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Those sprue weapons are awesome! You must go mad when carving them though. It would drive me nuts! Any ways nice works and keep at it. I would love to see an eldar model made by you sculpted ONLY from sprue, and green stuff! I know you could do it.

Viktor von Domm wrote:the kirs weapon would be ideal to have a dual wileding character... head facing downwards, both arm outstreched backwards and in full charge... that would be awesome!

That's a good pose idea Vik. I'll save that for future use.

epicwalrus wrote:Those sprue weapons are awesome! You must go mad when carving them though. It would drive me nuts! Any ways nice works and keep at it. I would love to see an eldar model made by you sculpted ONLY from sprue, and green stuff! I know you could do it.

Thanks epicwalrus and welcome.
The carving is a double-edged blade ( ), a lot of the time it's quite nice and peaceful and calming and lovely. Then there are the times (and there are plenty of times) when it goes wrong or it won't work and you just have to chuck it in the scrap plastic pot and start again. Those times it can get maddening and motivation-sapping, but it's not as bad as when things go wrong with my putty work (as the sprue is free).

A whole model may be a long way off (alright I did just build a hut from sprue, but...). Eldar tech' is really tricky to replicate with all the complex curves.
My secret so far is to keep the things carved as simple as possible and add small details later (like the guards and pommels). But when you look at my swords next to the sword from the Wraithblades, for example, you can see how much more detail there is in the GW bits over what I can achieve.

But I'm not down on that I will continue to push myself further and in time I may be able to do models from scratch with all the lovely little details.

Oh, in other news, I bought some drill bits while buying some more paint. I wanted a bit to fit between the ~1.5mm and the 0.4mm bits I already had and was aiming for about 0.7mm. However, I've only seen packs of many bits in the shops I've been in, so I bought a set of 20 bits that go in 0.05mm increments from 0.3 to 1.6mm. So I can now drill anything I may need to drill for quite some time anyway. *shrugs*

My mind's eye can see the pose Vik suggested..it's a good idea!

Indeed. I've made a note of it.

the smallest drill i own is 1.5mm... but it changed my hobby life very intense... 1.5mm is the thickness of paperclips... and now i pin my models with paperclips and thus i can paint them way better... afterwards i just clip the paperclips off and i am done...

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
the smallest drill i own is 1.5mm... but it changed my hobby life very intense... 1.5mm is the thickness of paperclips... and now i pin my models with paperclips and thus i can paint them way better... afterwards i just clip the paperclips off and i am done...

Yeah, I have some paperclips for pinning joints and things.

I've also been pinning these swords with some really thin wire which fits nicely in 0.4mm holes.
How much stronger it actually makes them, if at all, I don't know...

I just found that sometimes the ~1.5mm bit was a little too large (like bolter barrels), maybe it's a 1.6mm... it was something else I was given along with most of the other modelling supplies I have.

I would suggest getting yourself this kind of tool...:

Ah yes, that would indeed tell me how thick the bit is but the new ones are in slots that say what they are, so I'll believe them for now and try to put them back where they came from.

ah... yeah I tried that kind of order and organization once... and now I have a small casket where I throw every bit inside after use^^

Ha ha yeah, I'll be a good boy to start with at least and I probably won't be swapping and changing bits too often anyway. So I'll let the ocd part of me look after them (everything must have a home and I get irate if something is not in it's home and I can't find it.)

ha... good deal I have a very good memory where I put what and where I would found these then... my bitzcollection or my junk collection... vast would be an understatement...

I envy you and your good memory. Mine is appalling (related to the dyslexia), so I need to put things in a place where it makes sense to me and then I just have to think "where would I put "x" if I wanted to store it?" and that's where it'll be.

the thing is... I start with order but than a cancer growth happens and due to projects small pots full of bitz get collected... I kinda have a scenic/ historical /image related memory...mannnnny connections...

That is the very nature of everything, Vik. Entropy (disorder) of any system will always increase without an outside influence (someone tidying).

and the decision has been made...
Guardian #10's upper body has been glued together and will look like the following.

I need to carve the inside of his wrist to match the arm, but the outside fits well

After that it'll be time to chop the leg(s) to give him a running/charging pose. The back leg (being the straighter of the two) will be the contact point with the ground/base, but may need a little chopping to aid the pose if the front leg can't sell it by itself.

Thank you all for your help with the weapons. It was all very helpful, even if your ideas were not used they were all considered and potentially stored for the future.
Do not be disappointed if your favourite was not chosen, it will be used in the future.
and more weapons will be made in time...

Now it is time to move forward, where's the saw...

Chop Chop! -lookin good with dat pose!

Thanks Dave.
His right leg is currently in 4 pieces and I'm working on straightening the shin.

Looks great, and I said it before that sword is cool.

Good luck with the hacking. Always fun.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Looks great, and I said it before that sword is cool.

Thanks.

Good luck with the hacking. Always fun.

I always find it stressful to start with.
It's one thing carving something from a piece of sprue, if it doesn't work, no matter it didn't cost anything.
Chopping actual model pieces; if you make a mess of it, it's gone...

But once I've actually bitten that bullet and done the chopping, all is well again and I can carry on as normal.

Carry on as normal?......'normal!?'......... doubt that dude :-)

Do not be disappointed if your favourite was not chosen, it will be used in the future.

after all...you need to recycle...it´s the law!!!

looking forward to that reposing work then...

 nerdfest09 wrote:
Carry on as normal?......'normal!?'......... doubt that dude :-)

Hey pot, this is the kettle, I heard you called me "black"

My kettle is white enamel

NF: Well a consistent level of madness can be considered "normal"...

Vik: Yeah, very little is thrown away as even small slivers of plastic are useful (as you can see below).

Theo/Dave:

This is where the leg is at the moment.

I used small wedges of plastic to fill the gaps in the shin and then shaved/carved/sanded them down after the glue had set.
Next job is to point the foot and I'll hopefully do a better job than I did on the DA Exarch. I have an idea of how to make my life easier.

now that is a method even GS hypo allergic folks like dave could use to rearrange legs and arms and so on ... that is a very nice tut!

atm I am collecting plastic cutoffs and shavings for a future use... the orky way to build leaves a mess of these... a plethora of shaving I tell you!!!

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
now that is a method even GS hypo allergic folks like dave could use to rearrange legs and arms and so on ... that is a very nice tut!

atm I am collecting plastic cutoffs and shavings for a future use... the orky way to build leaves a mess of these... a plethora of shaving I tell you!!!

Yeah, it's an extension to what I already did to legs/arms when I re-posed them; I would use small wedges of plastic to glue the two parts together at the right angle. The wedges were always smaller than the parts and I would then fill in the knee/elbow around the wedge with putty.

Then I saw a post that Blackadder put up about filling small gaps with a piece of scrap plastic and cutting it off flush.
And after all the sprue carving I've been doing recently, it all just clicked into place. Fill the majority of the gap with plastic, carve it to shape, and then fill any small gaps left with putty (saves on putty and therefore money ).

So that is Sprue use number 1354. (note: that is just a random number and I won't be keeping track of it).

And on to the foot.
The last time a repositioned a foot to be pointing the toes, it was for the Dire Avenger Exarch that is perched on Venus' shoulder.
For that I cut off the toe-end of the foot at the point it met the leg armour and then cut off the heel where it met the leg armour.

This left the foot in two pieces and I wanted to remove some material from the smaller of the two (to reduce the heel). This was a bad idea, as trying to carve off a sliver of plastic from a tiny piece of plastic was very difficult and the foot needed quite a bit of work to reconstruct it.

So this time, I did it differently.

I cut into the heel, parallel with the sole and then cut into the toe end along the join with the armour. This kept the foot in one piece.
The also allowed me to remove the heel material from the leg (which is easier to hold).
I then reattached the foot at the heel and glued in a wedge of plastic to fill in the foot.
Carve that down once the glue is set and fill any little gaps with some putty.
Foot and lower leg, done.

Now to work on the knee joint.

Excellent surgical procedure doctor!

the wedge is brilliant!

creativehivemind wrote:Excellent surgical procedure doctor!

Thank you. I even used a scalpel for most of the work...

dsteingass wrote:the wedge is brilliant!

Ta very much Dave.

Its operation time. Nice reposing so far, good sword. Its interesting! keep up the lovely work dr.

creativehivemind wrote:Excellent surgical procedure doctor!

I was about to make a joke of medical origins too... bloody ninja



love that leg surgery!... I will try that out eventually too!