Tonight I managed to get some more done on the Arbites, it was another late night getting in, but I did a bit and got them closer to being finished. All white has now hopefully disappeared!
The yellow on the shields still needs some work. I decided on a colour change so used brush on white paint… not the best look. I will add a glaze and see if that helps. I am considering black and yellow stripes on them, but I am still at the ‘hmmmm’ stage about it. It would be striking, but also a total pain in the backside to get right.
Metallic still to go, but definitely looking better now.
Tonight I headed off to visit my mate and we got to drink tea and discuss our upcoming games, both my Alien RPG and the new one I have bought for my eldest…New RPG
I got back quite late but managed to slap a bit of paint about…
Slowly moving towards a finish line. To be honest I decided to just paint the grenades black, with the idea to repaint them white later to allow some red to be added. Really just the hands and weapons to do with the Contrast paint and then onto the metallics.
Hopefully I will get some more done on these tomorrow. I am deliberately leaving the printers switched off as it is getting a bit stressful constantly adding to the painting pile… my plan is finish the Arbites, Flintloque and the undercoated 6mm Samurai (oh and get some basing material onto the 15mm Samurai) then take stock of where I am.
Sadly the undercoated samurai are about a third (maybe a half) of the whole army. I am honestly not sure whether to just get them all done in one go or not…it might be a bit soul destroying, which is why I am dithering.
I have decided to start offloading stuff I am never going to get finished, or in some cases, started! Number one of these are the 15mm Black Hat Aztecs. I got a whole armies worth and decided on the Tin soldier ones instead. I really just couldn’t be hassled with separate shields and hands on something in 15mm, plus everyone had a similar shield, even troops that wouldn’t use that kind. I know that I will never, ever get them done so I might as well get them on Ebay or similar and get a bit of cash to spend on new paint or brushes.
What I am trying to say is my pile of shame is a bit on the large side and needs reducing by at least half, I mean I am sitting on GW blister packs from the 90’s… They are so old that the plastic is actually falling to bits. I will never get round to painting them… I suppose the bottom line is that I need the space, my 6×8 shed is packed, my cupboard in the big shed is packed, the bit in the passage above me books (which are packed in) is stuffed full. It’s a pity I don’t have a van and an easy way to get to some Wargames conventions as I reckon it would be quite cathartic .
Right I am going to stop rambling now and go to bed… I will catch you all tomorrow.
This evening was, in the words of the Rolling Stones, a definite case of paint it black…
I made a start on the boots and upper torso armour, once this is dry I will move onto the arms and belts. I also repainted the white on the Sister Superior. This will end up red for the robes and will remain white for her wimple (or whatever it is called).
I managed to get paint on various things, including some Flintloque miniatures too. I re levelled the printer again, this time I made sure I pressed on the build plate as I screwed the bolts in, this was to make sure it was level across the whole thing. I had printed the bust and stand at the same time, but only the bust printed, now it might have been poor support placement. So after re levelling the build plate, I gave this lot a go…
They pretty much all came out fine apart from the beggar’s right foot which hadn’t really printed properly (well I don’t think it had) … so I helped out by snipping it off… oh by the way the dog does have a head, it is behind the milk maid. These are the villagers from the Frost Kickstarter.
Well this is me on the second day after my jab and although I don’t feel crap, I don’t feel 100% either. Because of this I cancelled my game tonight and redid my horses from yesterday…
I had to redo them as a couple had totally gone weird, it probably got too cold and the resin thickened a bit causing problems. Luckily today was red hot…okay it was warm, so as I had got home early due to the head then I set the printer away with nice warm, runny resin. They worked a treat. One advantage of having extra horses is that I can now have a pair for my Brougham…
I will try and get myself on with some painting tomorrow. I have so much to catch up on now, the Arbites being a case in point. I doubt I will get much done tomorrow evening as my mate is coming over for another barbecue and to work on the characters for the Aliens game.
Nope we are not talking golf here, there is in fact a small hole in me, I got my second Covid jab today and as such am a bit headachey, but otherwise I seem fine. I stood next to the freezer and you will be pleased (but probably not surprised) to hear that I had not become magnetic. Yeah there are people out there who for some reason think it will make them.
Anyway I checked the horses from yesterday and sadly one didn’t print, one had half a leg missing, one had a separate leg part and the third was missing the end of the traces. I don’t have a team, but I can probably rustle up a pair.
I reckon the failures on the prints is down to poor support placement, I am not sure why one of them failed totally though!
I am giving them another go in a different orientation to see if that will help, fingers crossed 🤞.
They should be done in about an hour and a half..but I am having an early night so I might find out tomorrow morning if they are done properly… I just had a peep and there seemed to be four things printing.
One thing that is a bit annoying is that I want these miniatures a certain size and am dropping it to 85%. This means that the presupported miniatures are no good for me as the minute you change scale then the easier it is for the supports to fail. I am therefore having to learn support placement as I go along!
My lord if the rings or my caveman miniatures are the ‘correct’ size for me. This means the supports work all the time.
Well as you may have guessed by now I am a bit of a geek and Geeks love Geeky films, Indiana Jones fitting that category. So this evening whilst swearing at the printer I realised the similarity between myself and a character in the film…
I realised that I was a bit like Sturmbannführer Arnold Ernst Toht…okay not the sadistic Nazi torturer part, nor the bit where his face melts…apologies for the spoiler there, but the part where he had only part of the Staff of Rah height and not the reverse.
Tonight I was still having problems… so I decided to level the bed again and in doing so reread read the manual….
Some total pillock forgot to do point 6. To be fair to myself my last printer didn’t have a point six and everything was ready to go at point five…
I am not absolutely sure, but after doing said point six I managed to get this lot off the printer!
I tried these twice yesterday and got a wheel out of it, so here is hoping that I managed to get it sorted. I am printing the carriage roof and luggage just now so I will find out tomorrow. After the roof I have the horses to do and the carriage should be all done.
Today has been a day of frustration, lots of frustration! The bloody printer kept missing out various bits, not sure why but some of the miniatures on the plate did not print, on the up side, I now have a whole load more miniatures, that I was going to do at another time.
The matriarch and the ram were two of the things that I tried to print… annoyingly, when I moved them into the middle they printed fine. Now I am no expert, but this would indicate a levelling problem. I re levelled the bed and still had a failure in the same spots, now it could have been a simple support issue. I will try printing some other bits and pieces tomorrow and see how I get on.
Well, I suppose sort of might be a better way of putting it…
I spent a good deal of this evening sorting out a build plate with four miniatures, two shields and lots of weapons for them all… I came back to the printer to find this…
Now the mathematically astute will notice a distinct lack of number 4 miniature and the more observant will also notice a one legged man. There are also a lot of the weapons missing too, not to mention the bottoms of the two hand guns… I managed to print the hand to hold the shotgun, only to find I had printed the right hand instead of the left.
So I did what I could with the bits I had and came up with these two (plus the power maul for the sergeant)…
I decided to print them all again. This time I noticed that the bolt pistol and grenade pistol were actually sitting in mid air, so sorted that out! I also supported the heck out of everything that I could. Further to this I increased the lift height and slowed down the lift speed as the FEP was certainly being pulled upwards by the suction. On second thoughts, I have just realised that I increased the lift speed…. doh!
On the up side these are nearly finished…
I am rather pleased that I now have a long weekend… no work for four days! I need the above finished by lunchtime as my mate is coming around for his Birthday Barbecue around 16.00. I do need to go shopping for all of the barbecue food and drinks, but hopefully I can get the wash on them and highlights done. He might have to wait until Saturday (his birthday) to actually get them as it allows me to get some PVA on the bases as well as getting them varnished. The extras will have to come a bit later on.
Tonight I managed to get some more paint onto these chaps and am nearly done them. I want to get a wash onto the metalwork and then a dry brush. I added a dark paint into the mouth area and it made me a bit happier than yesterday…
So this is them nearly finished… I will get some of the dark sand onto their bases tomorrow. The one thing I did notice this evening, or should I say notice properly, is that the one chucking the grenade has lost his rifle barrel.
I had a go at printing the last two from this squad.. it was a bit of a pain to be honest. Chitubox, the slicer program was playing silly buggers and messing with the resolution. I eventually overcame it by totally reloading it and voila my printer appeared, so apart from the failure of the force truncheon (or whatever it is called), the rest printed ok.
So we have the sergeant with a las pistol and the marshal with a bolt gun and chain sword. In hindsight I think adding the bolt gun in that pose hasn’t really worked. I really should have rotated the hand more and had it on its side… hey ho never mind.
I will print off the failed bit tomorrow. He should get eight of the ten for his Birthday by Friday.
The one thing I found about this printer was the relief of just pressing print and off it went… none of the faffing on for half an hour trying to get the print head to come down.
Bogenwald 