The Desertbalde

So, I finally finished up the Desertbalde. I am very happy with how it turned out. I can improve in my plasticard skills but I think it is still on an acceptable level with this build. I do have some Ideas for the next step in practising my plasticard skills. It will still be a kit bash but with more scratch than on this one. As I am currently also painting away at some thing much larger (our house) than my models it might be awhile before this new project. In the mean time I will paint up some marines that have been hanging around my to do shelf. I will also return to the northern ghosts and finish some of the myrmidons and knights as they are mostly built and only need some greenstuffing before going to paint.

Another short update on the Desertblade

Well this will be another of these short updates as I have not really anything new to say except to show the progress of my work. In short, the stomach flue is over, which means that I have some more energy again, most of that energy is spent on the hose and garden at the moment as the weather is nice and as the proverb goes, strike while the steel is hot. The other day it was cloudy and a bit of rain which meant that I did have time and peace of mind to work on the Desertblade, I got the tracks mounted, the main gun painted and started out on the heavy bolter turrets. Regarding the tracks  how is it that a computer generated model does need so much fiddling to come together? One would have thought that it would just be to smack on the track peace and they would fit nicely, but o no! Luckily I had not attached the drive wheels so I could adjust the position a bit but I would have expected the to come on more smoothly. Well they are on now and the position will have to do. They are just base painted now and they need some more attention but that will be for another day.

Short short update on the Desertblade

This will be a very short update on what has been going on since not much has happened. Last week we had valpurgis night here and we had some friends over which was very nice but did not leave me any time to paint. Then I got hit by a stomach flue which also has prevented me from painting. So nothing much has happened from my last post. The main hull is now painted and I have started on the chipping and some details. Hopefully I can get some more painting in next week before I have to go away on work for a whole week.

Desertbalde update

I have been busy at work and with the house now that the snow finally has gone. But I have managed to get some hours in on the Desertblade build. Once I got the hang of working with plastic card things moved along nicely. I wanted to keep as much of the detail of the original as possible so I keep the amount of plasticcard as low as possible but I still had to make a new top to the hull as I lowered the turrets position and extended the rear deck. Once the plasticard was attached I added some bolts buy using a wire and some paint. The wire picks up the same amount each time and you can just add it as a drop. Two or three times of this will create a raised bump. Much easier than making plastic nuts, especially as they should be rounded on marine vehicles. Once all the parts where assembled I gave them a coat of black and started painting. As I dry brush my models I have learned not to paint to large surfaces at a time as the drybrush will get clogged and you might get lazy if the areas are to big and not work them over properly. Currently the base colour is 15 layer of paint before adding detail and battle damage and weathering. The turret is now painted as well as the centre part of the hull. I am starting out on the track covering and the side plates, after this I will add details and such before starting on the smaller parts and final assembly. I do like how it is coming together. I suppose this will take me some time to finish. Then I have some marines to paint, but I have already come up with the next conversion project, it will be a dropship, smaller than a thunder hawk but larger than a thunder chick. We will see when that happens, hopefully the Desertblade will be done by then.

Desertblade

During ester I had some vacation from work and it was spent divided among fixing with the house, eating and drinking with relatives and doing some plasticard work. I have always been envious of those who can scratch build anything from plasticard and make it look like it came straight out of the GW factory. Me, I am just proficient in reassembling models in new ways making new models but they are basically just combination of parts already available.
Now I thought that I would try my hand at some basic customisation of a kit using platicard and a base model. What to build (as if I do not have a lot of unfinished projects as it is)? I have always liked the baneblade, ever since my first games of spacemarine. But I have never owned one, not in epic nor in wh40k. So a bandblade it would be, but my days as an imperial guard commander is far behind me, I only have time for my Chaos, Mechanicum and Desert Eagles. The Forge World Fellbalde is however a spacemarine super heavy tank used during the heresy which shows that marines could have super heavy tanks and it fits right in with my back story of the Desert Eagles. They are after all guarding an abandoned weapon storage containing wargear collected over a period of some 10k years, containing any thing from the heresy to current times spanning all chapters and so on (it is a mystery of how this stash ended up on a desert world and who put it there, but once found it had to be guarded).
In the beginning I liked the Fellbalde model a lot and I was almost about to by one. But as I though about it it looked to bare, I dont know how to express it but it is just tracks, with some rather flimsy side panels, some large las-cannon mounts and a cupola with two large pipes. Instead I decided to use the Banebalde model and some plasticard to make my own version of the Fellbalde. So I started searching the net for what other people had done, mostly it came down to two approaches, either you just take the Baneblade, paint it in marine colours and say it is a Fellblade or you by an upgrade kit from a company ( have no clue which one they use, but they all look the same) and add it to your Banebalde kit.
To get a feeling of what I could do with the original kit I stated to play around with MS paint and some pictures of the Banebalde and soon came to the conclusion that it would look much better to make a model based on a modern tank like the M1A2, T90, Leopard II or Merkava and paint it up for my Desert Eagles. This also meant that the original Banebalde weapons out fit would be more suited for this build than the dual barrel turret of the Fellbalde or the quad lasers. However, the Banebalde is very similar to a post worldwar II tank like the centurion and it needs quite a substantial rebuild to look modern and like a space marine tank. So the M1 Desertbalde was borne. I made some ad on side plates to go over the original side plating but kept it small as not to loose al the detail. I also bought some Landraider upgrade kits, ie some predator parts, so that I could exchange the gun turrets of the Banebalde with marine versions. I also choose to swap places between the twin linked heavy bolters and the las-cannon turrets. I also decided to remove the housing beneath the turret and lower it so that it came more in line with the track coverings. This however meant that I could not mount the heavy bolter turrets on top of the track coverings where the las-canons used to be as the turret would hit them. But this was solved by my need to make the turret larger to match the look of a modern tank. I added some angled plates to the front of the turret and some gun boxes to the back, putting the Heavy bolters on top of the turret. I also made some changes to the back, removing the shrine and the double barrels. The back is now sloping upward like on the rihno and the fuel barreles are mounted in a row across the back.
Well that is as far as I have come, now the model is resting before I add some more details, I find that it is not good to do the build in one go. In stead I let it bee for some time and then I come back to it with fresh eyes and see if it still holds up. So this might not be the final look but so far I am happy with it.

Progress report

This will be a short progress report as I have not finished any major models lately. I have been cleaning up on the to do list, mostly single model painted for relaxation. Three and a half Desert Brederen are now painted. The Helldrake that I got for Christmas is starting to take shape, even if there is still a lot to do there.
I will soon start painting on one of the defiler walker artillery that I got as a bonus from the Knight project. I will make it Desert coloured and paint up a Techmarine to go with it. I have also made a sergeant and a spotter to my heavy weapon squad, one pained they will get a razorback.
At the local hobby centre I also found some miniguns from "maxmini" so now I will make another heavy weapon squad.
In the near future I will receive an order from GW with some weapon sprues and some Dark Angel upgrade sprues. I will use the weapons to upgrade two old plastic landraiders. These where originally for my Dark Angels but I never got around to painting them (I already have the duplicates painted). The rest of the weapons will go into a Fellbalde conversion project.











I do have so many plans for what I want to paint and so little time. We will see how much of it that gets done. I will anyhow try to limit the amount of models being painted at the same time.

Desert Bretheren

For my birthday I got a kit with Eavy Metal Edge Lining paints and a box of finecast Black Templar Sword Bretheren from my wife. Now I have not worked a lot with finecast, just one model before but I must say that it was quite a nostalgic moment. The models are highly detailed, very sharp edges and of course a lot of warping. In the old times, late 90th and early 2000 metal models had the same detail and where often bent and misshapen from their stay in the blister pack. This was before white metal and so the models where quite easy to bend back into some form of straightness. The same was the case with my sword bretheren, the chainswords where bent and wobbly  some of the models had clear missalighnments between front and back and some had obvious under castings giving them a somewhat famined look.
But sine they where a birthday present I love them, they are looking super cool and as my wife pointed out, they will fit right in with my Desert Eagles in robes. Well I started with some hot water straigthening of the models and got them ok, not great but straight enough. The I set about painting them and I am super pleased with the result. I think they are even better looking as Desert Eagles than my Death Wing Knights. However, looking closely at the models one can see that my drybrushing technique is not working as well on finecast as it does on plastic. The surface is slightly rougher so it tends to form a more knobbly texture when dry brushed, this sadly means that the shading is not as smooth and even as on the plastics. On the other hand, the details are much sharper and gives a great contrast. I am also still experimenting with my new recipe for Desert Eagle armour so the colouration differs somewhat between models.

On the topic of paints, I did not think I would use the edge lining paints as much as I do, since I mostly drybrush, but they are excellent to pic out details and give an extra edge to things. So all in all I am very happy with my presents.