BCK's Thread of Stuff: Maybe not eldar...

[Naryn]

Gorgeous work as usual!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I lied, apparently, and will not go straight to adding detail back onto the hull. 

 

 

Anyone else ever feel like you're fighting a losing battle against your subconscious? I don't want to get too heavy here, but I had one simple plan of filing down the circular thing in the middle of that raised section on the turret and the canister thing above it in the photo to make enough room to put another hatch on it. That's it, and that's how it started, but I soon found myself using my Dremel to grind off all the rest of the detail on that raised armor plate. You might be thinking "that doesn't sound so bad, BCK, the muse was upon you!", and it wouldn't be if I had still been sitting at my desk and just grabbed the Dremel and went to work.

 

But no, I got up, unplugged it from the wall, put on my respirator and safety glasses, plugged an extension cord into a socket in the garage, grabbed the leafblower (which included taking the rechargeable battery off the charger and putting it in the leafblower), and carried all this stuff around to the side of the house to start doing something I told myself I wouldn't do. I was so mad at myself for doing it, but I very nearly made it much, much worse. When I first started having ideas of trying to "fix" the turret to make it realistic enough for my subconscious to leave me alone about it, the original idea was to grind down the stowage bins on the back to continue the shape of the turret like this:

 

 

After that, the idea was to build out the back end of the turret with sheet plastic but I thought I had convinced myself that it was too much work for my meager scratchbuilding skills and there was a high chance of destroying the turret in the process. I had gone so far as flipping the turret over in my hand so I was looking at the underside of it - to get a better view of the angle I needed to grind the stowage bins down to - and had the grinding bit of the Dremel about an inch away before I realized what I was doing. 

 

Brain, I am very disappoint. 

[hushrong]

This sounds wild but I am excited about this. Definitely want to see you stare this thing down, plan, and tackle it!

[Majkhel]

Honestly, I was fully expecting you to incorporate the stowage bins right back into the turret
I'm all the more interested to see what will finally emerge from the project 

Edited July 27, 2020 by Majkhel

[Bryan Blaire]

Stay strong, brother! You can make it!

[Augustus b'Raass]

At least you didn't do what you're so mad at yourself over nearly doing?

in other news, I think Majkhel makes a good point here.

Hmmm, with the current placement of the wheels, it seems like a lot of weight ends up at the back of the tank. It looks as if it might flip backwards, if you know what I mean.
Would you be able to add more wheels? Alternatively - place the existing ones higher and move them a bit to the rear, but I think you would still need at least one more wheel.

interested in your reply to that... 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks, guys. There's no room for more road wheels and the only adjustment I could make to the way it is currently is to raise the drive sprocket up a little. It's going to look back heavy no matter what, and it actually is so back heavy I bought some lead fishing weights to put in the front so it will sit level.

[Subtle Discord]

Oooo... a project after my own heart, and naturally you're doing it justice. At first I thought it was an official model and couldn't believe how bad it was; salvaging a recast, now that makes sense.

 

You've really got the hang of laminating the materials together and the cleanup is just a matter of taking care with the sanding blocks, nothing complex, just labour intensive. Styrene is wonderfully forgiving for doing this kind of work, as you're illustrating. Laminate it on (or build from scratch) and make sure you give yourself some material overlap at the corners and you sand it down to a seamless and sharp edge. If you're gonna' do it, do it right. Nice work so far. Yup, I hate chopping something up when I'm not really thinking it through and then regretting doing it the next time I sit down. When in doubt, sleep on it and/or work on another part that you're certain of the course of action.

 

Consider adding a 'Dozer blade if you want to add more weight/balance to the front?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Sorry for the silence, but last Friday night at work I took a little fall because someone left stuff on the ground and hurt my left wrist. I went to the hospital the following day and got a brace and some meds to help with the pain and inflammation. It's healing up well and should be healed enough to get back to work on the Mach in a few more days. The night before the fall I did snap a pic of some new work on the turret and then forgot to post it until now, so this won't be a post without an update on the project, small as the update may be. 

 

 

@SubtleDiscord Thanks for the praise but I still uncomfortable and like a complete beginner when scratchbuilding anything or even using sheet plastic for things like replacing the armor plates on the tank. I also appreciate the dozer blade suggestion which would probably work really well and I know it's a valid piece of gear for the table top game, but it makes no sense to the scale model side of brain for a tank to equipped with a dozer blade unless it's being tasked for a specific job like clearing wreckage or a mine field. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Rebuilding the armor plates, hatch, and visor for the driver's section is going well. 

 

 

Even though the scratchbuilding work here is relatively simple, doing it reminds me of how I felt all those years ago when I first started trying to use greenstuff; mostly like an idiot. I'm soldiering on though. 

[Subtle Discord]

In the beginning you will build components more than once quite often as you discover how to work with the material and aim for better execution and/or accuracy. Getting the 'foundation' down is no simple task because the accuracy of everything to follow will depend on how particular you are to begin with. Yup, sometimes it can feel painfully slow as your working on the base shape, but once it's down adding detail becomes faster but it's also more tedious because it's generally a matter of repetition at that point. *Subtle's eye begins to twitch at the thought of placing rivets... so many rivets...* Even doing them digitally is mind numbing.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Yeah, I know the importance of setting down a good foundation. Hell I do it with GS all the time and even call it a foundation layer, but aside from the inexperience there's also the handicap of not really having the proper tools for this and essentially just having scraps from old failed projects long ago to work with. That being said, I like to preach that stagnation is death and you should always push yourself to greater achievements so I'm doing my best to put my money where my mouth is with this project. Here's a bit more work where I'm trying to recreate these shields on either side of the driver's viewport:

 

 

I'm guessing they're some kind of shrapnel shield? Anyway, the shields themselves were no problem and I knocked them out in a matter of minutes. The triangular shapes on the sides, uh... braces? Brackets? Not sure what the technical term for those is but those little bastards proved to be quite a nightmare. I stumbled my way through and even though they're not perfect, I'm happy with the result because in the end it's a relatively small detail that probably won't be that visible once the turret is on. 

 

[Bryan Blaire]

Those little braces look fantastic, BCK - you may see the flaws and frustration, but you're taking on something that most of us won't even do. Perfection or not, it looks great!

[Augustus b'Raass]

Yeah, man. Nice work on those shrapnel shields. Keep on keepin on with this!

[Evil Eye]

From the perspective of someone that is utterly hopeless at scratchbuilding (me), the idea of redoing almost all the detail from scratch on a tank that size is mad. But damn, you're doing a good job!

Edited August 14, 2020 by Evil Eye

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Not much of a visual update today and even though it's one small step for this rebuild, it's one giant leap for my peace of mind. The horribly warped bottom hull section has now been brought into compliance with almost 4 hours of filing, heating, more filing, more heating, and trying to force it into the right shape. Behold, the conquered foe!

 

 

Both of those flat pieces are going to get cleaned up with the back plate getting covered by a piece of sheet plastic because that repair job would take too much time otherwise. 

 

Little goals, little victories, brothers. 

[KBA]

Man, warped resin is a serious fight. I admire your ingenuity to salvage this kit— I’ve scrapped way less beat-up stuff without an afterthought. Looking forward to seeing more!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks for the encouraging words, brothers! Trying to get some work done on this beast everyday and I had a go at reproducing the thick slab of armor across the nose plate. On the normal model it looks something like this. 

 

 

On this Frankenstein's monster of a project, the lore idea I have in my head involves a lighter, faster variant of the Vanquisher. I know, a "fast" heavy tank is a bit of a contradiction, but against this particular foe the Leman Russ tanks don't have the armor protection at all to fight the foe on even footing, while the standard Macharius has the armor needed, but is just a bit too slow. The massive armor plates on the track sections come off, as does that thick slab on the nose plate. This particular tank crew begins to see other Machs getting killed through the nose plate (a flat piece of armor being much easier to penetrate than an angled one) and scavenge a piece of scrap metal from a destroyed factory to replace it.

 

This is the kind of maniac I am, coming up with all this detailed head canon simply so I can eventually paint that thick piece of armor in a beat up and rusty fashion for some nice contrast against the rest of the paint job. Yup. True story. 

 

So, I had a piece of scrap plastic from the big hunk I made my sanding blocks out of and I slapped it on the front of the Mach and set about reproducing the giant nut, bolt, and washer arrangement from the original. 

 

 

This next pic was intended to show how I was going to imitate the flame cut marks you'd see on a giant slab of metal like this, but the white styrene doesn't always like to cooperate. It does, however, give a nice shot of the nut, washer, bolt stuff. 

 

[Yosef Hausakluif]

The level of detail that just goes into the rivets on that nose plate; or the repeated heating and sanding resin; would make me lose it! Congrats on what your achieving in this restoration. It’ll truly be yours, EVERY detail as you progress. It’s looking great and always excited to check in and see your progress!

[Chaplain Mollusc]

I love the cut marks, BCK! Little details like that in people's conversions fascinate me. Keep it up!

[Bryan Blaire]

I love the cut marks, BCK! Little details like that in people's conversions fascinate me. Keep it up!

Same here! I know you and I get plagued by some of the same things, BCK, but keep up with it - you'll be happier in the end.

 

The cut marks look fantastic, and the bolt, nut, and washer fixtures look amazing! How in the world did you do those nuts?

 

Hopefully Nurgle decides to stop strangling everything and we can get back to some Kill Team and maybe even some 'Munda!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

 

I love the cut marks, BCK! Little details like that in people's conversions fascinate me. Keep it up!

Same here! I know you and I get plagued by some of the same things, BCK, but keep up with it - you'll be happier in the end.

 

The cut marks look fantastic, and the bolt, nut, and washer fixtures look amazing! How in the world did you do those nuts?

 

Hopefully Nurgle decides to stop strangling everything and we can get back to some Kill Team and maybe even some 'Munda!

 

 

The flame cut marks are one of those things from the scale model world that demonstrates how crazy some of these people get about making everything as accurate as possible. Those folks that build scale models for the serious competitions like Euro Militaire are in a whole different class. 

 

The nut, bolt, washer thing was not that difficult to assemble, but making sure everything lined up properly was the real task. It's simply two circles I made with a punch and die set and a hex shaped piece of plastic rod that I cut to the right size. Here's my rinky dink little punch and die that was a hand-me-down from my older brother like 15 years ago. The little piece of styrene I used to punch the circles out of was a scrap piece from something else and is a great reason to keep all your thin styrene scraps for later use.

 

 

I don't even know what size circles they punch, but it works. 

[hushrong]

I love pouring over the details of your work! The big steel beast is coming along nicely!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

My roommate got motivated to prime his Necromunda Goliaths and start painting them today, and sure in my belief that it's always better to have company while painting, I joined him. He doesn't have a lot of painting experience and his plan is to have the armor plates of his gang be very rusty, so I cleaned up and primed a Goliath of my own to see if I could possibly find an easier way to do rust tones than my usual method of dozens of thin layers over a long period of time. But then I'm a psycho who enjoys that sort of thing, while he's a bit less patient (read: normal) and prefers to see results a little faster. 

 

Here's what I got around to today. 

 

 

To make it as efficient as possible, I completely skipped painting the armor plates in any sort of metal color and mixed a dark red and dark brown for that old rust color and used that as the base. After that, I took well-used old brush with a frayed tip and stippled various shades of orangey-brown colors, adding a little more orange and/or yellow with each new layer. If it turned out to be too bright, I'd either go back over it with the previous color, or just knock it back a bit with a thin wash of the original base color. This is where having a wet palette is quite handy because you can have a whole bunch of different colors all mixed up at the same time. 

 

Once I was happy with the overall look of it, I made some washes of the brighter orangey-yellow color and started laying it down where new rust would form. Unlike your normal shadow/highlight method, rust tones are usually the opposite with the brighter "highlight" color being in the lowest spots because that's where moisture would settle and make bright new rust. At the end, I did a very light drybrush of a darkened metal color on the areas that would be likely to rub against something. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Welp, steam has run out on the Macharius for the time being and while looking through my vast collection of unfinished projects, I decided to pick one up again! Anyone remember this guy from my GSC Kill Team phase?

 

 

I did more work on him after this photo was taken, doing some more GS cloth work on the robe on the back of his left leg (it's a big bare spot that I didn't care for) and put down a foundation layer of GS for sleeve on his right arms. I dusted him off last night and sculpted a hood on him. 

 

 

The leftover GS from the hood I attempted to use sculpt folds on the sleeve, but it took me so long to get the hood how I wanted it that the GS was nearing the end of its working life and I could barely move it all with the clay shapers. I'll be ripping the sleeve work off and trying again soon.