I have not been in the mood to paint recently, but tonight I decided I would give it a go again.
I painted my 15mm giant that I printed out. This was done whilst playing ‘Hunter Call of the Wild’ on the PC. The pJnrs were to my left, the models were to my right and I was sat in a hide trying to call in some Blacktail deer. They never came but a bull elk did.
It’s not the best photo as it was taken on my tablet rather than my phone, but hey you can see where I have been.
Well I decided to see what I had printed for the Germans… quite a bit it would seem.
So at the back we have a couple of civilian vessels with a freighter on the left and a liner on the right.
Next, coming forwards, the SMA Brandenburg… a legendary vessel. This one is a battlecruiser.
A gunboat and battleship next, a pair of cruisers and finally a pair of destroyers in the foreground.
I plonked random weapon systems on these. Once I decide which version to go for then I will glue them down.
I cocked up with these a bit as I forgot to check the top of the base would fit in the hole on the keel of the ship. Due to the size reduction some resin/IPA remained in the hole and cured. I will either pin them or drill out a bigger hole.
Well, today I was browsing YouTube, in between watching the state funeral of her late Majesty. Anyway I attached Dana Howl’s video on the new contrast paint colours. I have bought one of them… the new black. Interestingly she calls them Contrast flat… aka they aren’t really Contrast… but anyway I found this video purely by chance.
I have never seen this guy before and was pleased that he said two things… First being he is biased.. he helped design them and secondly he wanted these paints to be as good as Contrast.
So as you can imagine, I will be giving these a go when they come out. There will be twenty five in the range with some similar to Contrast colours, but the majority in a different colour. The big test for me is will they reactivate… I don’t think so as he said if you get pint (or paint – thanks Guru) where you don’t want it, then just recover it with the white.
I might see if they will send me a couple of bottles to try out… wish me luck.
So the other day I started getting failures in the centre of the build plate. This causes a lot of swearing on my part as I then need to empty the vat, clean it and remove the resin that was stuck to the FEP.
First off I changed the resin, just in case there was something wrong with the first lot…. Still failures!
Next I re levelled the build plate, still getting those failures!
I checked that the lights were working… no problems, I oiled things… still issues. Then in one final attempt to get it to work I put the newly done vat onto the machine and voila- success!
This is what success and failure look like side by side. I go ad to peel the funny star thing off the FEP.
I eventually got two German cruisers. I have binned six! The little gunboats came out fine every time. I have a lot of them now.
Anyone who has a resin printer will probably dread the thought of the FEP giving out with the vat being full of resin. My original Mars Vat FEP was looking a bit worse for wear so I ordered a pair of new ones. Now this is, I suppose, one way to do it. The pair cost £35 so not the most cost effective method, especially when you cock up and put one of them on a bit of cured resin and scratch it.
So to be a bit more eco friendly I decided to order a pack of FEP sheets… what is FEP? I hear you cry…it is the clear ‘plastic’ bottom to the resin vat. It is a fully fluorinated polymer,
The polymer used has low adhesion and is somewhat flexible meaning that the model sticks to the build plate not the vat.
I gave it a go and to be honest I thought about just getting another pair of vats. To replace the sheet you need first remove eight screws followed by 24 grub screws that hold the FEP between two metal plates. These screws are about 5mm long.
So I set to work and got everything tickety boo on the removal stage. Read the FEP instructions and removed the protective film placed the sheet between the metal plates. As the grub screws were blunt I needed to puncture the sheet to allow them to match up with the hole underneath. I battled on with about sixteen of them when it suddenly dawned on me that the FEP had a protective sheet on both sides ( the instructions never mentioned it). So I took it all apart again and set to work putting them back on.
A lot of swearing later I had the 24 bloody things back in situ. I was worried that it was still a bit loose, luckily putting it back on the vat tightened it up nicely.
It is £30 cheaper and next time instead of using an Allen key I will use a screwdriver with the appropriate bit in.
A total faff, but financially worth it, plus I had a warm fuzzy feeling that I had achieved it.
I have received a plethora of books today…
I see lots of reading ahead… I got Burrows and Badgers as it was reduced and I fancied seeing what it was like. At a quick flick through it is like Mordheim or The Silver Bayonet but with magic and animals. (Probably a total oversimplification… but it was a quick skim).
I also got some FEP sheets to repair my resin vats. On the printer front I am still printing some things for Ironclads… this time an asteroid field (okay three asteroids may not be technically a field). There is a little lightship to go with them…. Oh and a comet!
I had to run the club today as one of them was off yesterday and the rest were desperate to finish theirs.
We got sand onto the bases today and metallics onto the gun barrels.
We will get the bases painted and flocked/tufts tomorrow.
I am really proud of them as they tried so hard.
Here is my effort…
I eventually got around to downloading the Ironclad miniatures. If you remember I got a test run from my mate and did a Grrman and British group… you can see the British HERE
Well this time I decided that my kitchen table is a bit on the small size for the bigger models… my solution… print at 50% size. I love 3D printing! Now to be honest it comes with inherent problems aka the guns won’t be magnetised any more so once they are on, they are on. Now I could be clever with a pin drill and some thin wire, but sod it …life’s too short.
So on the blue we have a British battleship at the rear (without guns) and a cruiser. The right hand picture shows a number of civilian ships at the rear and some British destroyers front right.
These were technically test prints and I have actually re sliced things so that each ship will come with suitable armament as well as a corresponding base. For the destroyers it means three to the build plate instead of four. But to be honest I have one battleship, two cruisers and four destroyers… I probably will have enough to keep me going for a while… unless I go for the Aether version of Jutland!
Well today the first day of the school club went well. I had five in and they all got a long way on with their first miniature.
I am really pleased with how much they tried and also how much they really enjoyed it.
Here we have the results after half an hour.
They were really into it… the rest of the kids came in after lunch and this lot sent me down to talk to my cover teacher to negotiate an extra ten minutes!
They have made me promise some more time to get them finished tomorrow.
So it would seem an initial success…
Next stage paint another bear in a more complicated pose then onto the other animals if they are up for it.
You might see some deadly teddy bears….
I am printing some Urzans for the kids at school. I have decided to do each child a couple of bears to practice something a bit easier than the anthropomorphic miniatures.
This will allow them to get used to the paint and paint brushes. To make their life a bit easier I increased the size to 175%
All six of the kids want to join the Geek club. They got the choice of which beastie they fancied.
We kick of on Tuesday…
Bogenwald 