How Much???

So I have a Rav4 to pull the trailer and caravan, it’s brakes were sounding a bit rubbish side, so I duly put it into the garage… evidently I need all four sorting along with two handbrake cables… so I asked him how much it would cost… he said ‘it will come in under the grand…not much under’. Well as they need doing, they need doing, but Needless to say next time I will be pricing up before hand. We only put it there as it was under warranty, but as we expected brakes aren’t included.

So baked beans for tea for the next month! Anyway to cheat myself up I decided I wanted to paint something fast… so this is what I decided upon!

These are my Z range Greeks from Museum Miniatures… the lone cavalryman was a z range sample… don’t quite get that, but never mind. He is a Heavy cavalryman and the others are lights. I also have a baggage train and the ubiquitous goats too.

I will get them sprayed tomorrow and start on the painting on Wednesday. I also decided to do something different on the helmet as the cheek pieces didn’t exactly work… so this is my cardboard mock up….

I might need to fiddle around with the ear area, but the problem is that you cannot really see your own ears… I will requisition a child tomorrow to assist me.

A Small Amount Done

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…

The Lion Knight on the right had his arm rebuilt as his had failed to print

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.

Minis off to their New Home

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 😂

Still Here!

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…

A Flash, a Bang and Soiled underwear

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!

Sorting out the Resin

Tonight, I really couldn’t be bothered to do anything. So I went through my pile of prints to sort out what was worth keeping and what wasn’t.

I also managed to get some black onto the 40K base edges…

The hand holding the bow (from another set) took a bit of trimming, but it does give me a different missile weapon to the crossbow. I will have to get Mordheim out to see what things cost points wise.

I am printing the lion knight and some more militia bodies just now, but then I really do think I need to do something with them painting wise.

Talking of printing I realised that the ISO was getting pretty skanky so I decided to decant the two litres of it into my big jars and let it settle and pour off the cleaner stuff. But I, in my infinite wisdom, put it outside to avoid the smell… cleverly I forgot and came home this evening to something akin to Greek Yoghurt… Whoops!

Tomorrow I will try and print some bases for the models I have. I have an STL for cobblestones so that will do for my miniatures.

And Finally, I probably laughed far too much at this…


Getting some Heads

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.

A Day of Ups and Downs

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….

A Mage, an Elf and a Case of Weapons

Look at that, 22.00 and I am already in bed… I spent most of the day trying to finish off the conservatory, but I did have time to rescue the mage and Fey archer…

Look, look she has two arms!

I am not sure why it worked this time, but I did add in some extra supports on the troublesome arm.

I also achieved a shield…. along with lots of weapons… as it worked, I did a second set and am printing a third now.

The small lumps are left and right hands to allow some left/right handed militia. Tomorrow I am going to do some heads and then some bodies. I am also going to try using some weapons from the riders set I have from Iain’s ranges.

Back to work tomorrow so the kids decided on a pre school feast…

We had loaded potato skins for starters, Ramen as a main course then sticky toffee pudding for desert with a cheese/meat board with crackers later on.

Hopefully I will get something painted tomorrow… this made me chuckle…

Today I made an Ass for Myself

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.