Project: Iron Warriors and Flames of War

I'm back at my home town for the holidays which means I won't be able to get much done. But I've brought back 11 Chaos Space Marines and a Chaos Vindicator to work on.

Before I left my apartment, I took some pictures that are blog worthy. These are what I've been working on recently.

A magnetized Iron Warriors Dreadnought. I even did a little extra and magnetized the head so it's rotatable.

As you can see it's pretty much still in progress, not done with some of the smaller details yet. But for the first time ever, it's the brightest I've ever painted for any model/army I have. Though, the silver is actually airbrushed.

I'm still wondering if the basing colour works, I'm out of ideas for now, which is why I used dark brown for the basing.


Also, I need to work on my Panzergranadier platoon. Even though Bagration starts in May, I'd rather finish them way ahead of time just so I don't have to rush.

I'll be working on more infantry models for my Iron Warriors.

Airbrushing - The Ork Trukk!

On Saturday, I've got to go buy a new airbrush since my previous one was damaged from the fall it took while I was cleaning it.

Thanks to Khairul who organized a short trip for Iqbal and I to go take a look at the place where Khairul himself got his airbrush a long time ago. He also taught us what to look for and what to avoid when looking for an airbrush. So if you want to know more about an airbrush, feel free to ask me.

Here's the kit I got. The Sparmax airbrush set. Side feed for paints and comes with an extra bottle for paint storage. Sparmax also sells spare parts that can replace almost anything on the airbrush, so it's a good buy knowing that if any of the parts were to be damaged or gone missing, I can replace them, unlike the previous one I owned.

I did some airbrushing on my Ork Trukk just for fun and take a look. You can never get such a smooth surface when using the normal brush. Not to mention, this process took little time and trouble too.

With the amount of corrugated recycled boxes I have, I decided to be environmental friendly for once and reused the box to build myself an airbrushing station. Just use some masking tape to fill up the gaps and hold the box up and it's good enough. With the amount of space I have here I can spray quite a lot!

I've just finished painting my Ork Trukk too. Just that I haven't finished the Orky crew.

I think I went overboard with the weathering. I used a very watered down mixture of Vermin Brown, Scorched Brown, Graveyard Earth and a dash of Devlan Mud. I call it da Orky weathering mix! (How creative for a name.)

So if you have any questions on airbrushing, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll do my best to help and spread the airbrushing love. :D

Hobby Tips - Never put your drink near the painting cup!

Well, this will be a major hobby update. For the past few days I've been assembling and assembling non-stop. And up till today, I've managed to start painting on the stuff I've been assembling.

Why I said "Never put your drink near the painting cup"? Because, when your body is accustomed to the position of your painting cup, your hand will automatically dip the brush into the water and the swishing movement of the brush will begin. Lucky for me, my cup is already half way done, and I realized instantly that I was about to mix Badab Black into my drink. Will that be Yummy?

Here are some images from a few days ago. I've been assembling a lot as I've mentioned.

These will be my Alpha Legion Chosen Chaos Space Marines. Anyone smell 5 meltas?

I've also been assembling more Ork Boyz from the Black Reach set.

Not only that, I've finished assembling 5 Chaos Terminators along with a Chaos Terminator Lord and a Sorcerer Terminator Lord.

I also assembled 2 Chaos Rhinos for my Alpha Legion. One of them is for the Chosen Chaos Space Marines.

The one below is the Rhino meant for my Chosen. I've did a minor conversion on the twin-linked bolter. Since I want this Rhino to stand out more, I let the gunner hold two bolters which should count as twin-linked. (You may steal this idea.)

Sprayed with Chaos Black. Real good spray to have and use.

Today, the painting process started.

Looks sexy! Black Rhino with Alpha Legion doors!

I'll be doing my best in completing this Rhino as soon as I can since I've got lots more to paint. I'll also be including some free hands on this Rhino just to make it a little bit more "special".

Hobby Tutorial - Magnetizing search lights on a Land Raider.

For the past few days I've been held back from doing my hobby stuff thanks to my assignment and some of the business that I'm running. Nevertheless, I found out some very interesting stuff that you can do with magnets and green stuff.

I've assembled most of my second Land Raider today, and as you can see, my table is in a mess.

In fact, my entire room is a mess, not to mention, even my bed wasn't spared from the hobby madness.

I had to use my other table, as my primary hobby table is packed with stuff. Which reminds me that I will need to tidy it up soon!

OK, getting back to topic. I was wondering how could we make a fully WYSIWYG Land Raider and yet not face the difficulty of transporting the said vehicle. The highest point of the Land Raider is definitely the search light in which gives us the dilemma of whether to glue it on or not.

If we actually do glue it, it will risk being snapped of during gaming or transporting, so I thought, why not just magnetize the search light?

I started off by getting some green stuff, drop it into hot water. That actually softens the green stuff a lot! It makes it easier to mix and do whatever you want to it.

Since I've already glued the top part on, I had to do it the hard way. If you want to make it easy, do the green stuff and magnets first before gluing.

I placed the magnet on the opposite side and used another to hold the magnet into position.

With the green stuff I mixed, I used my finger to press it all around the magnet at the opposite side from the nearest hole. Well, like I said, if you already glued it, this is the hard way. Do make sure the magnet is at the centre, you will be able to tell the location of the magnet by watching the one on top.

Cut off the little stand on the search light.

Glue the magnet to the bottom of the search light, and do make sure you're on the right polarity. I did it wrongly. so it naturally repelled and I had to pluck it out to glue it again.

Ta-da! Not only the search light can be kept for transportation, you can also turn it around 360 degrees!

Isn't that awesome?! If only I thought of this earlier I would already use it for most of my vehicles.

Hope you find this short tutorial useful. If you have any questions, do ask either by commenting or emailing me...

Thanks for reading!

Champion with combi-plasma painted.

I've painted up the champion with combi-plasma along with 3 other guys that were waiting for me to paint for a long time. Finally I sat down and dealt with all of them at once.

The highlight of the day is of course, the champion with combi-plasma. I actually cut it off and made it a little more compact.

I think I still have to work on the glowing effects he gets from the plasma on the bolter, so I'll continue to work on him.

I still have more men to paint up, and news is here that my Forge World order will be arriving soon, so I will show you guys what I bought.

Hobby Tips - Sketch before freehand.

Sometimes I've painted my freehanded stuff on vehicles just by chance or by intuition. This time, I've been having difficulties when I wanted to create a motif for freehand for my Alpha Legion's Chaos Chosen's Rhino.

Since it's for my Chosen, I think it would be nice to give it a good freehand for their Rhino.

So, in one of my psychology classes, I was overly bored and started doodling for freehand on my Rhinos.

I like the Chaos Star, it's such a beautiful thing. Makes me want to paint Black Legion. I'll be using the Hydra symbol on the right for the Rhino when I my stuff arrives.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post and finds this a little helpful.

Hobby Tips - Simple combi-plasma conversion

I was thinking of something funny to do yesterday, a 5 men Chaos Havocs squad with 4 plasmaguns and the champion with a combi-plasma. So after working out the statistics of killing stuff with plasmas, it turns out that if the champion in the squad was given a plasma, it will almost guarantee the death of almost anything when they go rapid firing.

I've seen someone converted a combi-melta or combi-plasma somewhere, but somehow I thought of doing this myself last night. I went through the bits box and found that the plasma pistol from the Space Marines seem to fit and look as though it's enough for a one-time use weapon.

So the cutting was made for the bolter and the plasma pistol.

Simple yet effective. I like it.

When Super Glue attacks! Visit http://gluedmyfingers.blogspot.com

Before I begin, I would like to share that today is the first time I received a parcel from GW that contains so much metal.

From the picture below, you will see:
2x Iron Warriors Conversion Pack

1x Iron Warriors Warsmith

1x Iron Warriors Shoulder Pads

1x Alpha Legion Shoulder Pads

1x Black Legion Shoulder Pads

2x Chaos Havoc with Autocannon

That's 8 blisters in total!

Well, after washing and removing the tabs off the metal, I got a cut on my finger, which is no big deal, since I always get it when using the knife.

I assembled and worked on the Iron Warriors Warsmith first. Wow, was thinking of letting him stand on a piece of a destroyed vehicle, what style!

I used my all time favourite, high volume, high reliability high powered super glue to do the gluing. In Malay, "Gam Gajah Kuat" literally translates to Strong Elephant Glue, I think you get the idea.

What I'm saying is, the nozzle was kinda stuck when I wanted to glue the Rhino part on to the base for my Warsmith. Seeing that it's stuck, I put more pressure by pressing it a little harder, that's when it decided to attack me! The nozzle "un-stucked" itself by bursting out a load of super glue, hitting most of my left fingers and hand with it.

Luckily there were no minis nearby.

I gave my friend a call and got some nail polish remover from her. Acetone from nail polish removers are claimed to be able to dissolve super glue.

I would say it only worked when I use it to dissolve the glue on my nails. It does not exactly dissolve the glue on the fingers... And remember the cut I told you about? Acetone burns the cut!!! Wash hands with soap after you're done cleaning even if it didn't work...

This is what remains on my hand even after soaking my fingers in the nail polish remover...

Take a read here if you glued your hands or something.

http://www.supergluecorp.com/removingsuperglue.html

Other than that, tonight's progress has been delayed for a few hours. That's sad. Well, with hard fingers now, getting back to work with the Warsmith...

Hobby Tip - Saving space in your room.

Good day! I'll start off today by saying that I've been painting recently, and I'll post up some of my newly painted stuff tomorrow, though it will be on the Alpha Legion again... Nevertheless, I'm still painting!

OK, first of, ever since I've started with 40k, I've noticed that there is a disease called chronic-lack-of-space. My room will get cluttered with sprues and bits from various box sets, especially when I buy things like Space Marines or Chaos Space Marines. Even my Tyranids and Orks have lots and lots of spare bits I'm never going to use.

Do we throw these things away? Definitely not! We will never know how useful it is when we need them for a conversion or when we have those insane ideas of army building thingy...

Within my 40k timeline, I've actually gained lots and lots of sprues, especially used up ones and probably some with barely a few pieces left.

So, in order to save space in my room, I've decided to do the most organized thing I can ever think of, cutting the bits and putting them into a box! Let's take a look.

These sprues have been emptied off the bits.

The bits were then organized in these boxes that I bought from ACE Hardware. They only cost me RM 6.50 each and these are the last of them from ACE.

This is what it looks like inside. Bits! Bits! Glorious bits!

Just a little comparison of how much space I've saved.

To conclude, those sprues will be recycled whenever there's a charity run going on in my university. I don't have the heart to throw them, that's a lot of plastic! I can imagine them being melted and remoulded into a Chaos Land Raider (which is what I direly need right now).

I actually hoped that GW would run a recycling campaign for us hobbyist to sell them the sprues, maybe about RM 10 per kilo or something. So that they can actually recycle these and make them into minis again. It's like killing three stones with one bird! They cut cost on their raw materials, the hobbyist gains a little back from recycling, and the plastic isn't actually wasted off!

So let's hope that if you were to cut out the bits and separate them into compartments, please don't just throw them, recycle them.

"Pun intended. Now go start throwing a bird at three stones."