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Good job on the tanks, the weathered and graffiti'd look works really well on them. The hellhounds are great, paintjob brings the whole thing together nicely.

Very cool tanks. Suitably Renegade-y.

Nifty reminds me of the old epic Hellhounds

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Actually, the moulding has gone wrong. All cast nicely, but I can't seem to get anything in without air bubbles. I've even widened all the entry points, but no success.

Might have to try insta-molding it. Or redoing them as a two-part with escape channels cut in.

:/

do you use a vibrating mechanism or a vacuum bowl to get the bubbles out?

yeah
I think you need space below the parts so that resin flows past the heads?

If you bring them to mine I can try?

Panic...

They are looking very cool now they are painted.

monkeytroll wrote:Good job on the tanks, the weathered and graffiti'd look works really well on them. The hellhounds are great, paintjob brings the whole thing together nicely.

Yeah, that amount of weathering hides a multitude of sins. It's probably the only way I'm getting way with building these out of bits and pieces...,

Jehan-reznor wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Actually, the moulding has gone wrong. All cast nicely, but I can't seem to get anything in without air bubbles. I've even widened all the entry points, but no success.

Might have to try insta-molding it. Or redoing them as a two-part with escape channels cut in.

:/

do you use a vibrating mechanism or a vacuum bowl to get the bubbles out?

If a vibrating mechanism means 'tapping it up and down on the table' then yes, yes I did

Maybe that would help. I got the impression the bubbles were getting trapped in the entry points because of their size though (since a
To of the pointy hats are fine but the faces fethed) but maybe a quick vibrate would help.

Panic wrote:yeah
I think you need space below the parts so that resin flows past the heads?

If you bring them to mine I can try?

Panic...

This might actually be what I do. Make a proper two part mood with an escape channel linking the points of the hoods and coming back up the sides, and wider entry points on all the heads

Laser destroyer! Lovely lavender tanks Ian, keep up the fine salvage work

- Salvage

SO, more progress on the tanks. I'd left some bits in Dettol for a while to re=use, and started with some stripping. The metal stuff came out fine, but some of the tank turrets are just a mess of old paint.



So, I decided to do some more casting. I guess I should have taken 'before' photos, but this is the (handily) single-piece turret from an old FW Exterminator in a two-part silicon mold.



And while I was there I put the cultists heads back in. Two parts with a piece of cable threaded through the end as an escape channel.



And then I used the rest of some quick-set putty I had to make a press mold for the Leman Russ sponsons.



While they all set, I assembled the last three Russes. These ones have magents inside the tracks to accept sponsons.



And after a bit of casting, I have five sets! Three sets of heavy bolters, one of heavy flamers, and one of plasma cannon.



They all have magnets on the inside to attach to the tanks.

Very clever Ian. Those look great!

yeah,
They look amazing.
Did you set the sponson magnets when the resin was soft?

Panic...

Panic wrote:Did you set the sponson magnets when the resin was soft?

No, drilled into them after. Though I made sure to fill the molds slightly under-level and then move them around to get it coating the sides, which makes the centre recessed (just like the real ones).

Also, TURRETS DONE.

I really couldn't be bothered to magnetise weapons on these, and just building tons of turrets was easier. The cast came out really well, though had to be filled in two parts to let air escape first before topping up. I then converted them with some big old weapons from a Robogear set.

I have ten in all, for four tanks! Three battle cannons, one old FW vanquisher, two punishers, one nova eradicator, one plasma annihilator, one old FW TL auto cannon, and an old metal demolisher.


The Punisher guns and Nova Eradicator are conversions from Robogear bits


And the Plasma Annihilator is an old Conversion Beamer


The old Demolisher kit is so front-heavy I had to weigh it down with coins on the bottom to get it to sit straight!

Swapable turrets beat magnetized guns every time. Good casts, and great kitbash and recovery!

Great job with the sponsons and turrets, that gives you plenty of options to play with.

And agreed, swappable turrets comes in ahead of magnetised weapons

Thanks guys. I agree, just having loads of turrets is MUCH better.

So, while I was priming and then spraying the Leman Russ batch, I got bored and started AND FINISHED the next batch.

Artillery!


Three Basilisks, one FW Medusa and one old Griffon. These were much faster to assemble because they don't have any options or magnets. Most of the hulls were already built, so just a few repair jobs here and there.


Two of the ordnance pieces were missing their platforms, so I fabricated them some more out of plasticard and textured rivet-plate. Of course, all four ordnance pieces have their safety rails replaced with spikes because Chaos. This is the back of the medusa, with extended track guard because the track assembly work I must have done ten years ago was pretty terrible!


For some reason, this one has two left supports for the gun. Weird. I'm gonna make it work anyway, because none of the bits sites have any supports in stock.


And finally - the guns! I'm tempted to spray all these tonight too, and then spend Christmas week on an epic ten-tank production line. By the end of the week I could have a finished Armoured Company!


EDIT: Ok, I did it. Here's this week's work, all in beautiful pink.

The Hello Kitty armour company

Impressive. Good going

I've decided to time all the different sections of this, so I can figure out how long I've got the painting process to take.

First, I spray highlighted all of the tanks with the pale pink colour, which took me 1.5 hours this morning. It's very quick when you've got the hang, just spraying softly round the edges and filling in an big armour plates.




After letting this dry for ten minutes, I spent a long time masking off all the pink areas so that I could spray the tracks and other metal bits silver. This took a while, but I hate painting tracks, so worth it! The actual spraying took about 20 mins, but the whole process was about 2 hours. So, 3.5 hours into painting and I'll finally get out the paintbrush!

Oh yes a pink tank/artillery company will look very grand, Slaanesh will be pleased.

Yesterday's progress. Went through and did all the base colours - probably the most laborious bit of actual painting, but at least they're done!



Probably spent around 4 hours in all painting silver, yellow, black, gold and various spot colours.




And then I used the airbrush to do a bit of early weathering on the longer barrels, and then spent an hour or so this morning applying transfers. The barrels were sprayed a little gold, then dark brown near the tip, then black around the end.




Next, to dig out the Micron Pens and start with the graffiti.

You know Ian... it's the scale of what you're doing that just kills me. Pretty darn amazing.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
You know Ian... it's the scale of what you're doing that just kills me. Pretty darn amazing.

Ha! It's kind of a final test of what I've been trying all year - trying to get my painting time down further and further. I started this project with my first go at weathering and airbrushing, and as I use more and more weird chemicals and tools that aren't 'brush painting' it goes down more.

This afternoon I did the first stage of weathering. Graffiti using the airbrush and some brown and orange Sigma Micron pens, and then some rust and oil using Modelmates Dyes. First, up, the graffiti. The chaos symbols are deliberately quite light as I want them to get lost in the rest of the weathering. The Sigma Pens are used because, unlike normal fineliners, the varnish that goes on afterwards won't dissolve the ink.





Then I used the dyes to put some rust and oil grime on the metallic areas. These are water-based dyes, which you can rub off or move around afterwards with a wet cotton bud - so, kinda like the oil washes but not quite as pliable. They have quite a good 'sheen' to them, though, and are ridiculously easy to apply. Each of these tanks probably took me two minutes of wiggling the brush around the tracks, trying to be as random as possible.






The whole process took another three hours. Next, out with the sponges...



UPDATE: Sponging done this morning. Four colours in about an hour and a half, thanks to my fantastic new tool - foam brushes!!



First, Minitaire Saddle Brown over all of it, concentrated around the edges with the occasional big splurge to cover up earlier mistakes.




Than, much quicker passes with Coal, Bloody Earth and Model Air Steel to make it more interesting, concentrating on the same areas. The Steel, being much paler, helps to blend back in any areas that look too splotchy from the darker colours.

MORE UPDATES. Christmas Eve is nice and quiet for me, so I've got lots done. Everything is assembled and gloss varnished, and ready to start with the oil washes. I'll give it a few hours just to make sure the varnish is completely dry.

These are progressing really quick, it would take me months to do this many by hand.

Very gritty.

Which tank is that at the bottom Arbitor?

Excellent work on the tanks, and speedy too! Always good to see which tricks peeps use to cut down the time.

How do you find cleaning the foam brushes? Ive wondered a few times about picking some up, I tend to just use pieces I've torn off packing foam for sponging.

The gold, brown, black on the barrels is very effective, like that a lot

angelofvengeance wrote:Which tank is that at the bottom Arbitor?

That is a Destroyer Tank Hunter from forge world, though the side skirts are scratch builds.

monkeytroll wrote:Excellent work on the tanks, and speedy too! Always good to see which tricks peeps use to cut down the time.

How do you find cleaning the foam brushes? Ive wondered a few times about picking some up, I tend to just use pieces I've torn off packing foam for sponging.

The gold, brown, black on the barrels is very effective, like that a lot

Yes, I hadn't tried the barrel thing before, and just looked at a couple of images online, and then gave it a go. It was actually really simple and seems to have achieved the right effect!

Regarding the foam brushes, I haven't tried to clean them - I saw them in an art shop the other day and, at 50p a brush, just assumed they were meant to be disposable! I did all my weathering in one go with one brush (now dead), but I reckon I could get two or three uses out of each one, trimming away more each time. I looked on eBay, and it's about £4 for 20. Before this I was using packing foam held between a set of pliers, but this was much faster and easier to manipulate.

TANKS!

So, I did the final stages of oil washing and blending over the end of Xmas Day and all today. The whole house smells of whit spirit, but I've now finished all the Leman Russes! The artillery section is done too, but I've got to make the crew before I photograph them.

I picked up some blue card, and colour matched a bit better, so these should be more accurate colour representations than the white photos. However, it looks to me like they're a bit crushed in levels. What do you think? Better or worse than the white?

Destroyer Tank Hunter




Then, the 'Command Tank' with the side skirts, here set up as a Demolisher and as a Vanquisher.





Then, the three regular tanks with swappable sponsons. First, as basic Leman Russ Battle Tanks.



Punisher


Eradicator



Exterminator



Executioner

Nice. Very, very nice. Can't wait for the artillery now.

(There seem to be some blue/cyan shadows on some of them - besides the plasmas' glow, of course! - that didn't seem to be there before. Is it?)