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That's some serious determination man. I love restoring old mini's, but I think I'd have been beaten by this...

Sorry for seemingly slacking, guys. I'm also slogging it out with 50 infantry.

I went back and sorted out that rot, the wing tips and the pod (still needs another seeing to back there, I feel)

How's this?

^ the side that had the most damage




feth symmetry, symmetry is for people with more time than even I have.

Buttery, you beautiful, crazy b@stard. You've accomplished a proper miracle taking what was once a mal-formed and ill-constructed mass of resin, glue, and greenstuff and transformed it through toil, tribulation and a titanic effort to the glory this model only briefly knew when it was packaged and shipped from Forge World, blindly hoping the recipient would take the time to assemble and paint it properly.

Such would not be this bird's fate, sadly. The story does not end there, for it then it came to you, wounded, limping, battered and pained, and through your efforts it has been restored to a glory it could only dream of.

Kudos. I can't say it enough, your dedication and skill in this restoration show plainly and I for one greatly look forward to seeing the paint job finished up.

By the way, you're working on some infantry? Guard? And if so, what regiment? Just curious. I'm trying to keep working on my Command Leman Russ for the August paint contest with Paradigm and hope to have the tank buttoned up and mostly finished after this weekend (Precious few days off coming up. We'll see how far I get.)

Keep at it, you're in the home stretch now man. I'll be cheering for ya and can't wait to see the finished product.

Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

...
You know, nobody's as surprised as me that I've got even close to pulling this off. I've never done this before with a miniature.
It's inspiring me to not settle for "almost"... That pod at the back is serviceable but it's not great. it's not something I'd be proud of (not that I'm proud of much generally). So despite me wanting to haul ass into painting it, back to putty and sanding.

I'm painting Mordians and Tanith. In the long term it'll be 100 Tanith and 100 Mordies with some strange vehicles and commissar cadets.

...

...

Cat jumped on the table, I put my arm out to stop her climbing over the top of the Aquila on her way to the window. Dropped it off the table and smashed a vent.



Think i'm going to make some toast.

Ouch :(

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...

Oh it's fine, better now than you know, when it's painted. Clearly that vent needed remodelling.

Water spray bottle exterminatus on cat incoming...

Im not a one for these type of project logs but I must say I couldn't close the window until i went through all 4 pages. You truly worked a miracle here. I am quite impressed with your determination and the finished product. Kudos to you good sir!

 Plains of War wrote:
Im not a one for these type of project logs but I must say I couldn't close the window until i went through all 4 pages. You truly worked a miracle here. I am quite impressed with your determination and the finished product. Kudos to you good sir!

Thank you so much.

Little victories. I fixed the vent, re-sanded the nose and rear, and re-primed on Friday... Then I threw down some varnish and took her to WHW for a practice match with my team for September.
We were in the corner of the hall out of the way, but a handful of people across the afternoon came over and asked politely for a look, or gave her a look over. She stood up to a ten year old's grabbing of her tail fin to lift her up (he's got impulse control issues, generally very polite child but got revved up).
The FW staff were politely impressed (they're politely everything) in passing.

Most importantly she kicked ass. I put some very nasty surprises in this unit. Four plasma gunners and my warlord with Preferred Enemy? Dirty dirty.

Mean-chuckle of the afternoon was taking her into the GW store to ask staff about wobbly model/placement rules for her and the youngest staff member saying, "What is that?" in total bewilderment.

Tomorrow I'll work on the canopies and start testing colour schemes.

That is awesome to hear! How do you go about finding these? Ebay I assume and look for misspellings?

I just randomly spotted it on eBay, this one was spelt correctly, but it was also very very open about the damage.
I paid about £90 which is around RRP... Yes it was a lot. I needed the project more than I knew at the time.

My second that I bought purely as a parts donor was from China. I suspect it's a fake. It did the job, I will never resell it, I'm going to build it static.

The one on eBay recently was also labelled correctly. That sold for £245 pre-built and primed. It was broken (smashed slide mechanism just like mine), but the seller did not list or explain this. I had to ask.
I feel for the buyer, that may be pretty gakky to find out later.

Get some paint on this! I've got one myself, and it's sat primed for months because I've no idea how I want to paint it, so inspire me. Plus I need to paint the inside of the passenger pod before assembling it, filling the gaps and attaching it to the rest of the plane. This is not making itself easy.

As for the dome canopy, I ended up buying one of those "chewable toothpaste" things in the gents at a motorway service station on the M6; it came in a clear plastic sphere which is just the right size to act as glazing for the canopy.

Mine turned out to be lopsided; it's now got one orthopaedic landing leg so it sits level.

Needs a little work by hand to round this out, but there's the flame test.

The vertical bars on the wings will be metallics, as will the rivets, and the white will be shaded a little.

This is gonna look so fething awesome!!!!

Cheers! I hope so. Though I may end up simply painting the belly grey until September due to time constraints.

Here's both wings before fine tuning. A better idea of the true colour.

Edit: Oh god you can see my mask, ahaha. I cut that out by hand from some low task masking paper. Yes it took forever.

Swanky! This bird is going to look hot when you get it finished up! See what I did there?

Excellent job with the mask as well. That effect on the side of a Salamanders tank would be very very cool.

Keep at it sir! Can't wait to see more progress.

Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

Snappy Stencils do this style of hotrod flame, salamander scales (several sizes) and such for airbrushing.
I was using their freehand flame template the other day, it's probably their weakest product, the brick walls and scales are superb.

(It's the one that looks like a blobby cloud in the middle)

There's also a hilarious Banksy style commissar graffiti, and some others that aren't in this image.

She's by no means finished, but here's her first painted outing.
Note: I hate the leadbelcher metallics on the wings, I'm going to sand down and take it back to white or mithril silver.



A few steps on from this:




http://i.imgur.com/MYXa6Qc.jpg

I made her a little present:

Great to see her back in service.

How did the game go?

Oh terribly! Though she survived all four. Mostly due to nobody having anti-air in two games.
There's pics of the lovely painted figures we faced in my P&M blog.

Beautiful.

For future refernce the best stripper I have found to date for any material is this
http://www.bonanzamarket.co.uk/listings/La-s-Totally-Awesome-Concentrated-Cleaner-All-Purpose-Refills-32-Oz-Pack-of-2/240402189

A bit pricier in the UK than here but it is often sold at dollar (1 pound) stores as well as big market houses ..soak entire model in the stuff over night and tooth brush it clean will crystalise superglue so model will come apart and makes taking the superglue off easier Have not seen it adversely affect any of the plastics, resins, metals or vynal model parts to date..

rinse off after scrubbing is done once dry ready to reassemble and paint

A bad thing happened.

I've been storing her in a KR pick and pluck tray that I carved out. Unfortunately due to the weight of the vehicle, the thin base is not enough, and bulges and flexes when carried. With the tail, she's also too tall for a standard case. My partner moved the tray upstairs onto the bed so that the dining table was free for gaming, and my extremely large cat jumped on the kit.

Ankle is shattered in the worst possible place. I haven't got the words right now.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
A bad thing happened.

I've been storing her in a KR pick and pluck tray that I carved out. Unfortunately due to the weight of the vehicle, the thin base is not enough, and bulges and flexes when carried. With the tail, she's also too tall for a standard case. My partner moved the tray upstairs onto the bed so that the dining table was free for gaming, and my extremely large cat jumped on the kit.

Ankle is shattered in the worst possible place. I haven't got the words right now.

First, I hope it’s the Lander’s ankle that shattered, not the cat’s. One is fixable with some glue and pins, the other requires massive vet bills.

Isn’t this the second time the cat has tried to kill the lander? I think there might be an evil agenda afoot. Don’t let the cat try for a third time.

Hope things work out.

I'm calm, don't even feel sad about it.. I'm just so very tired that I know I won't do a good job if I try right now.

I'm honestly on the fence about gathering it all up and sending it to a certain studio commission painter when I've saved up.

That is a shame to hear, but considering where you started with this project I am sure you will find a way to repair and strengthen the damage. Just make sure you are in the mood for it before you start.

Also, I know its not funny, but I now have visions of a huge intergalactic dry-dock with an empty bay and a small placard that says 'Reserved parking for Buttery Commissar'.

I spent a LOT of today thinking about the little bird. So much that I've brought her up to the bedside table to have a proper look before sleeping.
And I think I'm going to repaint the vast majority of her (and do some more sanding and work).
Repairs are simple, if galling.
Something hadn't been sitting right with me on this scheme, I think it's just too fussy for a large vehicle.

I'm keeping the flames. But the various metallics and blues are probably going, making way for more white.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And before any says anything, that's a wireless controller for the bedside lamp.
There's only one plug socket in my bedroom, and it's behind a cupboard.

I think leave the flames, and paint the rest of the remainder in either blue or white - probably white. I agree that it is too busy.

Apparently I didn't read any of your comment, so the above wasn't me just parroting you, it was just from looking at the picture - great minds think alike hey

I think the thing that looks off is that the flames are running "backwards" compared to the wing feathers, so it's kind of an awkward clash of lines and curves and shadows. I'm not sure if the Aquila is really the right model for a flame pattern like that. The blue and white flames (though maybe with the base at the hull instead of the wing tip) would look nice on something like the Thunderbolt where there's big open spaces, but I think the Aquila with its really complex and cluttered design probably benefits from either a simple single color on the feathers or at least a bird-like pattern that matches the physical structure of the wing.

I agree that the flames look backward