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Hi Guys,

Today I made a good deal. A guy sold me his 10 bolter marines + a sergeant from the Dark Vengeance set for 1 EU each. Consider that one tac squad is 21 pounds I think it's was a really good deal. However, I have some concerns and I hope you can help me out with it.

Issue #1
The Marines are Dark Angels, and they have the DA heraldic images as a relieve rather than a decal. My current project is a custom space marines chapter - Ursa Claws (I've purchased custom decals with the symbol of a bear claw). So I was wondering is it worth to sand off the DA logo from the shoulder pad? The link to the pic is below:
http://imgur.com/E0zYXHJ&B0PQcM9&EQupHmL

Alternatively I can paint the DA heraldic with Gold or Dark Copper and proxy those units as a Stern Guard veterans and change the name of my chapter from Ursa Scars to Feral Claws and rewrite my fluff like this: The Bears are the basic Tac Squads but the Eagles the veterans.

Issue #2
The marines are cheap but there are some plastic fillers that makes me cringe. Please look closely to what should be the space between the arm and the pad. How I am supposed to cut this off or paint it? Almost every mini apart of the sarge is like that. For example they have no space between the necks and the back of the armor. See the image below:
http://imgur.com/E0zYXHJ&B0PQcM9&EQupHmL#2

Overall I think the minis from the set are okay. They could have a bit of more poses thou. I plan to cut the flag of the backpack of the serge, then cut the wings on two parts and attached as cool wings to one of my Assault Jump Packs. The flag will be replaced with one of my sergeants stuff in my first Tac Squad box. Let me know if this is a good idea:

I've spent a lot of time converting various mini's from the Chaos sprues for DV. Its a great deal for the money, if you are willing to put in the time to work on them....which it sounds like you are.

Use a exacto to gently remove the iconography, then use the back of the blade or a mould line tool to remove the rough patches/smooth it out. In between those steps however, you could use a emery board to polish it down, then the tool to smooth it all.

Yeah the symbols should come off easily enough, especially the shoulder pad stuff allowing you to put your own chapters icons there.

I used a modelling knife and carefully scraped them off some terminators I got. Then just sand it down smooth with an emery board.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Tbh I had no idea that emery board can do the trick, I was thinking about sandpaper, but now Im just gonna buy emery board and try convert one of the marines.

An alternative is to remove the entire shoulder pad and stick a new one in it's place.

Use this as an emergency option incase you ruin the finish with your emery board.

A second alternative is filing down the DA logos and sculpting your own in it's place. This will hide any messy sanding!

The problem with the DV spurs are they are set a certain way unlike normal kits. Like other said sometimes removing the areas completely help more and use some greenstuff as a filler to add. I took me a while to convert the bikes in that set to Chaos. I can't stress enough if you use an exactor blade to cut parts off to be careful.

Something I've found useful in converting my DV stuff is to remove the model from the slottabase plastic bit, then pin it to a standard base.

And yeah, be careful trimming with the exacto knife.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sammoth wrote:
The problem with the DV spurs are they are set a certain way unlike normal kits. Like other said sometimes removing the areas completely help more and use some greenstuff as a filler to add. I took me a while to convert the bikes in that set to Chaos. I can't stress enough if you use an exactor blade to cut parts off to be careful.

Nice work, btw.

I converted the DV Marines to Ultramarines. Yes, you can do it with a razor knife and jewlers files... but a dremel would probably make it go much quicker, so long as you are VERY careful.

One tip: It's also much easier to remove the DA iconography BEFORE the models are assembled.

On the filled areas under shoulderpads... I prime in black and highlight up from a very dark basecoat. The filled areas look like shadows more than anything else; it's not a big issue.

I have converted the marines a different way. It's not ideal but gets the job done. You melt off the icon and file it down nice and smooth. This is done with a hot glue gun, and I would recommend that you keep your hands steady. Note that the tip needs to be clean and very hot for this to properly work. The end result is nice when done correctly. But keep in mind that you need to be gentle when using it or else you run the risk of ruining the model.