. The teeth were beyond the patience level I was currently possessed of. Instead I took the rune from the bottom of the storm shield in the Wolf Pack kit. Note: make sure the surface you roll out the rope on is completely clean. Any bit of debris that is picked up is hard to get off.

Basecoating the army will soon commence. Priming is done (except on the vindicator).

I plan to post my thoughts on 'counts as' models sometime next week. My vindicator is counts as, and so I wanted to say a few things on where I think the line between acceptable and not acceptable for using such models is.

Wolf Lord model, and a little conversion. And Happy New Years!

This guy will count as a wolf lord, or battle leader. Or maybe just a regular wolf guard. Depends on the game. The right arm was originally holding a thunder hammer, but I wanted a frost blade instead.

I haven't decided if I like the model better with the wolf's leg hanging off of the left shoulder. If I leave it off, I'll add some green stuff in the space above the shoulder.

The right shoulder pad is from Forge World. It's not the pad I wanted to use, but it fit much better.

And the little conversion:

The right leg is from the Devastator box. It's for the marine you can have kneeling. I just did some simple sawing and glueing.

Happy New Year!

Canis Wolfborn, magnetizing the arms and pinning the legs

In this post, I will be going over how I magnetized the model's arms, and attached it to the base over cork board. 

One of my Christmas presents this year was Canis Wolfborn. I wasn't too impressed with the model when it was released; however, after seeing it in person, I love it.

My original plan was to just assemble him as Canis. Then when it came time to glue on his arms, I decided that I also wanted to be able to use him as a wolf lord and give him a thunder hammer. Up to this point I hadn't been interested in using a thunderwolf, but the model is too cool! I make no claim that any of the following is the right way to do this. Its just how I went about it. If you know of an easier/better way, feel free to post a link!

Magnetizing the arms

The main problem I had was figuring out how to glue the magnets to the torso and arms, and have the arms fit flush to the model, as they are supposed to. 

First, I clipped off the part of the arm that was supposed to insert into the torso. Then, I drilled into the model to make a space for both magnets (the one for the torso and the one for the arm) to fit into, with the outer magnet being flush with the torso. Then I put a dab of glue into the hole, placed the magnet, and waited for the glue to dry. Then, I put in the outer magnet (with no glue). This way, I could just put a dab of glue on the outer magnet, place the arm as it is supposed to fit, and then quickly spray the joint with an accelerating agent to make the super glue set before it spread to the rest of the model and glued the arm to the torso. 

Below you can see the drilled out space with the inner magnet glued in place. The space was initially square, but a drill bit the exact size of the magnet and a drill changed that quickly enough.

And here is the model with the magnetized arms 

And the arms with the magnets. The arm on the left did take two attempts when it came to glueing the arm to the outer magnet.

Securing the model to the base. 

It was fairly apparent that simply glueing a giant metal model to cork board would not suffice. 

First, I placed the cork board on the base, and then put Canis on top.

Then, I traced the paws of the wolf on the cork board. These spaces were then cut out.

Then, I glued the cork to the base (with PVA glue).

Next, I drilled holes into the left front and right rear paw.

Holes were then drilled into the base for the metal pins that would be coming out of the paws. The pins were bent at a 90 degree angle and inserted up through the bottom of the base. The wolf was then placed on the base, with the pins in the paws. Satisfied that everything looked right, I glued the pins to the underside of the base, and hit the glue with the accelerating agent. Then, I pulled the wolf off, and filled the holes in the corkboad with green stuff, to both better secure the cork board and the pins. The hole in the cork board for the left rear paw didn't have a pin, but gave a more secure anchor to glue that paw too. Once the greenstuff had hardened, I glued Canis to the base. 

Greenstuff was later pushed onto the underside of the base, over the pins, to further secure them. 

Next up:

I''ll be starting the painting of my space wolves shortly. I'll finish the additional arms for Canis later on. I plan on giving him a thunder hammer and maybe a storm shield arm. 

Space Wolves Land Raider Redeemer WIP

Fairly basic Redeemer. No magnets or significant conversions. I used spare bits from infantry kits to add some Space Wolf character to it.