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A Quick Paint Job

Tonight, to be totally truthful, I couldn’t be bothered to paint anything as I had spent ages fighting with my resin printer, if it carries on being a bugger, it is going back. The plate wouldn’t go up or down so after swearing at it and threatening violence I did the old IT trick and turned it off and back on again and voila… it worked. On the build plate this evening is hopefully a mammoth.

So my little painting venture was thus…

It’s alright for 20 minutes work. I wanted something done and I cannot think how I am going to do the wraiths, so I chose something easier.

While mooching about I found this lot…

A pile of female Halflings, one is riding a pig. For the life of me I cannot remember where they came from.

I have ordered myself Osprey’s Men of Bronze rules to have a look at, there is absolutely no way that I am going to be adding another load of lead to the pile of shame. 🥴 But interestingly enough the Museum miniatures z range are rather nice… not that I am getting any though… I just thought I would point it out.

‘‘Twas a productive day on the old house front, filled the hole in the floor, rewired a light switch, changed a socket front plate, did a tip run, got horse feed, and pretty much sorted out more…sadly the weather was against me so I couldn’t get the seams on the roof or the walls on the conservatory painted. But hopefully some nice weather will arrive sooner rather than later. I am really hoping that the annoying little drip has been well and truly sorted… but as you know water, like life, always finds a way.

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

See I am a bit cultured… and in the words of Sir Samuel Vimes… We watch each other.

I suddenly remembered these chaps when I was considering what to paint…

I am going for a really simple colour scheme of green and browns, with iron metallics. They aren’t going to win any prizes, but they are going to painted and will look pretty at a distance.

It was a rather nice drive home today, so I stopped and took a photo of the view from the top of Weisdale hill.

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Khmer Super, Almost Nearly Done

Tonight I got the flock on but my quick drying basing Glue wasn’t so the tufts will have to wait until tomorrow…

This is a nice colourful army. I now just have to find someone to fight it, an order to Irregular might be in order with some Burmese making an entrance. Not for a while though as I still have a fair old bit to paint.

I was on a bit of a roll tonight and found some of my 28mm in the box so got some duds painted on the duds… I wonder where the word duds meaning clothes comes from.

These miniatures aren’t brilliant in terms of the printing, but because I am a stingy bugger then they will get used come what may 😂.

So from left to right we have a villager with a sack, a sailor, a lamplighter, a rat catcher and a lady with a barrel. I will carry on with them tomorrow.

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Cracking open the Paint

Tonight my son decreed that he was going to start painting again, to which I said not a problem…I hadn’t realised he meant right then. So I had a mad mooch for something that was undercoated and he chose the court wizard. My middle one decided on one of the milk maids and I cracked on with the ones I started ages ago.

You could really tell that I hadn’t used the Contrast paints for a good while as the tops had well and truly got sealed shut. Nevertheless we cracked on.

Being the cunning devil that he is, he informed me that he liked developing a back story for his models and his wizard had been dabbling in the dark arts and had developed a blackened face because of this. Nothing at all to do with painting flesh on when the black hadn’t dried.

I managed to get some more finished and got the lady painted too…

Sod all detail on them, but they will do. I will try and get some more sprayed tomorrow and then get them painted. I actually enjoyed doing these, i think it was a sense of accomplishment, I have dotted around so much of late that nothing has got finished, I also rather like the bright colours on the posh ones.

I had a major panic at work today. I actually thought I had lost my new child. Thirty seconds of searching and then I asked her sister if she had gone home early. Yes, she replied, because it’s Thursday (one of her finish early days). I had got it into my head that it was Wednesday… this didn’t wear off as I was gaming on Thursday… I bet you can see where this is going! At least I got some figures done instead 😂

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Further Resin Experimentation

Today I did some more miniatures on the Resin Printer. The one thing I have learned is that I am going to have to up my game in the post printing stage. Although I was trying to avoid the ISO, I think I am going to need it to get rid of a lot more of the liquid resin off the miniatures.

I will do some more testing tomorrow with the meths and see if that will work and if not then I will need to get some more ISO in.

In the first picture we have a merchant, lamp lighter, jailer, spearman, sailor and rat catcher. In the second we have a villager and a troll thingy (brain dead and can’t think of the name) and then we have a mix of spearmint and archers with a lone guard and another jailer. The last lot were done at 10 seconds a layer.

Tomorrow I think I will do an individual figure at different time per layer. It will probably be something small (and faster) and really try to get things clean.

Wish me luck!

My eldest wanted to do some sea creatures today but unfortunately, I had a support failure. It was the first time I had tried supports, so that will be the next thing to master after cleaning things.

The one thing that just struck me as I was about to sign off is that I am still printing at the standard resolution for the printer. I haven’t actually tried higher resolution. Something to ponder the future.

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Resin, am I safe to be let out online?

Today I was having a mooch like you do and ended up getting myself some Ancient Greek trireme (or something similar) I also got some 6mm buildings (which evidently aren’t)

But the boats are nice if a little large. I will drop the size down by half I think (if not by more) as I have Poseidon’s warriors rules, it seemed a good idea…

From what I remember there are ten different boats, I printed three off at this size as the vat still had resin in it.

I also set off to print the third set of townsfolk and somehow ended up printing the second lot again.

The printer also had a moment. For some reason when I put the plate back on and it tried to head down at an angle. Luckily it didn’t puncture the FEP film on the vat, but it had a damn good try.

I also had a moment. I was holding my sieve in a pot so merrily poured 300ml of cleaning water into a 100ml pot… needles to say it didn’t fit. Did I pour it in slowly? Did I bugger! Water everywhere! I also learned an important lesson, when you shove uncured miniatures into a water bath with cured resin in and swish it about then the cured resins merrily sticks to the uncured stuff. Hence the need of a water clean as mentioned above.

Tomorrow I will print off the third set of townsfolk and also see what actual size the building are…

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Resin Printing… Day 4

Another day of testing the printer… As I said I would I bumped up the cure time to 9 seconds. and it does look a bit better. The problem is that I printed different miniatures to last time.

So from left to right we have:

  • Male villager
  • Town Guard
  • Female villager
  • Lounging bloke
  • Female villager
  • Lady of ill repute.

I found the reason for my layer shift today… a simple case of user error. If you look at the photo below… you will just about see a nut above the Anycubic logo. The twice I have forgotten to tighten it fully then I got a shift.

You can really see it with the two koi below…

So note to self, I will need to ensure that the nut is tightened. It doesn’t matter really with these supportless miniatures, but when I move onto supports then a layer shift can cause a right pain I would imagine.

One other thing of note with these is that these bases are an absolute sod to get off the plate. For the next lot I am going to put a little gap under the edge of the base to allow a blade to fit in easily.

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Resin…Day Three

Today I spent a good while adding bases to miniatures in 3D builder. I found the bases on Thingiverse, but sadly forgot to note down the designers name, I just went and found them as credit, where credit due…

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3675552 Designed by ecaroth. I have used some of their stuff before.

So I ended up adding eighteen I’ll Gotten Games miniatures onto the Ecaroth bases and these are the first half dozen.

So here we have:

  • Fishmonger
  • Alchemist
  • Jailer
  • Blacksmith
  • Courtier
  • Farmer

These six took 2hours 48 minutes to print. Now personally I think I should have cleaned them a bit more, but let’s say 3 hours tops plus curing time.

Now with these I dropped the layer curing time from 8 seconds to seven to see if it was over exposing. Next lot I will bump up to 9 seconds and see if there is a difference (the first lot were done on stock settings of 8 seconds per 0.5 layers.

I would have done some more today, but my eldest snaffle the laptop for her Zoom singing thing, so I will resolve at 9 seconds tomorrow.

In terms of resin usage, they came in at around 30 grams, so hardly anything at all. I checked the resin and actually I bought plant based, which was what I was originally going to get. This states it can be washed in soapy water.

Tomorrow I will carry on with my first steps…. someday I am going to have to add supports 😱.

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Resin People and the Undead

My next rock group name … Resin People and the Undead.

So today, after my successful first print I decided to have a go at some miniatures. These are some of the Ill Gotten Games Townsfolke.

As I said I would, I went and washed some in ISO and some in meths. I printed a single mini too which I washed in soapy water.

So what do they look like?

The details are quite soft on the faces, I think that this is under exposure as the print cures. I will need to dial things in a bit and re test.

But anyway, the ones on the left were washed in ISO and the ones on the right in meths. Not to be honest I can’t tell the difference at first glance. They were all put outside in the sun and left for a few hours then taken inside and put under the lamp.

As mentioned I also printed another milk maid and this time washed her in soapy water. Once washed I coated it in washing up lights and rubbed it in, then rinsed off and threw it under the lamp (it was dark by time she was ready).

This is where things got interesting….

The one on the left is the one done in water and the other is the one done with ISO. Now they are definitely different colours under the light. One has just gone under the light the other has been outside and then spent a few hours under the lamp.it will be interesting to see if they both end up the same colour this time tomorrow. The others look dark as they were out of the direct light source.

Disco Milk maids

I also managed to get my Undead up to the basing level. Hopefully tomorrow I will get them done and onto the next thing.

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3D Printer… User Error

So today I printed my 120 x 90mm base for my allosaurus. I also spent ages finding various jungle/fantasy plants to go with the various bases.

I even designed a big base with multiple plants on it, but as it was going to take 8 hours plus to print then I thought sod it and just sliced various plants instead.

Anyway the base was a success, it is the same size as the GW one… so I will get it onto it tomorrow and then based up.

I then decided to print a tree thing… kept going back and It was taking forever! So after 4 and a half hours I went in and noticed that some of the support had fallen over, so after a bit of swearing I cancelled the print and took it off the plate. It was only then that two things struck me… then first was that it didn’t need supports and that second the actual print was perfect!

The tree that never was!

I will re slice it tomorrow, without the supports and hopefully get a nice tree out of it.

Didn’t get any painting done today as we played Journeys in Middle Earth. Four of us went on an adventure. I think it was a bit slow paced for my 9 year old but the girls and I enjoyed it.

We ended it, with Legolas and one of the others about to get their backsides kicked very hard by three nasty orkses.