My vigor is renewed on this project. I recently put in 2 bids on some large lots and...accidentally won. Wife was a bit pissed off... Oh Well!
So now I have 140+ new old-school troops. All in very good shape and one lot had a lot of extras. The 'female' figure, a jetbike, lots of metal dudes, metal arms, rare old weapons like a dozen Eldar Lasguns (that's right, Eldar) and a Conversion Beamer. I even got a couple Squats.
So here's my "Workshop". The goal is to detach any heads/arms where I can, get them all Dremelled down, filed and sanded. Then I'm sticking a bunch of the parts, heads and arms, on toothpicks so I can airbrush the lot of them all at once. That's the plan, anyway.
Check out my setup and let me know if you have any tips. I've been playing since 1987, but I'm still learning new stuff all the time. A lot of other people are too, apparently. Of all the lots of these I've bought, very few show attempts to remove the flash. Even then, you can tell they did it 'high school' method, meaning they must have been like me in 1990 and didn't have the money or were too lazy to get/use the right tools. The ones that have been attempted to clean up it was pretty obvious the only tool used was an Exacto knife.
Don't have Safety Glasses? Get some! These were like $8 BUT they're bifocals! Let me tell ya, they're essential to an old geez like me, but even when my eyesight was good the bifocals would have been awesome. Yes, I'm going to get a dust mask. I also put a damp paper towel down which does a surprisingly good job of trapping the plastic dust and makes clean-up a lot easier.
Here's a "Before and After" of the kit after I ground it off. My goal is 5 per night. I should be done and ready to paint in October some time. I find the more I do, the easier it gets. I'm getting to the point where I can re-shape their butts to look like butts, which is cool even though I'm going to cover it all up with modern kit.
Kids, if you're doing this at home, Have a couple different Dremel tips to experiment with. My main grinding is done with a medium round tip and I have several pointed Grinder/Sanders to do more delicate work once I get most of the plastic out of the way. Tip: use a low rotation speed. A high rotation speed is more dangerous if you slip (I have some new holes in my left fingers....) and a high speed tends to heat up the plastic to the melting point. Melting plastic doesn't just mess up the figure, it clogs the Dremel tip. If you're like me, you only have one of each tip on hand.
More later. I'm going all the way with this. Come Christmas my goal is to have a painted army of these guys complete with Deodorant Tanks, command, some Super-Heavies...Ok, that's a little ambitious, but I'm going to have several squads painted.
Yes, I'm going to put some up on eBay when I'm done. Most likely un-painted because that's how most people seem to like them. I do anyway.
Much thanks to the eBay-er's who made this project possible! Stay tuned!
