This evening I fully intended to get something painted, but as the famous bloke once said the best laid plans… I decided to get my mate some Imperial Arbiters (or a printable version) for his birthday, I had seen them somewhere online and came up with my first problem… firstly I couldn’t remember what they were called and secondly… I couldnt remember who made them… this led to a number of dead ends, confusion and internal grumpyness. in the end however I did manage to find the company that made something else that I had seen and then voila it all came back.

Anyway, this is what I purchased for his birthday….

I got the Matrriach and Augur as I thought I might be able to fiddle about with their hands to allow them to join the Sisters of battle… i have a feeling that the Arbiters weapons may be a bit on the large side, but we shall see. If nothing else I am sure they would fit in with the Mordheim idea!

It would seem that Monstrous Encounters are a patreon and these are some of the items that they have for sale, they do have some awesome stuff and to be honest, I did think about the Arbiters for a Necromunda force. they do have a couple Delaquesque sets – this is how I first found them. They also do Heroquest stuff, their minis do look like the originals – even down to the bases… I was very tempted! They also have a pile of Brettonian – or rather not Brettonian’s … I dont want them getting into trouble with GW.

Seriously though, I would have a look at them and see what you think…. maybe I am just being a bit of a fan boy… I will let you know how I get on.

Oh While I remember, this laptop has no working ‘p’ so I am having to paste each one in… so if you find a misspelled word tat seems to be missing a certain letter then you know why!

Tonight I decided to get the Greeks undercoated, ready to start painting tomorrow. I managed to squeeze them all onto my rotating spray doodah.

I also got an email response back about the Printer today, they wanted a video sent of it acting up so I duly did so, they came back and said I needed an new motherboard and that it was on its way to me. So I have about two weeks to go before it arrives so I had better get cracking with the 15mm stuff above.

I reworked the ear bits and cheek pieces on the helmet this evening, it is beginning to come together. I need to get my sander on it to smooth things out. The flooring foam is not as good as the more expensive high density stuff. The cheap foam is a bit on the soft side.

By small amount I mean took something off the Resin Printer! After being a total swine yesterday it did manage to successfully print the miniatures in the end…

I didn’t get much done on the old hobby side, but today has been bonkers, got my daughter riding, did the pony’s hoofs, went to a new fish place and got some new fish, redesigned my wife’s office, worst bit was removing the original desk. We bought the desk really cheaply before we built the office, so the office went up around the desk. we have replace it with something 2cm (about an inch) smaller and rotated it through 90 degrees and all of a sudden the office looks twice the size.

As per normal, I don’t have any cable to finish the job. I knew I should have bought a roll of it last time I was in town. I also need a couple of sockets too, as the ones I have re-used are a bit manky.

So I managed to get the miniatures sprayed today and as my mate came round for a barbecue then he got to take them home.

I still have the final sister of Battle and a Nid’ to do for him, but I will get some things to do for myself.

The printer has been a total bastard again today and is honestly getting worse, I have tried to do another set of miniatures but it failed to print at least twice…hopefully it will be successful… third time lucky!

I received some reinforcements from my mate for the painting

I have been messing with the helmet for my daughter this evening…

Yours truly had to try it on 😂

You will be pleased to hear that I haven’t played with any electricity today or even left the car lights on. I also managed to not drown myself in the bath… All in all I feel it was a successful day.

I managed to get the bases finished on the 40k stuff. I will get the. Varnished tomorrow morning. My mate is coming for a socially distanced barbecue tomorrow afternoon.

My printer decided to play with my mind too…

The crossbowmen had opposite legs missing and the Lion Knight had a missing leg on one and issues with an arm on the other. As you can see the mini top left has half an arm missing too… all weird!

Did however manage to cobble the bits together hence the chopped off leg on the crossbowman above. Here they are, sort of finished…

He gods, what a day…. ‘‘twas somewhat foggy this morning when I left for work…

It was patchy all the way in, but sometimes not good driving weather. On the upside, it was Chinese night at the local hall, my cleaner kindly gave me a sub as I was a bit short on the cash (children are expensive). I ordered it for 16.30 only to find that I had left my lights on all day. Luckily my cleaner Brian, who is a total star, nipped home to get his jump leads.

So we had yummy tea, after which , I decided to wire in the new plug. Plug end went in without a hitch, which was suspicious… the power end was using a snap fit junction box so I didn’t turn off the power … somehow there was a fracture in the live wire sheath that wasn’t visible. It went in fine first time, but it hadn’t held properly so I used my pliers to try and get it in further. At this point the invisible fracture met the earth and there was a bit of a flash, a bang and a horrible smell from our underwear. I have come to the conclusion that I hate these easy fit junction boxes and will now resort to the old fashioned ones that actually work allow the wires to be held firmly.

After turning the power off, I put an old style junction box in and voila everything worked fine. We now have our far infrared heater installed and it is working fine… however sadly my prints from last night need a bit of a look at…

I am not sure what is going on here, the crossbowman printed fine the other day, and yet here he has only one leg, as does the lion knight. I am trying another print this evening, it might simply be that the resin thickened as the temperature dropped (the heater in the shed eventually died). They were however both at the same end of the build plate so perhaps it is something to do with that.. sadly I would have known by now if I hadn’t tried electrocuting myself and tripped the power…On the upside I do know that the RCD works!

And finally, I got some Contrast paint onto the bases to hide the white. I will do the sand tomorrow…

And finally, this again made me laugh a bit too much!

Yes the printer was busy last night and again tonight and I got some heads printed off. They are rather nice, except a couple of them seem to have only one side to their neck. The other thing I printed were some more militia bodies, a couple of them had a bit of bad luck and only ended up with one leg, the crossbowman only has one foot. And typically the ones I have already printed successfully came out fine!

I added some of the heads to the bodies. Can be seen above, there is also a sigilist with a very large quill.

My intention is to transplant a foot from the one legged man to the crossbowman.

I also managed to almost get the chaos marines finished…

I really think the turquoise tongue needs to go, it just looks weird.

Today I sorted out another set of weapons only to find that the spear was in the left hand, the ball and chain snapped again, but the shields are now three for three…

I decided to print the heads as I said I would, the printer decided otherwise, I fought with it for about 40 minutes before it gave in and let me do anything.

I attempted o contact Anycubic, however this was not as easy as it would seem, the First Lady to reply said as it was a technical issue then to contact the tech department on the link she sent, so after giving my name, where I got it from, the tag number etc, etc, etc. I duly filled all of this in and entered the code, which failed and the form did not auto save, after about 8 tries I gave up and re contacted Natalia, who came back and said she would fill it in for me, providing I gave her my name, where I got it from, the tag number etc, etc, etc. Hopefully something will come of this as I am honestly spending more time trying to get a resin printer to print something than I am fiddling with an Ender 3.

The heads are still printing, so here are the first of my militia at 85% full size….

I really did, well technically I printed myself an ass, or perhaps it is a donkey…

I also managed to get a successful print of the 85% dwarf and Ranger. I did a militia miniature too, just forgot a left hand! More importantly, I actually managed to get the 85% mage done along with the elf archer. I tried another shield with added supports and it still failed, as did a spear for another militia mini.

One of the biggest problems I have is working out what the different bits of the miniature looks like, so at Lunchtime I basically opened the bits up in 3D builder and took a screen shot. I now have a reference to allow me to build the various bits from this set.

I also managed to get the FDM print done. It took 20 plus hours, but I am pleased with it…

The roof comes off the cottage too…

I cracked on With the conservatory and have got the ceiling finished. I ran out of longer nails for the nail gun and couldn’t get them locally so I had to fasten the thing up by using a hammer and brads… oh ye gods I ache now! I cannot actually move my right arm without yelping…

Today was also a day of weather…

These two photos were taken half An hour apart, there was about half an inch of snow down. We were cutting insulation and had to pack in as the snow was just covering it faster than we could wipe it off. So we went in for a cuppa and came back to a total lack of snow and bright sunshine.