Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

All I've looked through is the last page of this thread, but even that was enough to drop my jaw and cause me to subscribe. Amazing work, and I'm excited to see where this project takes you.

some really good techniques and tools shown throughout this thread - its as much of a tutorial as a blog!
good stuff

and johann is a real piece of work...

@ Mr. Grey : I really suggest reviewing the other pages

@ krusty : Thanks, and Johann is one of my favourite pieces of work!

Ok lunchtime sculpting went well again, finished the boots sculpting, need to add a small heel of plasticard and they are done. I also changed the sniper cloak and rifle from the new command set, scraped/filed the big pads away and rebuilt the cloak to hide the change.

Will get some pictures up tonight I hope, I plan to gather all the things for reproduction and takes some pictures of them also.

Looking great! Are there new pictures yet?

I have just finished the final sculpting push before reproduction, I thought you might like to see some of the results. I have one pair of legs, a female torso, two heads, seven arms, and numerous things like bedrolls, knives, canteens etc.

Here are the running legs, which to be honest seem to have taken forever, I kept on finding small things to change that I was unhappy with: -



The changes from the initial cadian legs were to cut off the original jacket bottom, resculpt a new jacket bottom to match the steel legion length, cut away the boot section, resulpt the boots, add zippers up the back of the boots, add ankles, add skulls on the top of the boots at the front, build the back heel of boot into the sole, and in one case build a complete new heel from plasticard.

The next significant addition to me "Steel Legion Sprue", is the female torso: -



The changes from the initial cadian tanker torso were to cut off the original legs and tank hatch, adjust the collar so it meets in the middle and add tidy up with greenstuff, make the female aspects of the chest, add the webbing to the chest area, add an eagle as a belt buckle, cut grooves out at the locations where the webbing was going on the back, place the plasticard webbing into the grooved shirt, and finally add plasticard triangles where the webbing meets the belt. Look at the magnified model, I think I will tidy the lower crease on the front of the shirt, it looks rougher than I like when magnified.

Next is the officers head: -



I shaved the head, removed the ears / ear cover, smoothed the head, altered the chin, altered the nose, rebuilt the ears, and added hair and an eye patch.

I think this is my favourite piece so far, I am really pleased with the way the gas mask head looks: -



The head is from the tank sprue, I cut off the ear coverings, shaved down the items attached at the back of the neck and side. The I extended the gas mask straps to the back from the sides, added a brass etch ring to attach the straps onto, ran the straps up to the center of the head, and finally rebuilt the ears. I am really looking forward to painting this head, with stubble!

Finally for the sculpting are most of the arms: -



As you can see all the arms have had gloves in the steel legion style added, the cadian shoulderpads removed, and on appropriate arms the steel legion lighting in a circle emblem has been added. The white plasticard was cut using my new Micro Hole Punch (for those wanting to know where to order from - http://www.micromark.com ) and made the horrible task of sculpting perfect circles redundant.

With all of the above now complete, I will begin reproducing them, this will give me two pair of legs, two torsos, 4 heads, 11 arms, 2 Las-Carbines and numerous small items. I can finally start making some more of my first squad, with some of the variance I originally started the project to achieve. I have discovered legs to be really annoying to do, arms easy to do, and heads fun to do. Sadly the one thing I need more than anything else now is legs.

Its taken me a long while to get this far, but I hope it has been interesting so far. The work continues ...

Hi

Looking great. I was looking into photo etching a little while back to look at making some cool panels for a land raider (taking GW art and etching it in the shape of the panels).

I found some DIY stuff, but nothing that made me really confident that I could do it so am keen to see what happens with the pro-etch.

Cheers

These look great. Have you considered selling the sprues ?
Im not sure how GW feels about this as there is a lot of your own sculpting here so its not as if you are just making casts of their models.

@StubbyGB : It would be illegal to sell them and to be honest although I been approached 50+ times to do so my answer has always been no.

Anyway, a nice present arrived on my doorstep this morning ... My Forgeworld Vendetta upgrade, here is the obligatory picture: -



In addition, to punish myself I have lined up three pair of legs to work on (one kneeling), for the next round of Steel Legion parts. I think with some more legs done I will have enough of a "Sprue" done to move onto the painting phase for troops.

Oh there was also a Death Korps Rider in the delivery today, but no promises, I am just looking incase. Actually I would prefer to do Motorbike riders, but cannot think of an alternative to the lance that I could replace it with.

Lastly, what do people think of Ogryn, worth doing some form my Armageddon Steel Legion force ?

I've heard it said that a grenade launcher could be used as a lance replacement on bike-mounted rough riders.

Re: Ogryn, I've never really been a fan of them myself. Personally I wouldn't.

Just use a big grenade as lance

With regard to rough riders, Deveran over at the boot camp and The Dreadnote here at DakkaDakka mentioned using grenade launchers and Deveran even suggested the following single-shot grenade launcher as a replacement for the explosive hunting lances (which are also single shot). I suspect something like this would fit the bill and keep with the mechanised infantry image.



It is similar too but slightly smaller than the death korps grenade launcher.

Yea the dkok one is much wider and longer, as you said

That's the old US army Vietnam one wasn't it?

And yes. Please do Bikers. Sleek dirt bike creations, or burley manley mens choppers?

Yep it is, M79 "Thumper" 40mm Grenade Launcher... tasty.

Well the postman had a package for me this morning, sadly it was very damp, from the inside. This was concerning to me as I had recently got dangerous liquid chemical Ferric Chloride delivered!

It turned out to be something else entirely, it was the product I use for stripping paint off of old models. Now ... over my many years I have had the pleasure of living around the world and for a few years lived/travelled back and forth between London and Long Island, NY. While in the states I found and used an excellent paint stripper for my models, that doesn't harm plastics, metals or resins (disclaimer: always test something a little to make sure yourself) the sad thing being it was almost impossible to find outside of the USA. So after settling full time in South London, I was unable to get any more, and with all kinds of bans on travelling with fluids on planes, my chances of getting more had diminished, as had my stock of the product.



The product is called Simple green, I fill a small container, and literally drop the figure I want cleaned into it. Its possible to pull it out 20 minutes later and with an old toothbrush just wipe/scrub the paint off, or you can do as I do and leave it for a few days and its almost all fallen off. So far its worked on anything I have put into it even some old figures painted with enamels from ebay. Now with a vehicle you can just fill the bottom of a large bowl and do one side at a time, rather than waste a whole load filling the bowl, or alternatively you can fill the bowl and then filter/strain the old paint out and put it back into the bottle (using a funnel).

So as you can its good stuff, and hard to come by outside of Northern America, but as I was running out of it, I thought I would look to see if anyone was selling it anywhere in the UK before trying to order from the states. Well as you can deduce from the opening paragraph I did indeed find a supplier, it was Simple Green themselves in the UK, who had recently opened an e-shop for Europeans.

For UK & europe you can find it here: - Simple Green UK

In America its often available at Walmart etc, but if not it can be found here: - Simple Green - North America

Now be aware it can be expensive in the UK, however it is reusable and can last a long while. I haven't tried diluting it personally, so if anyone does try that please post the results.

I will take some before and after pictures over the weekend so you can see what it does

Wow as is my want i have again come to this post late so just spent many hours catching up, and all i can say is this was truly amazing, wow

I suddenly love the idea of one-shot grenade launchers for stand-in hunting lances. I still love horsies though.

Anyone know where to get those M-79s in 28mm form then?

Bad news on the Simple Green dude, that sucks. I've found great success with Acetone Free Nail Polish Remover for stripping plastics. After a while it tends to make the plastic softish, but it hardens back up again once dry. The Cutex brand (thanks, Dakka!) specifically, but I'm sure they're all the same.

Ogryns: I love em. The ones I sculpted were a blast to make, and they performed in battle too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: Hush my mouth; here's some!

http://www.theassaultgroup.co.uk/store/home.php?cat=70


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT 2: Those grenade launchers looks a little sketchy to me. After a bit more research I'd go for a modified WHFB Empire Pistolier arm...

Have I somehow not replied to this thread yet? It's the first thing I look for every time I log on. It's probably the best P&M blog on here. That's the truth. Anyways, looking forward to see some WHFB Ogres converted into Steel Legion Ogryns .

Just read through the whole blog... wow, is all I can really say. Your plasticard work is very impressive, and has reminded me I need to get a metal ruler.

Oh yeah, where did you get the rivet punch thingy with the different sized holes, and how much was it? It'll be useful for my Mechanicus/Knights.

Dragonlover

SIMPLE GREEN IS THE MOST AMAZING LIQUID EVER, and now that I know it works on everything, it's even cooler.
Also been watching this blog for a while, amazing work you are doing, keep it up!

Bro, you have absolutely ruined a whole afternoon at work as Ive marvelled over your P&M blog.

Outstanding!

Glad I could be of interest ... keep following it could get better! ... We have Photoetching, Clear Resin Casting, Custom Decals and Laser etching coming ..

On to the bad news, I spent the weekend up in the Coventry with my parents-in-law, so sadly no modelling, sculpting (or fun).

Good news is the website goes live tomorrow with a couple of other contributors to help me

Hi i have been reading through this thread and have been intrigued by so many new techniques and have even tried my hand at converting a random figure into an S.A.S. major with disasterous results. (I had to go to hospital after stabbing my leg with a craft knife) But i kept going and finished my figure but i can sya that i wouldnt have done it had it not been for me reading this thread lol. Oh and im new so hi!

Vet Sergeant Travis wrote:Hi i have been reading through this thread and have been intrigued by so many new techniques and have even tried my hand at converting a random figure into an S.A.S. major with disasterous results. (I had to go to hospital after stabbing my leg with a craft knife) But i kept going and finished my figure but i can sya that i wouldnt have done it had it not been for me reading this thread lol. Oh and im new so hi!

you have also inspired me to do a tanith army although being jobless isnt good for modeling so i havent gotten started... but when i have money i will get started

unless i lose interest

this was at bursley not sergeant travis sorry dude

nvm sorry.

For some time I have had an interest in the wars for Armageddon, ranging from the initial chaos invasion, all the way through to the third war where the Orks were brought to a standstill with the blood of Imperial martyrs. Almost subconsciously my army choices have reflect this interest, I have collected and cherished my Salamander Marines, the Sisters of the Order of the Martyred Lady, my recent Steel Legion troopers and my dream of an Adeptus Mechanicus army from the nearby Forgeworld of Voss. I wish to create rules to unite all these armies into a true Army of the Imperium, and field that force in games such as Battle Fleet Gothic, Epic Armageddon, Aeronautica Imperials and of course Warhammer 40k, all based around the defense of Armageddon.



Recently I, like many of us, have been collecting and working on an Imperial Guard army, the Steel Legion. As you know I have been maintaining a log of my work on this site and others. Amazingly, over time I have amassed a lot of of posts detailing this work, and realised that this work, with my passionate interest for the Armageddon conflicts, could form the basis for a website. I discussed this with a number of friends who all also had interests in the Wars for Armageddon, slowly an idea of a site detailing the History, Modelling, Painting and Gaming of the Armageddon wars grew into being.



There had been an intense amount of information concerning Armageddon on the old Armageddon 3 website, this had been lost when the website had been shut, some of it had scattered to other websites but there was is no central resource for the Armageddon conflicts. With the help of some friends and hopefully invited guests, we hope to build a repository for this historical and gaming information. Somewhat in the style of the Bell of lost souls campaign packs we also hope to add detail to some of the smaller parts of the conflict across a range of systems from 40k through to Aeronautica Imperialis.



The painting and modelling articles will be a continuation of my work on the Steel Legion, with additional material from my armies mentioned above, as well as those of my friends who are building the site with me. While on the subject of friends, an introduction is in order, first off is Ragnar, a friend of many years standing who will be bringing his Space Marines, the "Praetoris Aeneas", Strikeforce Alpha 492 and the Phantine XXIII to the closing days of the 3rd war. Secondly is one of my Co-Admins from the Bolter & Chainsword SCC, who will be working on the "Exorcists" chapter, the Dieprian 756th, and the 609th Fighter Wing. We hope to get some assistance from various guests and also to add a few more permanent members of staff over time, including Ork Players, if you have some interesting modelling, painting, stories or gaming ideas please contact me and possibly we can showcase your work on the site.



The initial modelling content at the moment discusses, sculpting, painting, resin casting, magnets, photo etching and plasticard work, I am sure there will be something there to interest you and the first tutorial will be ready shortly showing how to make "extra" armour using plasticard. These tutorials will have video content demonstrating the modelling techniques used, and will form a growing library of reference material for modellers.

Anyway enough chit-chat, take a look at the site, leave comments, participate if you have some ideas and most of all enjoy yourself in the Battle for Armageddon

The website looks excellent at first glance, will have to check it out in depth at a later time. Good job sir!

Maybe this could help ?

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815065248/http://www.armageddon3.com/

Altough everything didn't get salvaged from the deep abyss that is the internet.

EDIT: Here's all the salvaged pieces http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.armageddon3.com

EDIT2: Apperantly only 3 different pages were salvaged, the rest is duplicates

Keep working

Indeed it is helpful, I stripped the info from it already though

Over the coming weeks we will be adding it to the website with added content from other GW sources too !

Dude! That is really cool! I remember I tried to do something similar a couple of years ago with the Badab War, only it never became anything more than a MSN Groups.