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So.... how close to the asking price did you get?

 Ruglud wrote:
So.... how close to the asking price did you get?

We got £175 for him. Which I think is a good middle-ground for us and the buyer. I got roughly the same hourly wage as I have for most of the other things I've painted, so that's ok.

We shall see what the buyer thinks of it when it arrives.

Fantastic result and well worth it for the work and quality ... and awesomeness of the final build!

175 British Sterling is a bit rich for me! that is like 250USD for me.

Nice, very nice. That's an impressive price

Thanks Magos.

Shas and Ruglud. Yeah, not cheap. But a good deal considering the time put in to create it (it "should" have been closer to £600 if I was to get minimum wage, but no-one would have paid that much).

While I'm working on a couple of personal projects over in my other thread, thoughts are turning to what will appear here next. Stay tuned.

thoughts are turning to what will appear here next. Stay tuned.

That sounds very good! I'll be looking forward for more of your amazing works! Keep it going doc!

Greetz from the S
Take care!

Right, so there was a bit of a gap over here as I've been busy making a jet-bike for my army and a piece of terrain for the LoER contest.

Having won the terrain contest, I'm now running the next round. Click on this to check it out:


And now back to our (semi-) regular programming...

My friend that helps with the buying and selling of the models / projects that I make in this blog, had been looking for the next thing for me to have a look at and found that Terminators seemed to have the largest potential for profit. He told me this at the same time as saying that he had found a cheap squad of Terminators on ebay and they were on their way to me.

They arrived, well packaged and glued together; this much was expected.
What wasn't expected was the build quality and the vast excess of glue used to build them.
You will see them in the pictures below, but I'll expand here:
None of the mould lines were removed. That's ok, some people don't like dealing with them and they can be a lot of work for someone that just wan't to get on with the gaming.

However, they also didn't remove any of the sprue tags from any of the pieces. These have just be clipped off and glued together.

This brings us to the glue. I crossed my fingers and threw them in the freezer. Hoping that it was superglue and that they would fall apart...
No such luck. This was plastic cement... the thick stuff... and there was a lot of it... all over the models...

So they sat to one side (crying to themselves) while I worked on the aforementioned projects. Now with those finished, I've pulled these from the shelf and started work.

Using scalpel and jeweller's saw, I removed them from their bases and removed their arms and the (wonky) add-ons.
Cleaned up all the pieces and assessed the damage.

Some of them needed some repair to the bodies where I'd removed a bit too much with the arms, and some needed the bottoms of their feet repairing.
True, I probably could have got away with doing neither, but I like to start from a good point and not have a problem hanging over me as I do the rest of the work.

Now, I have finished the re-posing (using wedges of sprue to angle the arms out a bit). I shuffled the arms about and selected pairs that went with how each body was sitting on the legs.

There will be much putty work to do and a few additions to make, but the basic builds can be seen below (before, during and after):


I'm referring to these as "Rescue" Terminators as I'm rescuing them from what they were before, and I'm going to run with this as a theme: They will be the most veteran of veterans, wearing old, battle-worn armour. Sent in to extract vital people or things from the most deadly of places. The damage and chips on the models will be used as battle damage and I'll give them a worn and scuffed paint-job.

We shall see how they turn out...

Yeah Rescue Terminators!!

I love rescuing a model. Or even a whole squad. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

International Rescue terminators.... Go on....go on....you know you want to

I will be following this H. I have three rescue grav centurions with sprue still on, god awful mold lines, and basing. I can't wait to see what I learn from your efforts.

At least they were only 40$ and have decent poses.

EyeamRai wrote:Yeah Rescue Terminators!!

Thanks for the enthusiasm. I hope to live up to it.

weetyskemian44 wrote:I love rescuing a model. Or even a whole squad. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

and you do a brilliant job of it too.

monkeytroll wrote:International Rescue terminators.... Go on....go on....you know you want to

I don't even know how I'd do that, other than painting them different colours. Not sure on the resale value of it either. Maybe I'll try and fit a reference in somewhere.

Stormwall wrote:I will be following this H. I have three rescue grav centurions with sprue still on, god awful mold lines, and basing. I can't wait to see what I learn from your efforts.

At least they were only 40$ and have decent poses.

Good luck with them. I can't offer any Centurion specific advice (as I've not seen, let alone built, that kit), but I will say; when it comes to rescuing models (especially those that have been badly built), don't worry about trying to dismantle them carefully. Use appropriate tools, obviously, but expect some damage and then either incorporate it into the final model, or fix it afterwards.

I've just added putty to the arm joints and am now turning my thoughts to additions.

One of them has some cables that extend out above his head, where 3 of the other 4 (one being an older, possibly starter set, model) have a light/lens attachment. What these cables are actually for, I don't know (answers on a post...), but I'm thinking of making a larger light/lens thing. He is the one with the assault cannon, so more light is probably a good thing. He also needs an ammo' pack for the assault cannon which appears to be missing it (did I say these were cheap off ebay...).

Other than that, there won't be much more I'll do to them. Maybe some small trinkets etc...

I'm also in two minds about the bases.
Either simple gravel and/or mud and rocks,
Or some kind of space hulk decking...
I can't see anyone voting for the simple bases, so this is me just thinking aloud.

These will also serve as practice for my new airbrush. Stay tuned for my thoughts on this later...

haha... love the thought of international rescue terminators.... Just got a question.... do you use Photoshop or another programme to create your listing images..... almost cartoon style with the text overlapping... its a nice effect!

Ahhh, part of the fun for me, I love a good model rescue.

Ebay 99p specials normally.

Model rescue is the best part of modeling.

Frustrating though. Odd, I normally hate terminators but, I am following this with glee waiting for an update.

MagosBiff90 wrote:haha... love the thought of international rescue terminators.... Just got a question.... do you use Photoshop or another programme to create your listing images..... almost cartoon style with the text overlapping... its a nice effect!

Thanks. I just use Powerpoint. One day I decided that I wanted to start cropping my photos and arranging them together, had a look at what I had that would do it...

Not the best program for the job really, but I know how to use it and just haven't got around to trying out better one (it is something I intend to do... one day).

SJM wrote:Ahhh, part of the fun for me, I love a good model rescue.

Ebay 99p specials normally.

With the amount of work I put in to a standard, new, model (see my army blog); it's not a great deal more work to do.

Stormwall wrote:Model rescue is the best part of modeling.

Frustrating though. Odd, I normally hate terminators but, I am following this with glee waiting for an update.

It can be frustrating at first, but once the models are cut up into parts, they are no different from any other model... to me.

Good to see I'm sparking your interest.

I mentioned that the one with the assault cannon was missing the ammo' drum. So I had a look though my parts (that took longer than expected when I received a package from OMN that contained a ton of bits as my prize for the LoER contest) and found the battery pack for a Predator turret...

...While they are intended as a battery pack and not ammo' pack, I thought "what the hell" and chopped one of them off and set about it:


Next is to give him a light/camera thing up top...

Thanks for the info mate... that's a cool idea..... oh... and that detailing on the rotator cannon ammo box is just awesome! Really adds a lot of detail!

False Advertising! I saw 'rescue terminators' and though, "Cool, Fire and Rescue themed or Search and Rescue themed termies." Both of which would be way cool. Instead, rescued terminators. Sigh. You'll do a good job with them though.

MagosBiff90 wrote:Thanks for the info mate... that's a cool idea..... oh... and that detailing on the rotator cannon ammo box is just awesome! Really adds a lot of detail!

Ta. Well the little comment boxes become necessary when you start putting progress pictures all together. People have to be able to follow what you are showing. Usually each montage is just for one stage and shows different angles of the same thing, so I don't usually add any comments.

Thanks. I added the triangular shape to match those on the ammo' boxes of the other Terminator's storm bolters. The visible bullets are necessary so people know what it is and don't ask "why does that have a battery pack?". The whole thing being necessary so that it has some ammo' to use...

Red Harvest wrote:False Advertising! I saw 'rescue terminators' and though, "Cool, Fire and Rescue themed or Search and Rescue themed termies." Both of which would be way cool. Instead, rescued terminators. Sigh. You'll do a good job with them though.

Who says they are not themed, and that they can't be both rescued and rescue Terminators?
The theme may be more apparent once painted... there will be hazard stripes at least

They have their last lot of details; some medals and purity seals.

The assault cannon bearer has his lighting / camera addition.
After rummaging in my bits I ended up finding the perfect shape in one of the sculpted pieces I made for the feet of the Chaos Dreadnought (now that is recycling ). Added a couple of bits from the end of some round sprue and a small strip of plasticard under the rear (between the lumps on the top of the body). I thought about adding more detail to it, but the flat and plain look matches that of the Terminator armour.


You can also see here the putty work in their armpits and a couple of them needed the rear of one of their shoulder pads repaired (as the previous owner had used 2 of the right "crux" pads on their right shoulders... as well as the ones on their left. I've shaved off the crux on those pads also).

And spare a thought for the runt of the herd; the starter box Terminator. He's noticeably shorter than the others, and this is part emphasised and part hidden by the lack of anything on top of his shoulders.

Also notice that I've added to the battle damage on their armour. Again, painting will help with this.


Now on to the bases...

The bases have ended up being more work than the models that are to stand on them , but they are now done.
This says it all really;

Yes, that is a Genestealer hand (I had a spare one already chopped off), and yes there are rivets (if you look closely enough. Paint will bring them out).

I did intend to leave the sides open but some of the smaller part-plates were liable to break off in the future and filling all the gaps with putty made it much easier to sand the sides to a neat finish.

I could have done more with these, but they took long enough as it is (because of trial and error. I'll know what I'm doing next time).
There will be painted details though.

And here's the Terminators on the bases (not glued), ready to paint.


Expect airbrush talk tomorrow or Monday.

Wonderful use of sprue, Doc. Very nice basing.

Liking the rescued termies.

Nice bases, I like the one with the stealer hand moving the panel aside, looking forward to seeing more on these.

Absolutely love the basing, I need to up my game!

Where did you get the textured metal floor plates plasti card?

Thanks Stormwall. Sprue is just so useful.

Thanks Shas.

Thanks Calibanite', I just had the plate loose to make it different and then remembered that I had a hand that I had chopped off a previous model, and making these I can't help but think of space hulk...

SJM wrote:Absolutely love the basing, I need to up my game!

Thanks.

Where did you get the textured metal floor plates plasti card?

[singing]I bought it on EBay. [/singing]
=>http://stores.ebay.co.uk/transportmodelsofpreston/

Many thanks!

No worries SJM.

So, airbrush thoughts...

It seems to work pretty well. I didn't fiddle with it much and had no major problems.
There are a few things that will need to be perfected, such as;
The perfect air pressure (Just getting the needle off the pin in the cheap-O regulator seems to work fine),
The best paint viscosity (although I seem to have got that ok),
Maybe reading about what the twiddly bit on the back of the airbrush is for (didn't touch it, worked fine...),
And the technique (distance, variation of the paint-flow, timing of layers, etc.).

As it happened;
Sorted out all the things I'd need and set myself up in the garage (No space in my room for this and no current means of extraction).
Started with my primer and, after checking that the airbrush worked with plain white spirit in, threw some in and tried it out on some card.

I should mention at this stage that I have used a siphon feed airbrush before and so I am used to the action of pushing a button to spray paint, and to getting the paint thin enough for it to spray. This new (proper) airbrush seems to like the same treatment as I gave the old spraygun.

The only new things to me were the gravity feed (stick paint in top, no need to worry about how much paint to mix up so that the tube can suck it up = win), and the dual-action trigger (after a quick play I got the hang of it fine, seems quite natural).

As no problems presented themselves I got straight on with the models.
Primed them grey. Very thin coat so not full coverage. Was tricky to see what I was doing though...

...Unlike a paintbrush you can't always see where you are painting (or I couldn't, more light may be a solution to this). Especially if you are spraying only a little paint, the jet is pretty much invisible, so it's difficult to tell where you are spraying and where you want to move your hand to spray an area of the model. This may come with practice (and more light). Painting a grey thing with grey paint is probably not the best to start with, so I soldiered on...

I then gave them a coating of black. At least easier to see what you are painting.
However, in my eagerness to make the models black I did try to spray them black in one go and this seems a bad way to do things. As you spray the paint can build up and without time to dry you can end up with runs and pooling. I could see this happening and so eased off and it didn't end up so bad in the end. I also wasn't worried as this is going to be covered up anyway.

Then (after letting the paint dry) I sprayed brown on the models from the top, leaving the undersides of things like the arms and legs, black. Part of my cunning plan...

Then (after letting that dry, and trimming a hedge) I sprayed them red. Again focussing from the top, but making sure to cover the black as well.
I took the red really easy, and built up the colour in successive passes, giving each model a light coat before moving on to the next and cycling back around after giving the paint time to dry a little. This worked much better.

This now gives me some nicely shaded red armour in a similar time that I would probably take wet-blending one of them...

And here's photographic evidence:


Now it's back to the "normal" brushes to finish these off...

Nice work doc.....the bases are cool, and airbrush work certainly seems to have done the job

Thanks MT.

The next stage was to pick out the various black, "stone" (or whatever those crux's are made of) and metal parts in black and then start on adding the base colours for these parts.

As an example of the power of airbrushing, all that above, being careful with a paintbrush, took longer than all the airbrushing...

Here's an example of how they look now:


Much more work to do on them.

and yeah, they are getting gold helmets. I said they were going to be the most Veteran of veterans.