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Posted (edited)

No new progress on big Lelith, sorry to say. The other statue I'm working on which is not 40k related and I can't show here is giving me a LOT of problems and has been taking up all my recent hobby time. But that might go on hold for a little bit as well because I made a pledge in Call to Arms to finally paint my two eldar Scorpion and Cobra super-heavy gravtanks.

 

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Full transparency, the Scorpion (on the left) is official, but the Cobra is not. I got duped by an eBay auction years ago because the price was good, but not too good to be true and I thought it was going to be a real FW kit. It's not the worst recast I've ever seen but it's got issues. The giant d-cannon was in bad shape and arrived with several of the vanes on the weapon snapped off and a few pages back I detailed how I modeled and printed a new gun for it.

 

Since these will be painted in the colors of my corsair group, I'm considering printing some dark eldar guns to put on the Scropion instead of using the pulsars. Giant twin dark lances?

 

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Disintegrators?

 

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Haywire blasters?

 

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Edited by Brother-Chaplain Kage

The penance for my sin of having a re-cast has begun. The left side of the fuselage has some serious issues with the panel lines being wavy, varying width, and an odd raised edge on one side of most of the panel lines. The three gem blisters are also malformed and I removed them. Plan was to fill in all the bad panel lines, sand it all smooth, and the scribe new ones.

 

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Started with ApoxieSculpt but it was taking too long and I thought I'd give 3d printer resin a try and it was going to take a lot of sanding.

 

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Now for a safety warning, if you're ever going to be sanding resin of any kind, wear a respirator mask. The little cloth mask things aren't good enough. To help keep resin dust from sanding out of the air I wet sand with wet/dray sandpaper and my files. I'm constantly dipping the sandpaper or files into a tub of water to get the excess resin off of them, I keep paper towels under the model to catch any dirty water that runs off, and about once an hour I change the water in the tub, throw away the paper towels and get fresh ones, and I use soapy water and a fingernail brush to scrub down the model and get any excess resin dust off of it. It took about 3 hours of sanding to get to this point:

 

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12 minutes ago, Grotsmasha said:

I got caught out with a recast Spartan and Caestus, I was not as committed as you to the end result, but am envious of your dedication to the task.

 

Oh, believe me, when I sat down with the model after the resin had cured I definitely had a moment of "Why am I like this? Why didn't I just leave this alone". We'll see if I screw it up when I try to scribe the panel lines back in.

 

And again, always wear a proper mask when sanding resin.

 

Every.

Single.

Time.

 

 

 

 

Looking good! It's a shame it takes so much work to fix the recast, I've had some that were as pristine as any original and some like yours that were pretty rough. Looking forward to seeing your next steps!

I did buy some other recasts later directly from some folks with good reputations for quality, but this was an eBay auction ambush. It's not as bad as some recasts I've seen, but it's not great.

Scribing new lines on the front fuselage went pretty well. I'm by no means a master with the little chisels and the curved sections were more difficult than I expected, plus the crappy resin the recasters used flaked off in some places, leaving a rough jagged edge which I will try to clean up. Still looks better than the wavy, varying width they did before. Plus, the paint scheme I have in mind will that side of the fuselage in the dark grey color anyway which should help hide some of the flaws.

 

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Sorry about your experience. It looks like you've got it under control tho. I've always wanted all the Eldar super heavies and the dark Eldar as well but never was able. I hope you got a good deal money wise. Can't wait to see paint. 

7 hours ago, Brother-Chaplain Kage said:

Scribing new lines on the front fuselage went pretty well. I'm by no means a master with the little chisels and the curved sections were more difficult than I expected, plus the crappy resin the recasters used flaked off in some places, leaving a rough jagged edge which I will try to clean up. Still looks better than the wavy, varying width they did before. Plus, the paint scheme I have in mind will that side of the fuselage in the dark grey color anyway which should help hide some of the flaws.

 

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Looks so much better @Brother-Chaplain Kage!  
 

I commend your dedication and look forward to seeing your progress 

Posted (edited)
On 6/19/2024 at 9:41 PM, Bryan Blaire said:

New lines are looking good!  All the repairs are looking great - keep it up, bud, looking forward to seeing it painted.

 

Thanks!

 

Repairs are still ongoing though. One interesting thing the recasters did was to fill in the cutout on the tail piece of the Cobra. You can see it here on one of the very earliest pics of it, with the engines below clearly visible.

 

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So not only did I have to open that up, you can also see the massive gap between the tail piece and the main body.

 

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With a lot of heat shaping, filing, and Dremeling, I finally got the tail to mostly fit enough to get it pinned and glued on. While removing the fill in on the tail cutout with my Dremel I accidentally removed too much material and when I mixed up some Grilliput to fill the gap between the tail and the body, I built up the edge of the cutout some more. So much sanding later...

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Not pictured is the Scorpion that I got the tail pinned to or the engines for both that I started to clean up, but none of them fit all that well to the back of the tanks, but I was able to find some a great STL replacement for them which I'm currently printing and will get in the next update.

 

I did try to find some different options for the pulsars on the Scorpion, dark eldar weapons specifically, but both my searches and my attempt to model something myself didn't work out so the pulsars will stay.

Edited by Brother-Chaplain Kage
Posted (edited)

In case I finish these for CtA and still feel like working on something else, I was pulling out all the Vampire Hunter parts I have to see what still needs to be printed and I'd forgotten I already had the thicc pulsars. I looked at the Scorpion. Back at the Vampire pulsars.

 

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I might have to print another set of these for the Scorpion because I want to remove all the gem blisters and make them longer (they're about 10-12mm shorter than the normal ones), and I have a Revenant titan that came with sonic lances that are really warped and broken in a weak area, and I could use the original Scorpion pulsars on that.

Edited by Brother-Chaplain Kage

Oh man, that looks like a doozy. I've had recasts of FW Tyranids from a few different suppliers (they were of long-OOP models which would have set me back a kidney if bought "legit" on eBay) and even with the advantage of being gribbly monsters, some of them were...bad. Blobs of excess resin, brittle material and horrible warping and mould-slips everywhere. Ironically, the good ones were better than some official casts I've bought. Having to work with that on an Eldar vehicle sounds like a nightmare! Good work so far though!

Posted (edited)

Yeah, the repairs on eldar vehicles are a PITA because they're tend to be smooth, flat, and rounded surfaces and you can't really hide them in detail (scales, fur, etc) or completely get rid of them on flat armor plates like IG or SM stuff.

Edited by Brother-Chaplain Kage
Posted (edited)

New engine section and the old one with mold shift right through the middle of the whole thing and a similar issue on the other original one. The recast ones don't have the mold shift but the detail is very soft like the mold was nearing the end of its life.

 

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My chonkier pulsar next to the original.

 

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Still need to clean up the seam line, but it looks so good. Mmmm.

 

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Forgot to add that these pulsars are inspired by the original Scorpion Type 1 model with most of the gem blisters removed. Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

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Edited by Brother-Chaplain Kage

Man, slightly lacking detail aside that Type 1 Cobra is a really nice looking kit. Probably a horror to build, but a cool design. I like the taller profile and general "Falcon+" look it has.

It's not bad, but it feels like a concept sketch that should have had a revision or two. Seems like a wedding cake to me and not exactly what I think of for Eldar.

 

Got the seam lines on the new pulsars cleaned up last night and painted them glossy black to make sure they were gone. Looking back at my original Falcon that I did the test paint scheme for these corsairs on, I went with gloss black for the underside of and back of the tank, as well as the weapons as a way to fight my short attention span and be able to pump out the models faster, but it is kind of boring.

 

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So I did a test on one of the original pulsars in a light metallic bronze color to see how it would look.

 

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Looks good, so tonight I repainted the weapons on the Falcon and I'm definitely sticking with that color.

 

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I have worked in a bakery before.

 

And of course, just as I was about to go to bed I discovered this large gem thing that sits in the little cutout on the fuselage was missing from the recast and the original is way too thin and fragile to even think about press molding.

 

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But the Omnissiah provides inspiration to the faithful.

 

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This and a few more goodies - hopefully the last printed bits for these things - will be in the next update.

I noticed the other night that the tanks don't have any kind of defensive weapon under the cockpit like the Falcon tank and variants do so I printed a new chin turret and an updated version of the old rotary cannon version of the scatter laser, replaced the Falcon targeting array with a printed version of the old Fire Prism targeting array, new canopies (which don't fit quite as well as they do on the Falcons and will need some adjusting), and a new gem blister for fuselage on the Cobra. There's still a little tidying up to do and then figuring out how to base these monsters, and then it's on to painting!

 

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The new defensive weapons are looking real nice - does that targeting array have the half upper shell on it like the old Falcon targeter bit, or is it a full wrap-around deal due to the print process?

On 6/29/2024 at 4:52 AM, Bryan Blaire said:

The new defensive weapons are looking real nice - does that targeting array have the half upper shell on it like the old Falcon targeter bit, or is it a full wrap-around deal due to the print process?

 

It's a digital copy of the old Fire Prism targeter.

 

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Been busy with work for the last several days and just got a primer coat to check for issues on the Cobra where the tail joins up and it looked good. I also scribed in new panel lines across the area.

 

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Just finished priming all the parts and next update should be some paint!

Found a conversion project that went missing for a while because I dropped into a random box one day last year when I was cleaning off my desk and promptly forgot about it. Found him again a few days ago when I was searching for some bits to use on the super heavies and did some of the last bits of GS work on his abdomen. It was a nice little break from the tanks. 

 

 

 

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