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Nice stuff thanks a lot the resin casting advice is certainly food for thought. Looking forward to the super detailed Griffons as well. I can't wait for your idiot proofed how to make a Plasma Gun demo as well.

Some phenomenal work you have going on.

JB wrote:
As for resin casting, the idea came from seeing BrotherArgos' work. His Steel Legion are looking very, very nice. I intend to do a lot more to detail my Cadian veterans. That will mean using 20-30 infantry for experimentation but that's simple enough.

I finished building a new mold last night and took step-by-step photos for a tutorial, which I will post tonight. I like the Amazing Mold Putty far more than the Amazing Resin, but I will try pre-warming the mold (recommended in the instructions for small casts) to see if that helps the resin harden to a more desirable finish.

Sounds great, a tutorial would be very interesting

Thanks for all of the kind comments!

I took the pictures for the tutorial on making a two-part mold on Tuesday and then completed photo editing and loading last night. Dakka takes a while to upload 49 hi-res photos. I wrote and posted the tutorial today and put it in Dakka's new P&M Tutorial section. It's rather long so I won't repeat it here in the blog. I will simply post the link and a few key photos.

Here is the link.

First the new mold. It gives me three working molds for Griffon Mortar shells so I can cast that many at once. This is the best mold I have made so far. The improvements were register marks, an optimized pour channel (golf tees are useful again), and better air vent channels (previous molds had only one). Now I hope to improve the curing of the resin to get harder, smoother castings. I will start by pre-warming the molds in the oven at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This method is suggested in Alumilite's instruction hints for small castings.




Second, a cast shell washed with Badab Black so you can see it. One of my Cadians is shown for scale.




Now I can get on with detailing my Griffons and their crewmen. I'll post my progress as I go.

looking very cool, I'd love to learn to cast, I might check that company out.

I'm in the middle of my cadians at the moment too, I've gone for an arctic look but theres nothing wrong with the traditional scheme if doen right, and you have.

Thanks Sleazy!

I think Alumilite's starter kits are a simple way to learn the basics for casting. I'd like to try their basic rubber mold kit next. I also have yet to try to pre-heat my current molds to see if that improves the curing of the resin. One thing I've noticed about the three two-piece molds that I'm using now is that the castings get better the more I use the mold. I wonder if some of the olive oil - that I used when I made the mold - takes a while to clean out. Perhaps I should try Universal Mold Release instead of oil the next time I make a two-piece mold. My one-piece molds produce terrific castings from the very beginning so the only variable I can isolate is the oil.

For today, I'm working on Griffon crewman - mostly repositioning or kit bashing the right arms and hands. I'll post some pics later. I'm also making molds of shell storage containers - open and unopened. It's all fun and games.

Your tutorial was great. Its great to see griffons in the game again.

Karnaeya,

Thanks! A lot of folks like me are eager to embellish their armies in new and interesting ways. Casting is one way to do that.

I'm hoping the new GW Griffons are as nice as the ones from FW, but I will probably stick with my older models after I finish detailing them. My veteran force will fight for the Emperor with the same type of tanks, Chimeras, Hellhounds, and Griffons that their fathers (and likely their grandfathers) used.

I finally have time to throw up photos of one of my Griffon crewman. He has hand and forearm changes so that he can hold the Griffon shell properly.







The head, torso, legs, bayonet, ammo pouch, canteen, and left arm come from the Cadian infantry boxed set. I repositioned the left forearm and opened the thumb and fingers more to better grasp the width of the shell. The right arm also comes from the Cadian infantry boxed set. It is a heavily trimmed flamer arm. The right hand comes from the Warhammer Empire Militia boxed set. It is a hand from an arm on the bow and crossbow sprue (in the center of the sprue beside the heads). I can see a mold line on it that needs some trimming.

I spent some time with Blu-Tack getting the hands and arms where I needed them to hold the shell correctly. Once I was satisfied, I glued them on with Testor's Model Master Liquid Cement. I like that precision applicator.

The patterned plastic sheet used on the model's base is Plastruct HO Scale/1:100 Diamond Plate (stock number 91687). I find it has lots of uses in Ork and IG Mech armies. It can also be handy for Space Hulk and Necromunda/Inquisitormunda.

My strongest motivation lately is to work on more Griffon crewmen so I stopped pretending I was working on other projects.


I built five more crewmen to go with the loader that you saw earlier in the blog.
That loader is shown at the far left of this picture.

As you can see, I built another loader (unpacking a new Griffon mortar shell), a vox operator/scribe,
and an officer dictating from his data slate.

If you want to zoom in on any of these pictures, you can click here to go the Dakka gallery where they are stored. This new formatting style that I'm using does not allow you to simply click on the photos to jump straight to the gallery.











This photo shows the same figures from another angle.























And here is a photo of just the officer and his vox operator.
















This photo has the officer shown from a different angle along with my last two crewman.
These are my sergeant (nicknamed "Smoke") with his pipe and mug, and a crewman getting ready to defend his vehicle the hard way.

















This picture shows the same figures from a different vantage point.
















The last picture for this update is a closer view of Smoke and the crewman with a lasgun.


Those of you that are familiar with Cadian bits will recognize pieces from the standard IG frames, the new command sprues, and the IG vehicle accessory sprue. I added in some of my resin shell castings, the pointy end of a pin (for the vox operator/scribe's pen), a FW helmet with interior detail (the one lying upside down on the base), a pipe from the Dwarf Warriors set, and some plastic card to fill out the data slate. Smoke's mug is trimmed off of the backpack on the IG vehicle accessory sprue. It took some neat trimming and some GS to recreate a mug handle. The crewman holding the lasgun has the same right hand from the Empire Militia set that I used for the first loader (the one with the black shell).

I still have some mold lines to remove and some holsters to add on, but I'm fairly happy that my Griffon crewmen are not just heavy weapon teams or regular guys with lasguns. Now I can get back to casting more shells and making my lasgun holders for the back of my Griffons. I've done some measuring, and I decided that simpler is better for the rifle racks. My original concept was way too big.


Good luck with your own projects and thanks for looking!

It's time for a long overdue update.

I finished casting the resin shells for my Cadian Griffons. Here are pictures of them:


The quality is certainly not up to Forge World standards but I like the finished pieces. They make my OOP Griffons look more interesting. Thanks to everyone that voted for my tutorial about making the two-piece mold for my unpacked shells. The contest was exciting and many of the tutorials are going to come in handy for me as I experiment with sculpting some new accessories for my Cadian mechanized veteran company.





The shell shipping container original pieces were made out of Evergreen styrene tubing (#229, 9/32 of an inch or 7.1 mm). I filled the ends with green stuff before I made the molds. You could simply cut lots of tubing to make your containers but I found that I get a very consistent result by casting since I have a hard time cutting multiple sections of tube to a standard length with perfectly flush cuts. With casting, I only have to get one original the correct size.

I never did figure out a good way to add rifle racks for two lasrifles on each vehicle. I left room on the deck behind the gun for my crew figures to stand. I'm not sure I like the standard round bases for the crew since they look out of place and have no role since the crew figures cannot be targeted. I may put the crew on round bases made of just the diamond pattern styrene.

I also decided not to add candy-striped aiming stakes because they would not be stored on the vehicle while it is firing. I may add some track guards in the future so that I can put racks, stowage, and other items on them.

Logic dictates that I finish painting my six crew figures now. They are primed! However, I am interested in making melta gunners so that I'm not limited to the standard metal figure and the resin model from Forge World. I have a dozen of the former and two of the latter, but I would like to use no more than two of each in my army. That means I need five different melta gunner models. Since I don't want more than two of any pose, I need three new poses.

Solving this problem led me to make a melta gun backpack like the one on the back of the metal figure. I used a relief casting in resin as well as a very hacked up set of flamer promethium tanks. With a bit of green stuff to fill up air bubble holes, the backpack is pretty good. It's not easy to make out details in the pictures since white resin does not show relief well in photographs.



Now I'm in the market for four more melta guns from the Cadian command squad though I may use the Space Marine tactical squad melta gun since it doesn't have an annoying arm and hand attached. I'll connect the melta guns and the backpacks with two power lines (similar to the metal model) made of Procreate. I'll have to experiment with this a bit but I think it is possible using a clay extruder so that the lines are a standard diameter.

Have a great week! I know that I will.



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Here's a quick update for those that are interested in the female IG figures and Army Builder.

Spack, the host for Age of Strife reported the following news items:

1. The Phoenix Wargamers Club (AKA TPC) site is back in operation. If you enjoy seeing new sculpting projects that sometimes actually get made as figures for the general public (including the female IG models shown earlier in this thread), then you should check TPC out. I find it inspirational for future sculpting and casting projects.

2. The Army Builder maintainers (the guys that produce the data files) have released the IG Codex files for AB 3.X. You can download it from their site.

Now, you probably want links but out of respect for Spack and the work that he does to pull this info together, you'll have to go to his site to get them. They're on the Age of Strife homepage.

I'm breaking out the paint brushes for more melta monotony. One day those cursed figures will be finished so I can play a game with my preferred list.

Here is another quick update:

I felt like building this week so I assembled my five veteran sergeants with shotguns. I have plenty of sergeants with laspistols and CCWs but dropped them out of my old army list in favor of sergeants with bolters and lasguns. Since the publication of the new codex, all long range weapons are verboten for sergeants so shotguns seem the best choice.


Since shotguns are one of the few weapons not available in plastic, I bought two of the Forge World Cadian veterans with shotguns upgrade packs. Each pack provides four torsos with shotguns, five heads, and a some spare parts such as ammo pouches, one shotgun, one plasma pistol, hand grenades, bayonets, helmets, etc. Most of the pieces are a bit smaller than their plastic counterparts and this is true of the torsos and heads as well. They look somewhat odd with some sets of legs.


I also used a set of legs and a head from the The Phoenix Wargames Club (TPC) set of female soldiers. Surprisingly, her legs work better with the FW torso than do the plastic GW legs. She is a little taller than the blokes.


I will play with green stuff casting later today to make the sergeant stripes for the left shoulder pads. It's easier than sculpting five sets of uniformly sized stripes. If my method works, I'll post some photos late, late tonight.

I finally had time to try out a green stuff mold and cast of sergeant stripes.

I used the standard Cadian sergeant arm with the chainsword as my original.

I pushed a small ball of greenstuff on top of the sergeant stripes and let it fully harden. This produced a simple greenstuff mold.

I brushed a thin layer of light virgin olive oil (you can use another type of mold release) over the mold. It's important to get mold release or oil on every part of the mold that you will touch with new greenstuff later when you are making a casting. Otherwise your new greenstuff will stick to your mold.

I made a thin disc of greenstuff and used a Size 0 Extra Firm clay shaper to push it into my mold. I let the new greenstuff fully harden.

Now I had a nice set of newly cast sergeant stripes but it was too thick. I had to use an X-Acto knife to cut about half the thickness off. This isn't something that I would enjoy repeating so next time I'll use a thinner disc of green stuff.

I neatly scored the veteran sergeant's shoulder pad where I intended to place the new stripes and used super glue to adhere the stripes to the shoulder pad.

See the photos below:



I still have four more sets of sergeant's stripes to cast. Any excess green stuff is getting made into purity seals while I'm waiting for the stripes to harden.

It's time for another WIP update for my Cadian mechanized veteran company.

I expected to get a lot of painting done this weekend but never managed to open a paint jar. Instead, I finished the green stuff casts of sergeants' stripes and built the last three grenadiers that I needed.

The first two pictures show the sergeants with their new stripes on their left shoulder pads and most of them have purity seals on their right shoulder pads. Thanks to Insaniak for his tutorial on making these seals. I'm considering making a small seal device with an IG eagle to stamp these in a standard size. I believe this is possible.




And now we move on from the conga line of sergeants to the grenadiers. Building these three models gave me another opportunity to use the female figures produced by DocThunder's club, TPC. Heinrik Petterson did the sculpts and DarkSoul did the casting. These figures add some variety but they are a real pain to build. The torsos do not quite match up with the legs and the heads do not quite match up with the torsos. I ended up doing quite a bit of clipping, carving, pinning, and puttying. In spite of all the work, I like them. The Cadians, with one standard torso and eight [ten?] types of legs, need some variety.




I have just about run out of stuff that I need to build for my preferred 1750 point list. I still need an Astropath and would like to try sculpting one, but I want to get my army on the table soon so I ordered an Alkemy figure to stand in for now.

On the materials front, I'm getting good use out of the clay shapers (Size 0, extra firm hardness from Royal Sovereign). I haven't tried the ProCreate yet. I just got my tiny magnets from K&J (I normally use MagCraft, but they don't have the tiniest magnets), which - along with a 5/32 drill bit - will allow me to magnetize IG arms. I also received a slew of Tamiya weathering kits so that I can finally make my vehicles look like they left the showroom and made it onto a battlefield.

So lots of work remains but it will be painting, weathering, and other detailing. GreyDeath's weathering tutorials are going to be required reading soon. I also plan to rebase my infantry in a more interesting style. I've seen several inspiring examples here in Dakka's P&M Blogs.

No more tonight though, it's time for bed.

Edited to add links and to update the name of a sculptor. I forgot to add that I still need to finish two technical servitors. I'm torn between the current models and some old
GW Tech Ganger figures.

I thought I'd survey folks about IG technical servitor figures. I have two of the current GW figures, shown in the beautiful GW photos below (not the two guys with the big guns):



I also have four of GW's 1990 Tech Gangers. The image below is a copy of GW's original catalogue page from the 1991 Blue Catalogue 1. It is viewable on The Stuff of Legends website along with a lot of other great images that will take long time collectors straight down memory lane.

The tech gangers that I own are Tech 1, Tech 7, and Tech 8. I also own a fourth figure that is not shown in the catalogue. It is clearly labeled "Tech Gang, GW 90", just like the other three figures so perhaps GW dropped it from the line before publication of the 1991 catalogues.



I'm stuck on which figures to use as my two technical servitors. The current models require little work other than pinning, glueing, and painting. The tech gangers came with ugly plastic human arms so if I use the figures I will have to make some new arms. After seeing Proiteus' conversions for his Renegade Mechanicus army, I'm more inclined to try the old figures and get creative. What would you do?



The images of Citadel Miniatures and the page from Games Workshop's 1991 Blue Catalogue 1 are used without permission. The sole purpose in using these images is to provide a visual guide to said miniatures.

No challenge whatsoever is intended to the status of any intellectual property rights of Games Workshop Limited, including, but not limited to trademarks and copyrights of Games Workshop Limited. This blog has no legal connection or relationship to Games Workshop Limited.

Wow, those old tech gangers have actually stood the test of time very well!

Can't wait to see what you do with 'em.

Love what you have done so far! Keep it up!

Savnock wrote:Wow, those old tech gangers have actually stood the test of time very well!

Can't wait to see what you do with 'em.

I'm still torn. The tech gangers are really neat but they are noticeably smaller than the current Cadian models. That's not an insurmountable problem but I'm also considering a third option using some AT-43 figures (rebased) with servo skulls to represent the servitor arm capability.

EzeKK wrote:Love what you have done so far! Keep it up!

Thanks! I'll doubt I'll ever completely stop working on my Cadians. There's always something new to do, plus I'm working on related BFG and Epic Armageddon models in the same color scheme.

I don't think the size difference will be much of a problem. Servitors are supposed to be withered flesh wrapped about lots of mechanical worky bits. You could easily bulk them out with Borg-esque wires and cabling.

Well, I decided to use a couple of the old GW Confrontation (pre-Necromunda) Tech Ganger figures to make my technical servitors. I had four models but chose the two largest. These, conveniently enough, also lacked laspistol holsters (which would have been out of place on a servitor).

I used Cadian IG arms. They fit pretty well after I used a flat file on the Tech Ganger arm nubs. The claws came from old Ork Epic bits. Other fittings and tools are antenna bits from the plastic Imperial Navy cruisers for BFG. The servo skulls are from the SM Devastator squad.

I still have to fill in some gaps with GS. I'll leave that for later this weekend.



I tried to make the servo skulls fulfill a purpose. One is adjusting the eyepiece on a servitor. The other is observing the work performed by a servitor.

Overall, I'm happy with these conversions - fragile though they may be (the BFG bits in particular). I did a lot of pinning but that won't help the thin plastic bits. Now, I'm looking forward to getting these models primed and painted.

I'm down to just one more model to build or acquire for my army before I get back into full painting mode. I received the Alkemy figure that I was going to use as my Astropath. Unfortunately the Alkemy model sucks so I'm back to square one. I think I'll find an appropriate GW model to convert so I can use it in the 'Ard Boyz tournament.

I finished up some needed tasks - GS on the servitors, putting arms on my daughter's Nightbringer, clipping bits, etc. - this weekend but none of them was particularly blog worthy. So this is a good time to mention that I'm also working on Cadians for Battle Fleet Gothic (BFG) and Epic Armageddon. Since my BFG force has been around since 2003 and my Epic force is pretty much just a stack of blister packs and some bags full of unassembled miniatures, I'll cover BFG today.

This first pic is a side shot of my Cadian cruiser group. I have a Mars battlecruiser as my flagship, two Dictator class cruisers, and one Gothic class. You can also see escort ships, fighter craft, and bombers swarming around the larger ships.



The next pic is an overhead shot. I adjusted the settings in Photoshop to make the lights and highlighting stand out more. I like a lot of both on my Imperial ships.



In the next two images, you can see one of my two Dictator class cruisers and my Gothic class. The Dictator class are not really good at anything but they carry a nice balance of ordnance and weapons. I like them for their ability to spit out fighters, bombers, and torpedoes. The Gothic is all about lance batteries though it has torpedoes.




The next two pics are shots of my two escort squadrons. I have one squadron of three Firestorms, armed with useful lance batteries, and one squadron of cheap Cobra destroyers. The destroyers are mostly useful in mass when they fire a lot of torpedoes at wounded cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships. I'd like to have a lot more escort ships.




And the last image is another side shot of the massed cruiser group.



My future plans are to make a nice 4'x4' BFG gameboard for my wargaming table. I also plan to add some troop ships and other props for scenario play. My other fleet is Orks, and I intend to stage a few scenario fights this summer. That means I need to fill a few gaps in my fleets. I'm looking forward to it.

I hope you didn't mind a little BFG with your 40K. Have a good week!

Wow those servitors look awesome!

Nice job

Werdes wrote:Wow those servitors look awesome!

Thank you! Jes Goodwin's sculpts (as Savnock noted) have held up under the test of time. These minis are almost 20 years old.

Death Gear wrote:Nice job

Thanks! Now I need to start painting. The humidity and temperature have dropped enough for me to get outside and use spray primer today. The Griffon crews are already primed so I plan to get all six of them painted this weekend. I will try to paint them so they have more depth. I'm also considering how to make them stand out from the infantrymen. Perhaps a bit of the color red. It's a traditional artillery color (and also the engineer color) in the US, though the artillerymen will tell you that their color is scarlet and the engineers will claim scarlet with white piping.

love the work. attention to detail is great very realistic with the ammo still in the cardboard tubes on the arty piece love it keep it up

Thanks Lex!

Ok, bad news...I'm going on a two week vacation so there will be no updates until I get back.

The good news is that I'm taking my melta gunners and artillery crews with me so they should be fully painted by the time I get back. [Edit: No room in the suitcase for paints and minis so I'm going without them.] I'm also taking some putty, armature wire, and sculpting tools. Kid Kyoto's thread about what three sets we wish GW would make in plastic made me realize that I want some stuff that GW doesn't make. So I'm going to try to sculpt some of it and maybe cast it in resin.

I've got a 40K skirmish scenario running around in my head that requires at least three Cadians on stretchers, a Cadian squad, my Kasrkin squad as "the cavalry", a doc, two nurses, three Death Guard Chaos Space Marines, and a full squad of Cadian IG Plague Zombies. It also requires some walls, shipping containers (I have six of the AT-43 containers that just need repainting and some IG icons), and the medical station from AT-43 (a sweet model I picked up for a low, low price from Miniature Market. I may get another one of these beauties and paint it IG green to serve as a temporary command post or research station. I may use AT-43 low walls but they need some filling and repainting. I may also use the AT-43 doc and nurses but they are a bit tall and need rebasing and repainting.

Here's a pic of the AT-43 Medtech Unit so you can see what I'm talking about:



Is anyone else interested in sculpting Cadian accessories or 40K skirmish style games? Necromunda and Kill Team do not quite fill the bill. I see a lot of special scenario rules in my future or a home brew version of Necromunda rules.

[Edit: No painting on vacation, just drawing and sculpting.]

So it's been more than seven months since my last blog update, but who's counting? I finally had the time and motivation to begin more work on my Cadian 11th Assault (Mech) Regiment. I'm also getting some opportunities to play with my lists so they keep changing as I learn some new likes and dislikes with regard to the IG Codex.

I am currently running either two LRBTs or one LRBT/one Executioner. After failing miserably to kill AV12 reliably (and I see a lot of it), I decided to add a Vanquisher to my list of Leman Russ variants on hand. Unfortunately I didn't want to pay for a Forge World turret so I decided to convert an existing LRBT turret by modifying the gun tube.

It all seemed so simple. I measured the barrel diameter and then bought some 1/4" and 12/32" Plastruct tubing. Unfortunately, those diameters were just a tad too small. Instead of admitting defeat, I grabbed a dozen different writing implements from around the house and checked their diameters. Imagine my surprise when a recycled pencil proved to be the perfect fit. I could have saved myself $11.10. Oh well, I have some ideas for the future employment of two packs of Plastruct tubes.

Here are photos of the simple work done to convert my LRBT turret into a Vanquisher turret:

That looks fantastic, I was wanting a vanquisher but wasn't really sure about the FW stuff, but this is perfect!! Thanks, this idea has been taken!.

U say in ur Sig. that you need ideas for a cadian sly marbo...Why not have acadian disguised as a tyranid...disguised as a lictor would be quite ironic....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Opps double post, soz

aaaaand Subscribed!

Imperial Monkey wrote:U say in ur Sig. that you need ideas for a cadian sly marbo...Why not have acadian disguised as a tyranid...disguised as a lictor would be quite ironic....

Hah! That would be cool but I have no tyranid parts and I don't fight any tyranid players right now.

I'm painting a figure up to use as Marbo right now. He's not super cool but he's better than the GW figure...and much cheaper. I just wish I had a good fig to run behind him as a weapon caddy, carrying all the crap that Marbo uses in combat: frag grenades, knives, demo charge, poison, pistol rounds, and melta bombs.