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For the past hour or so I've been working on repairing some used eldar bits I got cheap in a trade. As I was sitting here clearing out all the gunk and glue in a vyper, I started to wonder what's the greatest salvage job everyone else has done.

I think my greatest would have to be a carnifex. Warped plastic, plastic glue, bad pose, mold lines everywhere. It took a few hours, some filing, and some greenstuff, but I got it back to perfect condition and the feeling was quite pleasant.

So what have you guys done? If it took you less than 30 minutes or so I wouldn't consider that to be a great undertaking.

So far mine is the creation of a Destroyer tank hunter from an e-bay Russ. I originally planned to try and light it up, but that didn't work terribly well. It was also my first attempt at stripping a model with very mixed results

It took up an awful lot of time while I was fiddling about trying to salvage something from the debacle, but I quite like the result. Its still waiting for a proper shroud on the joint between the main weapon and the hull, but is otherwise done (except for painting of course ).



I also did a weapon destroyed marker for it for fun

Wow, very nice. Especially the weapon destroyed option. I look forward to seeing it painted!

Shell casing from the stubber really do it for me. Love details like that.


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Oh, and to answer the OP's question, probably turning a mob of biker boyz into biker nobs. They were "painted" with what appeared to be orange pancake batter and nothing else. Stripped them, cleaned up the bikes, then went at the boyz with the clippers like I was Grotsnik. He must have dipped them in glue before sitting them on the seats.

Would have been frustrating if it wasn't so much fun.

SuckMuffin wrote:They were "painted" with what appeared to be orange pancake batter and nothing else.

Lmao, sigging that.

I also once got a wad of IG figures from a guy for a good price. Found out why later. I can't tell what kind of glue he used. I don't even think it was glue. Pieces would come off cleanly, but it was like they were attached with plastic glue. Months sitting in superclean did nothing to them. Even stranger, there was this stuff...like rubber...that melted the plastic it was touching. Rubber cement maybe? At least I got the official metal piece of a griffon out of it, even though the body that went with it, and an entire basalisk, were beyond my abilities. Bent barrels, heat damage, etc. etc. I've been incline to prime it black and then just use it like that, if people ask I would say that it destroyed basalisk simply covered in ash. I made it look like that so when it actually gets destroyed it will never be confused for a tank that works.

Yeah I learned "buyer beware" the hard way that time. I really should have taken a picture of them like that, I had never seen anything like it before. I'm just lucky it came off.


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Not thinning your paints is one thing, but a crime was committed that day. They were advertised as "assembled and primed." Nope.

I'm still repairing a "looted" russ i got off ebay three years ago. every time i sit down and say "im going to do this today" I get frustrated and go onto painting my soul drinkers. The turret must have been welded in place with plastic glue and all the barrels on all the weapons have been made "snub nosed" by the previous owner. Thinking about making it a wreck, but not ready to give up on it yet. Oh yeah, it was painted chrome when i got it. Enamel is hard to get off the tank. Lol, oh well, serves me right.

plonshart wrote:I'm still repairing a "looted" russ i got off ebay three years ago. every time i sit down and say "im going to do this today" I get frustrated and go onto painting my soul drinkers. The turret must have been welded in place with plastic glue and all the barrels on all the weapons have been made "snub nosed" by the previous owner. Thinking about making it a wreck, but not ready to give up on it yet. Oh yeah, it was painted chrome when i got it. Enamel is hard to get off the tank. Lol, oh well, serves me right.

Lol, well if you're playing orks it can't be too hard to make it look ramshackle. Unlike imperium where you have to make it look like it works.

Sadly, im trying to turn it back into a working russ... Exterminator to be exact. using the newer FW turret. Ugh its a pain. lol.

I feel sorry for you then, lmao. Imperial tanks are massive pains to repair. For me it was because all those recesses and corners. That and plastic glue.

Mine was a basilisk that had the turret attached the wrong way round. Damn ebay.

I once salavaged some chopped up marine bits i found in a bitbox from my local gaming club.
Sadly i didn't take pictures before i salvaged them but it was basicly just some marine torsos and legs and every joint of the leg was cut and large blobs of greenstuff and very thick paint was all over them.
Likely the person they belonged to tried to repose them then saw how he failed misserbly and dumped his work in the bit box.

Sadly i didn't take pics of them before the salvaging operation but i did make some after i repaired them and added a few new bits to make them into complete plague marines (gottal ove nurgle since no mather how badly something is damaged it usualy works in your advantage!).

Here are some pics of the marines i mentioned:


The one on the right was even missing a whole leg so i made him a new one from some guitarstring and greenstuff.


The one on the left was part of the salvage operation (not the one on the right)


And on this one the one on the right was part of the salvage operation.

I found it strangly amusing to make these.
There is simply something that's makes it more fun to me to take somthing that looks utterly gak then make it into something cool looking again

The_Hunter wrote:
There is simply something that's makes it more fun to me to take somthing that looks utterly gak then make it into something cool looking again

I know right? And those look AWESOME btw. I'd go as far as saying better than the kits.

An old, awfully painted sentinel (the first thing I ever painted!) lost a fight with the stairs, and ended up missing a leg. I had a quick delve in my bits box, and fixed it up with some plasticard and random gubbins.

BEFORE: (and you have to imagine it without the leg too!)

*shudder*

AFTER:



I think I can do a lot better with the paint job now, but I'm still pretty proud of the conversion. I play some majorly unequipped guard that do a lot of scavenging of wrecks and the like, so this kind of thing fits right in

Nice, you could prolly convert it to a nice traitor sentinel with little effort.

RandomSauce19 wrote:Mine was a basilisk that had the turret attached the wrong way round. Damn ebay.

LOL, I'm still laughing. lol. sorry for your misfortune, but, thats just funny.

I really enjoy the salvaging of models. Most of my IG army is made of restored miniatures. I probably stripped, reassembled and repainted around 60-70 miniatures. They arrived in all manner of horrible conditions. Enamel paints, plastic glues, melted parts, mystery adhesives, etc, ete. were all par for the course.

The worst were the trio of Bassilisks I purchased for around 50 bucks. They required a rediculous amount of effort to strip, and required major disassembly though they were assembled with plastic glue! I had to rebuild the railings on all 3 with plastic rod and sheet. I also recieved a russ in the same condition. Completely assembled inccorrectly with plastic glue! No pictures of before, but here's a few after. In most cases, you can't even tell, though the russ has a few rough patches.





My poor paintjob mars the result, but here's a Yarrick that arrived without a claw or scabboard, and with most of the left arm very roughly sawed off. The power fist is a lefty that I reversed and move the thumb. Nothing to advanced, but it was a nice excercise in parts matching and basic Greenstuff on a figure that most folks would have destined for the bin.
While I was at it, I cut off his head and gave him a warzone sgt's cap with a nice big skull!

The Final army.


More pics here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-24779-13756_Melk%2037th.html