# Steel Legion ... Plastic ?, Found some time to do some modelling



## Brother Argos

IG Codex, Argghhh <looks at large pile of cadian boxes> , <considers doing some IG> , <Ponders which force> ...

Cadians ? Done to death, who wants to be the same as everyone else!
Vostroyans ? Character, Cossacks, Hmm possible, but too archaic looking for me and METAL, metal is the bane of conversions.
Catachan ? oh please, Rambo, big arms, BIG ARMS, nah.
Death Korps ? got a good few packs of them, with snapped off gun barrels, resin weak and snaps, expensive, like the look though.

Uhhh oh, just ruled out all the plastics, hmm not good.

Praetorians, Character, Metal, hmm no longer sold on the GW site, ebay, possible rarity appeals
Mordians, Praetorians with caps, prefer Praetorians.
Valhallans, Russians, Look ok, great coats, hmm maybe.
Tallarn, Arabic never moved me. 

Steel Legion, hmmm WWII German Paratroopers, that might work, Metal.
Hmm based on Armageddon, would work well with my Salamanders.
Nice artwork too, stylish, and the cool laying down and firing Heavy weapons. 

Ok this is working for me. But I want plastics and compatability with the Cadian sprues ... oh damn, time to do some work.

So began an Easter weekend of fun converting, with the intention of making a Cadian soldier into a Steel Legion trooper! 

I have got about 85% of the way there so far, just gloves, boots and lightning emblem on shoulder left to green stuff.

Take a look, tell me what you think, anything wrong ?


















































I used this for inspiration ...


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## Rahmiel

Wow that is really great work mate. One question though, how are you going to get all the heads you need for an army? Still beautiful job.


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## Brother Argos

The head is from a Steel Legion trooper, as the hardest thing to sculpt I cut it off and tested with it 

However for heads, I will sculpt my own in Green stuff and anything I sculpt myself I will cast in resin. then I can merge my own sculpted material with normal plastic cadian parts, and produce the speciality steel legion models that don't exist (and likely never will).


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## Asamodai

Yeah looking good. Nice conversion work, though I don't envy the task of doing an army of them.


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## officer kerky

not too bad. i like it alot.


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## Stuntiesrule

only question I have is why did you cut off the butt of the lasgun? in the photo you were using for inspiration they had butts on there guns they just were dark brown.

other then that really nice job, converting them all may get annoying but more power to you for doing it.


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## julio d

he didn't, it's a lasgun with a folding stock from a tank kit.


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## Brother Argos

Here is a list of the changes so far: -

Chest: Chest piece was from Vehicle sprue, and was chosen as it did not have any armour on. Channels cut for straps, straps made from plasticard, Ammo Pouches made from plasticard,rebreather made from plasticard with the grooved section being cut from one of the cadian trooper heads, Eagle shaped clasps added finally.

Head : Taken from a Steel Legion trooper (one of the few without a massive mould line), Added gas masking tubing using the "power cabling" from Dragonforge ( http://www.dragonforge.com ). At some point I need to sculpt the head from scratch so I can mould and cast my own copies without legal issues.

Arms : Cadian Rifle arms, Shoulders shaved down and some small creases added, more work needed to make proper folds, also need to add the lighting strike insignia on the left shoulder.

Hands: Detached from the Cadian rifle arms, rotated slightly, the hand that was part of the gun was carefuly cut off without damaging it, and attached to the arm and therefore allowed the use of a different weapon.

Weapon : Because the Steel Legion are an Armoured Fist unit and as such spend a lot of time in vehicles, they generally use Las-Carbines instead of las-rifles. The normal metal models have carbines (with folding stocks), and I used the Las-Carbine with folding stock from the Tank sprue to represent this. I had to change the way the hands worked to make this happen.

Legs : Cadian legs, trimmed down at the top, Three layers of green stuff to build up the bottom of the coat, final layer applied carefully and smoothly, Coat pleats added last.

Feet : Need to trim the boots back, and then sculpt on the changes to a full knee high boot, also add a small skull in the center at the top as per the 4th edition IG codex image of a steel legion trooper.

Canteen : At the moment I am using a Forgeworld Elysian canteen, however it doesn't fit with the style on the metal models, something else to make from plasticard or Greenstuff.

Knife/Bayonet : Currently a Forgeworld Deathkorps knife, I am happy with this and find it matches the metal steel legion nicely, I have a significant amount of these from my Deathkorps, so might stick with it.

Blanket : Currently taken from a metal Steel Legion trooper, however its going to be sculpted in green stuff so it can be reproduced.


The future ...

Do more converted parts to enable me to use the new Cadian command sprues, and all the old Cadian stuff, and the add-on forgeworld cadian parts.

See if I can make transparent resin goggles ... now that would be cool.


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## Rahmiel

Sounds like an interesting project, keep this updated I would really like to see how this turns out.


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## Brother Argos

Oh like all huge projects, it will entirely depend on the time I have available after the real world takes its chunk.

But the idea of a long term project aiming at something fun is worth pursuing.


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## MaidenManiac

This surely has potential. Its gonna be great to see the first whole squad completed


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## Capt.Al'rahhem

You might want to check out Pig Iron heads. http://www.pig-iron-productions.com/order.htm# The KOLONY MILITIA HEAD SPRUES would probably work and save you allot of time and effort. Bravo on going your own route with guard.


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## Brother Argos

I had a look at the Pig Iron heads, and to be honest they lack the detail I would like to use.

So I hope to make something a little closer to the detail that the deathkorps have.


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## fallvictim

I like the artwork you are working from, so far they have the look.


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## Brother Argos

Ok was a good night tonight, got one of the gloves done, put the lighting flash emblem on the shoulder, and made a folding carbine stock out of wire that looks the same as the one on the tank kit carbine. Pics tomorrow.


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## Brother Argos

While looking at the new IG codex, I came to this rough army list .. please bear in mind I am aiming towards an Veteran Armoured Strikeforce.

The following is 1500 pts.

Company Command Squad with Medi Pack & MeltaGun in a Chimera, with Heavy Bolter x 2

Veteran Squad with Meltagun x 2, in a Chimera, with Heavy Bolter x 2
Veteran Squad with Meltagun x 2, in a Chimera, with Heavy Bolter x 2 
Veteran Squad	In Valkyrie, with Meltagun x 3

3 x Leman Russ, 2 Normal, 1 Punisher	
Hydra 
Basilisk, Enclosed
Armoured Sentinel with Missile x 3
Valkyrie


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## Brother Argos

Some Picture Updates ... 

Firstly here is an extended version the Folding stock normally found on a Las-Carbine. I hope to model a few of the arms to accept this version.




























It took around an hour to make the stock, but I think now I know the "how to" I could do it in about 30 minutes, or possibly cast it in resin?


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## Brother Argos

It feels strange to be doing this much modelling. I haven't put this much time into doing this for years, but I am enjoying it immensely. I have to achieve things before the real world calls me back or worse, I burn out, therefore I am pressing ahead hard.

This mornings update focuses on the aquila clasps on the chest, the shoulder emblem and the glove.

The aqulia clasps are less than 1.5mm they were scraped with a scalpel to reduce the hard edges, then cuts were made to create the fantail of the eagle and to hint at the location of the heads



















Next up is the first glove done, when the greenstuff has hardened I need to fatten up the fingers a little to make a more glove like feel.










Lastly the emblem is done, and I need to practice it a lot so I can do it on other arms.



















More photo's later, with a comparison shot showing a Cadian, my Steel Legion trooper, and a Metal Steel legion trooper side by side.


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## The Wraithlord

Some impressive work here and could easily lead to the creation of a stunning force on the table. I am going to move this thread to the Project Logs area as that is where an ongoing thread like this fits best.


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## Brother Argos

Here are some comparison photos showing a Cadian built using almost identical components to the one which I am making into a steel legion trooper, then there is my Steel legion trooper, and finally a metal Steel legion trooper.

The pictures are deliberately stripped of colour to make the comparison easier, although there is a final shot with colour for those interested.


































Here is the colour photo.










I was surprised to see the differences, the first difference between the Cadian and my trooper is the bulkiness that the shoulderpads and helmet give the Cadian, followed closely by an illusion of height difference (Cadian looks slightly taller), however even when measured they are virtually the same height. The second more obvious difference is 2mm difference when compared to the Metal Legionnaire, if I am going to use them together I will need to make sure the scenery on the bases boosts the Metal Legionnaires by a couple of millimetres to fool the eye. 

Although the boots remain to be done, as does the final gloved hand, I am pleased with the result, and have begun work on my own sculpted helmet, soon to be followed by a complete head. While the first layer of greenstuff dries on the helmet, I have also put the basecoat of greenstuff down on the right foot. Hopefully more pictures tomorrow showing progress.

Oh lastly I found a wonderful rolled up blanket, which comes attached to the Cadian backpacks from Forgeworld, which I will be using instead of the metal one.


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## Brother Argos

Progress report, I worked on the boots last night and made a small addition, just on the knee a small skull, the idea came from the illustration of the steel legion in the 4e Imperial Guard Codex. Now one boot is almost finished I am pleased with the look.

Here is a picture from the 4e IG codex: -


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## NurglingStomper

Wow everything is looking good. I am amazed at your converting skill. Can't wait to see how your own scups come out. Plus rep.


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## Brother Argos

Thanks for the kind comment 

After an unproductive morning I finally managed to catch up on some more sculpting ... 

*1. Heads*








A] Interesting head from the Baneblade sprue, with some minor sculpting it would serve well as a trooper without helmet and as such becomes head number 3 on my list.
B] An old head I was working on for a potential deathkorp project, which can back to my attention, currently head number 2 on the "heads to do list".
C & D] Freshly sculpted helmet shape on its second layer of greenstuff, the lip around the base of the helmet needs extending and minor modification for the front, then an eagle needs to be placed on the front also, this will then be cut off, moulded and cast to serve as my master helmet for future cadian sized heads. On a minor note, in image C the gap from helmet to head on the side seems wide merely due to the lack of an ear, when I checked its the same size as the other side.

*2. Boots*








a] Right hand boot completed, with new skull as mentioned in previous post.
b] Side shot demonstrating heel now cut into sole of boot, where there was none previously, and the extension of the sole to surround the back of the heel, which is faithful to the original metal steel legionnaires.
c] Rear of the boot showing seam/zip line leading down to the aforementioned sole extension surrounding the heel.
d] Wasted Greenstuff (and who doesn't mix to much) is being used to pad legs for the next Leg sets in the Leg list. Rather than waste GreenStuff its often worth using it to prepare for future work as padding and hole filling is often required (especially for clothes).

*3. Shoulder*








The shoulder has been extended with a minor lip, this will serve to hide the point at which the arm joins the body (normally hidden by the huge shoulderpads on a cadian), and it also accentuates the "Coat" aspect somewhat by extending the lapel. The other side remains to be done, but I was pleased with this side so will definitely do it.

*4. Blanket & Gloves*
















Nothing special about these two, just showing the nice detail of the Forgeworld blanket and the fact the other glove has now been done too. Of the original list of things to do only one boot, a shoulder extension and the head remain.

I am hoping to finish off the other boot by the end of tomorrow, as well as the 2nd stage on the helmet and the shoulder, with some preliminary work on either a new arm set or one of the legs.


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## Viscount Vash

You are making this look far to easy lol.

Nice work on this project though, how many hours have you commited so far? ( You don't have to answer that btw sometimes its best not to know.  )


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## HorusReborn

definately some sweet conversions going on here! Well done man, loving everything about it!!


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## Brother Argos

Its not Easy!! ... so far I am looking at 25+ hrs of work. However like any master figure all the effort goes into it before moulding and casting. Time put in now saves correction and annoyance later.

Just finished the second stage of the helmet, got one last bit to go and adding the aquila on the front.

Flagging a bit now, got the boot and shoulder to do, the boot will take longer and is only the 1st stage of a 3 stage process. I might just go for the shoulder lip as its a one hit wonder and I will be finished with the torso completely then.


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## dirty-dog-

these are better than the metal models, and they definitly look more in scale with the cadians than the metal ones cause they just look too scrawny IMO.

definitly cant wait for a few of these guys to be casted.

ive also got a few questions.

1: Is there any tips that you would be able to share with me? ive just recently brought some greenstuff, and only used it for minor gap filling.

2: Do you know much about using greenstuff for the mould? i want to start making some glyph plates for myself, and cant afford any resin etc, and the masters will be made from greenstuff/plasti-card.


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## Fenetik

Looking awesome! Definitely watching this thread.
Keep up the work.


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## NurglingStomper

Looking good so far. Do you do sculpting commissions? Haha
No, but seriously that stuff is top notch. Can't wait for more!


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## Brother Argos

@ dirty-dog- : Get some good sculpting tools, and keep them well coated in spit while working with them, otherwise the greenstuff sticks to them and is useless. On a personal note I would make the Glyphs from plasticard, and use the green stuff to fill gaps.

@ NurglingStomper : What do you need sculpted ?

Ok, its a monday ... that means work!

I am working for the British Museum today (they are a client of mine) so not much will be happening till last thing tonight.

The shoulder was done last night, and tonight I face the boot, last stage of the helmet and starting work on some new legs. I am considering creating a tutorial when I make the next one, showing the stages and effort involved.


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## dirty-dog-

hey cheers for the info, i was using water, and it doesnt work to well.

cant wait to see an update!!


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## jack

I prefer your version to the original metal trooper.
Brill!


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## Brother Argos

Thanks Jack 

Current update : Took some pictures to show current progress as an assembled trooper. Realised it won't be long now before I am ready to work on the second one.


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## NurglingStomper

Simply amazing. Your model trumps the original for sure. Great work.


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## Syph

That's a spectacular conversion chap, really great attention to detail. Looks forward to seeing more.


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## Brother Argos

First layer of second boot done now, two more layers to go, Lapel on second shoulder extended not happy though and might cut it off and redo, Aquila added to front of helmet with GS.

Still need to get skull embedded on boot, need to tidy the lip on the helmet.

Pics tomorrow morning after all the GS hardens, if I get time before work.

On an interesting note, as I was working at the British Museum today, I had time to go to Warren Street and visit Tiranti's a casting, moulding and sculpture shop, where I picked up a couple more Wax Carver #5, my sculpting tool of choice (and favored by many sculptors) I also collected some Silicon rubber so I have sufficient for the casting.


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## NurglingStomper

I sent you a pm about what I would like sculpted. Thanks


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## Brother Argos

This mornings pics: -
The picture of the head needs to be clarified, it is not destined to be an open faced head, it is merely the framework for me to make the helmet on. Once the helmet is made and cast, it will be cut off the head and become the "master helmet" for the next generation of work where i work on different gas masks and different goggles.


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## The Wraithlord

I have to say that I like the model you have converted far more than the original as it just looks so much better, from the kit down. I am curious as to how you are planning on casting these guys however.


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## Brother Argos

I will be using a pressure based resin casting system to ensure no bubbles, I get almost perfect reproduction that way.

I am going to be working on the last boot, and fix the shoulder tonight. Now I have looked at the helmet with Aquila ... I am satisfied and will attempt to cast the helmet later this week.


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## Brother Argos

Just finished tonights sculpting...

Got the remaining boot second stage completed including the skull just below the knee, I need to thicken up a few places on the boot top, add a seam, and add the heel protector.









Extended the shoulder on the torso to the level I wanted it, so the torso is now complete I think.









Started a second pair of legs and got the rough shape of the coat onto them, this will be cut and trimmed back next time, but I wanted to get most of the "padding" on.

















But for now I am going to bed


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## gwmaniac

Wow, nice work so far! But I personally wouldn't have the guts to do this work, it would be a lot of money for me, I wouldn't dare separating the Steel Legion heads, cuz now you've got a ton of expensive headless pewter minis, what do you plan to do with the headless steel legion bodies, btw?


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## Brother Argos

There will be no more cut off steel legion heads, as you can see from page 3 onwards I am working on my own steel legion heads done in Green stuff 

Ok a bit of a change this morning, first of our regular update mainly regarding the tidied, but still at least two more stages to go second leg set.




























Just because I wanted to see one of the heads I am thinking about framed on a body ... 










And in the next post a change from our regular Steel Legion stuff ...


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## Brother Argos

Just a quick showing of an unfinished Adeptus Mechanicus Heavy Servitor, the right arm has a socket fitted to enable the use of Sentinel weaponry, and I always envisaged using them as a replacement for Sentinels in an AM army. He has been sitting looking at me now for a year, blaming me for not being inspired enough to finish him 

He needs chest armour, the plasticard shoulder pads finished, tubing and piping running down his spine and connecting to his tracked carriage, a bionic eye, and a host of small details. 














































And in the next post this evening we will return to our regular Steel Legion stuff ...


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## dirty-dog-

Looking bloody good,

where did you get the bottom sections from? 
they would be great for a few grot tanks.


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## Brother Argos

The bottom section is a Forgeworld Cyclops

Anyway tonight's sculpting will be second stage on the new legs, and possibly trying to get some new arms started (for variety). I will also be finishing off the boot on the first pair of legs which need a seam up the back and the heel protector added.

Interestingly that should give me enough to start casting a full figure, although I am still thinking about my own canteen. I have a valid reason for that however, in a gas mask they often have to use a tube to drink through, which isn't represented on the canteen I am currently using, but is on the metal models. So I might think about fixing that.


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## NurglingStomper

Wow still looking excellent! Can't wait to see what's next. Keep up the good work. Are you gonna show us how you cast them?


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## Brother Argos

I haven't done this much modelling in years, and have never done this much sculpting ever ... I am now thinking 5-6hrs a day is almost like a full time job, on top of my normal work. I might well have to cut back a bit, or I might burn out at this pace.

Anyway, as discussed earlier here is tonight's work.

Most boring first: -

The next set of arms is in production, and the shoulderpad has been removed and the arm has been tested for fit with the torso, one problem the ammo packs on the chest bring is they get in the way of the arms, unless the arm is carved on the side which is out of sight, to let the ammo pack sit snugly behind it.









Next up is the unhelmeted head, simple stuff tonight, smoothed down the surfaces I am going to work on, and added the first strap to hold the mask on, there is another strap to go almost vertical infront of the ear next.


















Next is the new set of legs, the padding out phase being finished we are onto working on the edges, doing the edges of anything in greenstuff is the hardest part, and on the steel legion models there is a "kick" on the edge of the cloth to accentuate it and stop it feeling quite so "heavy" that the original sculptor used. I am duplicating it, but its one of the slowest parts as it doesn't come naturally to me.









This next bit is tonight's hardest part, and I still need to practice, with my limited sculpting experience, I have never done the female form, so adding female characteristics to the torso is a bit of a challenge. This next picture shows my first attempt at this, from the get go one of the goals of this project was to try and produce a female torso for the Steel Legion, to further create some unique variation. Please bear in mind this is an early attempt, and not the finished item.









Different message boards have different rules about casting .. so I am not sure.


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## NurglingStomper

Your work never ceases to amaze. Good job!


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## Brother Argos

I would like to do approximately 1/3 maybe 1/4 of the troopers as women. the complex part of the sculpting is the affect that the leather harness/strapping on the Steel Legion would distort the female form and I cannot find any examples of women wearing coats wearing anything similar. That kind of pushes me into very unfamiliar territory as I prefer to have real world examples when sculpting something new. 

No new pictures this morning, as I did not get up early enough to get any sculpting done, hopefully more tonight.


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## Iron Corsair

Brilliant job on all of your Steel Legion soldiers, Brother Argos! I think they are very well crafted, and worthy of praise. :clapping:


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## Brother Argos

Thanks, had tonight off to recharge, and working up in London tomorrow, but I hope to have enough energy saved up now to get some more sculpting done tomorrow


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## Brother Argos

In a sudden surge of enthusiasm, I purchased the models I needed to complete the army list I defined above. Forgeworld are now secure during the recession: -

These are my purchases: -

HYDRA FLAK TANK CONVERSION KIT
Because fast skimmers and bikes are annoying, but mainly because with planet strike a lot more skimmers/flyers will be around.

ARMAGEDDON PATTERN MEDUSA
I plan to make a Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon mortar with magnets to hot swap between them, this also gives me the enclosed artillery that Armageddon Regiments use extensively. So I should have an artillery piece which can be either of the basilisk/medusa/griffon as I require.

VANAHEIM PATTERN BASILISK GUN SHIELD
If the enclosed section of the b/m/g artillery is removed, this will be avaliable instead of a gun shield on the gun itself, and also magnetised.

DEATH KORPS OF KRIEG TRANSFER SHEET
I want the small shoulder numbers for the back of the steel legion helmets and my tanks.

DEATH KORPS OF KRIEG MARS ALPHA PATTERN LEMAN RUSS VANQUISHER COMPLETE KIT
MODIFIED RYZA PATTERN LEMAN RUSS TURRET
MODIFIED RYZA PATTERN LEMAN RUSS DEMOLISHER TURRET
These three will allow me to build my three tanks, with the lead tank being an Mars Alpha pattern, I plan to make the turret weapons interchangable, to allow me to build other variants from Forge world later.

When these arrive I will start to document the modifications and changes for the vehicles, as well as the sculpting


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## Kobrakai

This is one hell of a project log Argos, your a source of inspiration for all :victory:

Thanks for sharing this army with us, it's a real pleasure to read.


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## Jezlad

> Different message boards have different rules about casting .. so I am not sure.


I think we can make an exception here.

Truly outstanding work thus far. You're even making me want to do some modelling... Which hasn't actually happened before :laugh:


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## Brother Argos

Well after a fairly relaxed couple of days I finally got down to some more work with my Steel Legion!

I started off by working out what items I wanted to mould / cast and how I was going to split them between the two moulds I envisaged. In the end I decided that the body, weapon & heads would go in the first mould










Followed by the less used legs and arm mould 










It took me about an hour to get the components into the Chavant Sculpting clay I use as the base in the moulding process, I ran the sprue in and connected all the components up. I then built up the walls of the mould containment (the old faithful lego, used by amateur mould makers the world over) and headed down to my work room.

I was lucky enough a couple of years ago to buy a pressure resin casting package, which consists of a Compressor, Pressure Pot, and all the funky gauges and piping to connect it. Being amazingly careful with any pressure system I started by checking my compressor (hasn't been run for a while), then my pressure pot, and finally I made sure I knew the mix ration (by weight) for the catalyst I would use with the Silicon rubber and finally sat down to make some moulds.

I had purchased the Silicon Rubber while in Tiranti's the sculptors shop in London, during lunch at the British Museum last week. I got out the plastic disposable beakers I use to mix and proceeded to make enough rubber for both moulds, and add enough catalyst to give me a 30 min pot life, pot life is the working time before the rubber starts to set solid, and a final release time of 5-6 hrs, it was going to be overnight for me so no worries about the delay.

Once I had the catalyst calculated I mixed it with the rubber and made sure it was WELL churned, with a normal casting arrangement that would not be good, the air mixed in during that process would cause bubbles in the moulds. However with a pressure caster it would not be a problem as the bubbles would be crushed by the pressure of approximately 40psi.

Once well mixed, I poured approximately equal amounts of rubber into each mould, covering the Steel Legion models. Then as pot life time was ticking, I got the moulds into the pressure pot, and placed the lid on. There are four wingnuts on the lid to keep the pressure tight and stop stupid things from happening such as flying steel lids for instance. Once tightened evenly, an important step in a pressure vessel not to tighten one to max first, I attached the pressure hose from the compresser which I had pressurised earlier to 80 psi. The gauge on the pressure pot rose rapidly to just over 40psi and I closed the valve as it had reached where I wanted it to be. 

All that was about 10 mins ago, the rubber is now slowly setting under pressure in the pot, and will be released in the morning when I get up. For those wondering why I am creating the mould under pressure, it is critical to do so, as moulds made at normal pressure will dimple and deform if used for pressure casting later on.

Hopefully this is an interesting insight into preparing for moulding with pressure, if all goes well I will show you the resulting mould tomorrow morning when it is set!

An important note, just to make sure I wasn't breaking any rules here, the board tyrant ,(Hi Lee!) said I could post about casting/moulding.


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## BDJV

Outstanding work! I've done casting in pewter, but I may to have get the gear and give resin a go.


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## Jezlad

This is incredibly interesting. I haven't really considered the science and application behind moulding. Seeing your set up and the obvious skill that goes into it is an eye opener for sure.

Something thats puzzled me (and I apologise if it was explained - Ive had a few beers tonight...) is the holes in the top clay. What purpose do they serve?


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## BDJV

Jezlad said:


> Something thats puzzled me (and I apologise if it was explained - Ive had a few beers tonight...) is the holes in the top clay. What purpose do they serve?


I'm pretty sure those will end up being the guide for proper mold alignment. Think of it like a puzzle; the pieces of it only fit properly one way.


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## Brother Argos

BDJV is indeed correct, they ensure correct alignment of the moulds. I believe the technical word I heard for the process is keying, and they are keys.

Just woke up, heading down to the work room to see how things turned out.


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## Brother Argos

Things went well for the first half of the mould, there were no errors I could find and the mould had set correctly. Here are some pictures showing the moulds are they had been release from the lego containement.

Steel Legion Heads & Body










Steel Legion Arms & Legs










One of the concerns I had was the fact the aquila clasps on the torso were only lightly glued into place and I worried they would come off in the mould and ruin a lot of work, however I am pleased to report they all cast correctly and nothing detached!

The next stage is to cleanup the parts we are moulding and to remove any chavant sculpting clay still adhering to the component. We all make mistakes, and one of mine cropped up right now, I placed one of the blocks of clay with the embedded compontents underneath a hot halogen lamp (I usually use the position for fast setting green stuff) and tidied the contents of the other one. Unfortunately the clay got soft under the halogen lamp and adhered to the components much more than it normally would, which resulted in an additional 45 minutes cleanup I would not normally have to do 

Anyway once all the components are clean we put the new silicon rubber moulds back into the lego containment and place our components back into them exactly where they came from, here are a couple of pictures showing this: -


Steel Legion Heads & Body










Steel Legion Arms & Legs










<to be continued in next post>


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## Brother Argos

Moulding the other side ... continued.

Once all the parts are back in the rubber we need introduce the concept of a mould release agent. The mould release agent will stop the new rubber we are just about to pour from sticking to the rubber we just made, without it you get a solid block of rubber with your components somewhere inside and a lot of unhappiness. However the mould release agent which is a fine spray from a can, could clog and add a texture to whatever we are going to cast, so we need to protect the components from the spray, but at the same time make sure we coat the rubber thoroughly. Time to get some blu-tac: -

Steel Legion Heads & Body with blu-tac










Steel Legion Arms & Legs with blu-tac










At this stage we used the Mould Release Agent: -










Once the mould release agent has done its job, we carefully remove all the blu-tac and raise the level of the containment around the mould, to handle the new rubber we will be about to pour into the mould.



















At this stage the mould was ready to have the new rubber poured in, so back to the workroom and once again check all the equipment, get all the chemicals ready, mix the rubber, add the catalyst, pour onto the moulds, and then place the moulds into the pressure pot and pressurise to 40psi. This time I increased the catalyst to a higher ratio to decrease the casting time, so we should be done in about 3 hrs.

Here is a picture of the compressor and pressure pot, you note with safety goggles also.










I will be gone for a few hours now, I am taking my daughters to their Ballet Dancing exams, I might have my iphone with me to answer any questions


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## edd_thereaper

this is some pretty awsome stuff, inspiring for all

i wish i had the money and time to do something like this with my traitor guard

keep up the good work

edd


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## Kitsunex

i really like your work. thanks for the posts on how you are making it! i might have to think about buying a setup like you have down the road. your post was very helpful, thanks!


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## Brother Argos

Well as normal sunday has been a busy day for me, but I finally got the chance to continue with my moulding & casting.

Last time I had just shown you the mould going in for the second half, I am pleased to say that was a success, and I pressed on with cutting the mould and adding channels for the resin to flow once under pressure, here is a picture showing the moulds with cuts for resin flow done.










I proceeded to test the cut mould and was pleased with the initial result: -










As you can see all the pieces cast correctly, and to my satisfaction, upon closer examination no more than two bubble prone areas, one in the hand and one on the rebreather. The rebreather was luckily where the pipe was meant to go, and therefore worked in my favour, and the hand was difficult to see, so I decided to live with it rather than remould. both would be fixable with a little greenstuff if it was required.

After removing the model and cleaning up the flash I could not resist assembling him to see how he turned out. I used the power cables from DragonForge Design again as they worked perfectly.

Here are the first pics of my new Steel Legion Trooper assembled and ready to be painted.


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## Lord-Gorgutz365

you have done an amazing job there , beutiful sculpting and rather different! very well done


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## inqusitor_me

dude all i have to say is wow i love them as a long time SL fan i think GW shouold do a plastic version.
I can not wait to see the modle painted. 
on a diffrent note what would be the legal Implications of casting you'r own modles if any one knows.

Pete

edit:also if you dont mind me asking how much did that rig set you back?


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## Brother Argos

The rig to pressure cast was about £500 or so.

Just to make it fairly plain, I have no intention to sell these models (I have had a number of polite purchase requests via pm), they are intended to make my Steel Legion army, a customised army from its point of inception. I want something unique for myself, and as its a good 40k year already for me, I wanted to make it very special. 

For those even vaguely interested in why its a special year, I was lucky enough to have my online persona make it into a Short story & Series published by Black Library. The short story book is "Heroes of the Space Marines" and I am in the story "Fires of War" on Pg 190. Brother Argos appears as the Master of the Forge for the Salamander space marine chapter and I get to help out a few times throughout the story 

Anyway, back to where we are with the Steel Legion, next on my list is to finish another pair of arms and pair of legs and mould them, to offer more variety. As usual I will post my sculpting progress as we go!


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## Micklez

Dude, that is amazing (both your models and your BL story). One question with this rig you have set up, wouldnt that result in you having a 'LOTR effect' army??? (ie. all your guardsmen will be just 3 or 4 minitures repeated)

Btw, thank you for giving some love to the Salamanders


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## Brother Argos

In answer to your question all the components are moulded in a similar way to the cadian sprue ... so I can have different legs, arms, heads and weapons in any mix I want 

I could not resist trying a figure using the new parts I had made, and I wanted something sergeant like: -





































Would not take much to add the Steel Legion badge on the arm and some gauntlets and we would be there


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## Brother Argos

Ok this is bad ... now I am playing with Toy soldiers, next I will be making lasgun noises!


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## BDJV

Pew, Pew! There I did it for you!

They turned out fantastic!


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## MaidenManiac

Those are damn sweet looking, really really so! Grats on what will be a very personalized army, that probably will be a blast playing too thanks to the new IG Codexk:

Gonna be very fun to watch this progress!


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## Kitsunex

BDJV said:


> Pew, Pew! There I did it for you!
> 
> They turned out fantastic!


haha beat me too it! so i'll just add to it


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## Brother Argos

<laughs> Pew Pew Pew !!

sorry couldn't resist ...

Worked on the current set of legs last night, got 2 more stages roughly to go till they are complete, I also had a look at another pair of arms trying to work out which set next as there are only four sets with lasguns. I found one and stripped off the shoulder pads, and am working on the hand separation from the gun. At some point I also need to finalise a method for making the wire folding stock.

Pictures later tonight, today I am off to the Infosec (Information Security) show in Earls Court, London. Should be fun!


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## The Wraithlord

Dude, that is just fucking amazing and deserving of the huge pile of rep I am passing your way. I am SERIOUSLY impressed!!

I am curious however, what it the cost of that set up (pressure casting set, etc)?


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## Ste

absolutely amazing - do you do commisions?


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## Brother Argos

Pressure casting setup was about £500

It would really depend on the commision .. pm me

First part of my Forgeworld order arrived today ... here take a look at the Vanaheim pattern gun shield for my medusa/griffon/basilisk : -










The other two items were ok, and were a demolisher turret - ryza modified style and a normal leman russ turrer also Ryza modified.

To the credit of FW they agreed to send me out another plate immediately, and also had the pleasure of telling me my Armageddon pattern medusa would be shipped as well.

I was however a little dissapointed, as the box was undamaged and well padded internally, so fundamentally it was almost certainly put in broken ...


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## inqusitor_me

dude that sucks man i know you'r pain man


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## Captain Galus

Very nice work my friend!


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## Brother Argos

Anyway a few people commented that the raised hand on the sgt looked wrong, I suspected it was the grossly oversized lanyard making the arm appear weird. I have removed the lanyard and am much happier now with the way it looks, here is a before and after shot: -


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## The Wraithlord

Agreed, far better with that gone.


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## Brother Argos

Good NEWS !! I got my IG Codex, Valkyrie, Catachan & Cadian command sets and a new sentinel in the post ... YAY!!! So this evening I will be looking in some detail at those boxes and deciding if anything is going to be converted to steel legion 

Not to mention trying to make a new army list!


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## neilbatte

I like what you've done so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the whole army when its cast.
Have you thought about using the the Lt Varras model as a base for a sculpt as it has the legs and boots predone and a nice armour plate for an officer.
plus rep for your work so far.


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## Brother Argos

Ok, I am leaving London for a few days on business/pleasure in New York, this will have a definite impact on my ability to post updates. I have however taken some Greenstuff, some plastic sprues, and my sculpting tools, I am determined to get some arms / legs done. I invariably wake up very early in the morning while in New York, due to the time shift, so I will try and get some sculpting done in the mornings, with any luck I will have some pictures to show you guys when I get back 

I could however do with some input from you, I have made a "todo" list of things I want to sculpt, if you can think of anything Steel Legion relevant I am missing please post it!

Female Torso: -
Need to sculpt female torso, add braces & aquila buttons.
After reproducing need to add ammo packs, rebreather.

Male Torso: - 
Need to sculpt another male torso, add braces & aquila buttons.
After reproducing need to add ammo packs (3 this time), rebreather.
Also after reproducing create officer variant with lanyard, medals, gorget, etc.

Head: -
Need to hollow the new helmet I sculpted, clean out the inside, and make a loose helmet for diorama / hanging on webbing / belt.
Need to add Googles onto helmet
Need to do seperate Goggles for belt / neck hanging
Need to add gasmask detatched and on webbing / belt
Need to do gasmask lowered from face at neck region (for officers)
Need to do Company Commander heads, with drop sided helms and skull gas masks.

Arms: -
Finish converting all Cadian arms to Steel Legion (glove work mainly)
Make a small press mould to quickly do the Steel Legion lightning emblem on the sleeves.
Look and see if it is possible to use a socket arrangement for gloves and arms, to reduce hand/glove sculpting (possibly magnetised ?).

Legs: -
Need to look at Deathkorps / Elysian legs for possible alternate leg positions.
Need to look at adding any variant postures from Catachan legs.
Reproduce boots, possibly look at a socket arrangement for ease of use. 
Need to do longer coat for company commanders .. with fancy edging?

Weapons: -
Do the stock wire folding stuff (check diameter, maybe use etch folding plates to get the bends)
Create a gun without the stock on it ... so can add the folding stock too it.

*If you can think of anything I am missing which is steel legion relevant, please post it!*


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## subtlejoe

dude, thats amazing, you should think about doing it full time, mention to the GW or FW crew about a job. +1 rep


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## dirty-dog-

Need to sculpt female torso, add braces & aquila buttons.
After reproducing need to add ammo packs, rebreather.

hmmmm. hope thats the castinf of the torso, and not you trying to do anything with it lol.

but anyway, are you sure your not just someone that has an alliance with GW, i mean, these models, look exactly like what i imagine steel legion plastics would look like, and i definitly like the fact that it is combatible with the cadian sprue.

good job mate, keeping my eye on this thread for a while.


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## Munky

A very intreresting read and a subject I enjoy( I used to be a mould maker and prototyper myself), im really very impressed with the quality of the resin casts hats off to you for some good work.
+rep


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## Brother Argos

Just woken up on the second day of my New York trip, I have a day off today so I am going to visit a friend over in New Jersey, and do a bit of shopping in a local wargaming shop, and head over to an excellent wargaming club called "HQ the Club", over in New Jersey. I have been there before and they are a very nice bunch of guys, with a great club.

I also managed to grab 10mins in the The Compleat Strategist a games store in New York, I bought some of Procreates sculpting putty to give a try, supposedly its less sticky than green stuff, longer working time, and can hold a harder line/edge, we will see! As I have all my tools with me and there is a room to put aside for making / painting your army at HQ the Club, I will make some time to do some sculpting there I think.

Should be an interesting day!


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## dirty-dog-

that sounds like a great plan, i wunder how much appreciation you get from them when your there.

i definitly cant wait to see more sculped goodness, specially at the level that you can do.


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## Sarcasm

Wow mate, your stuff is awe inspiring!
+rep


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## Brother Argos

Ok, I ended up getting a box of Cadian command in Time Warp Comics (NJ), and having a thoroughly enjoyable 6-7 hours sculpting and chatting at HQ the club. They were a great bunch of guys who made me feel very welcome, whilst I was there I managed to get two sets of gloves sculpted and put on the 3rd layer of green stuff on a pair of legs. I tried doing the gloves using ProCreate and it took me a while to become used to the differences but they turned out ok, an important note was the fact I managed to complete the gloves in one go, where normally with Green Stuff I have to do two stages. So certainly so far there appears to be a time saving with some items due to the nature of ProCreate.

Unfortunately I don't have my camera with my to take some pictures of the work done, however I will obviously have a bunch of pictures to show you on Monday, with more stuff added if I get a chance to do some sculpting today. I took along to the HQ my finished steel legion work, and was delighted to find that in real life it got an excellent reception, there is always a concern that people looking at something online can only see the good things that you show them, while in real life they get a good look all over the model. However in this case my work was scrutinized and got a very good response, so I can stop worrying about that now!

On a final note, I would like to thank Joe, Lou, Billy bob, Scott & the rest of the guys for a chance to talk about games and relax in a great environment for a very pleasurable few hours.


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## dirty-dog-

sounds great, now im anxiouse to see more.

i can agree with the fact that you dont want to sell these either, cause i mean they are pretty awsome, and it wouldnt be the same if a whole lot of people had the same things as you. its great to see someone that is sculpting an army for themeselves and not for retail.

on a side note, maybe you would be a good forge world designer? they have some spots open apparently. youve deffinitly got the detail for it. and you work with resin aswell.


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## NurglingStomper

Wow, it's been a while since I last looked at this thread, but your work still amazes me none the less.


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## Brother Argos

Well, after catching up with jet lag, I am behind by a day, I hope to get the pictures of new stuff done tonight, and get them uploaded with an update.

On the forgeworld sculptor note, firstly I am not that good, secondly I know what they earn and a pay cut is not a good thing!


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## Brother Argos

I finally got some pictures taken last night to show progress: -

New arms, the laspistol arm requires a lightning strike insignia, which to be honest I am trying to find a quicker way to do. I am considering using small circle of thin plasticard, with the lighting strike done in green stuff, or a GS press mould. If you can think of a different method please mention it.










The penultimate stage on the next set of legs is done, only the trim round the edge is left to do. This stage was the addition of folds to the coat to give it some life.


















Finally here is a picture of some components just after they were made, as you can see there is still some flash to clean, and the fault in the hand is starting to annoy me, I need to create an additional feed to clean that up. I thought it would be interesting for people to see that no matter what the method of creation there is always cleanup.


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## dirty-dog-

how much do the FW sculpters earn? and what do you mean your not that good. if these were on the forge world site i would buy them.

infact ive been thinking for some time to start up a DKoK force, just purchasing a unit per month etc, maybe a tank every once and a while, but i would not buy a new unit untill the one before is finished, and this would be my Showcase army, only brought out on special occasions.

hmmm, that was a bit off topic. but anyway,

these guys are looking really good. definitly love the fact that you have picked a componant set up similar to the gw cadian kit, its definitly one of the better ideas that i have heard/seen.


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## Brother Argos

I was up in Milton Keynes today, and popped into a Games Workshop store, and left with two sentinels and a Basilisk box. Over the weekend, I had planned to spend some time working on how to make my Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon which is Enclosed/Open, using magnets and I suspect some plasticard!

In a weird twist of fate I also received the next part of my Forgeworld Order today, funnily enough the enclosed Medusa model, fate was obviously taking a hand here and pushing towards working on the Basilisk/etc. Sadly I was once again slightly disappointed as the Medusa components are again deformed, but unlike the Vanaheim pattern shield they are not broken, merely warped. Interestingly the replacement for the Vanaheim pattern shield arrived too, in good condition this time. Now with all the components arrived I am going to enjoy working out how to make it all swappable with magnets.

In a first step towards painting I undercoated some Cadians and my Steel Legion in black primer, I plan to practice to get the colours I want on the Cadians, and when happy start on a test Steel Legion trooper. Its an interesting time branching out from the sculpting into other areas, I am concerned that I might lose focus, but I know that I need to see a finished/painted Steel Legion Trooper soon, to give me some feeling of moving forward.

Some pictures of the new stuff arrived and the undercoated troops tomorrow, bed time now as Mrs Argos calls!


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## dirty-dog-

oooooh kinky.....

but anyway, definitly cant wait to see more. I dont like the fact that forge world parts are warped. and i have seen a few from other people that have shrunk


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## Brother Argos

Ok here are the pictures from last night showing the warped medusa enclosure, now I know that its simply a matter of using a hair dryer or hot water, with careful bending to restore those peices, I have done it a fair few times, but looking at the way they are distorted shows they almost certainly were compressed by stacking with other items, either at the people who produced them (FW cast using other companies around the world depending on the load on their own resources) and sent them to Forgeworld, or by storing them poorly in the FW warehouse before distribution. Both of those reasons can be fixed with simple procedures, either placing the item into a stacking tray that keeps them all seperate, or boxing them at source to ensure they don't compress. Obviously this might cost more, however given the amount of products that Forgeworld have to replace due to these issues, that cost might well be recouped significantly. Anyway rant over, here are the pictures: -



















Finally here is a shot of a Cadian & Steel Legion trooper side by side, primed and ready for painting, tonight's post will cover how I determine the colours I will be using, especially as I am basing my colours on the inspirational image that started this whole idea going for me: -










Inspirational artwork, showing the colours I wish to use, tonight we will use some techno wizardy and a small program I wrote to determine the colours to use: -










Your welcome to suggest a paint scheme to achieve the above colours, will be interesting to compare


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## Brother Argos

I wanted to work out which three colours (dark,medium,light) would get me closest to the Inspirational artwork shown above. Now obviously I could guess fairly well, there are few enough colours in the GW range to have a good chance of getting it right. However if one is prepared to use the closest colour from any range of paints, that is quite a bit harder. Well it might have been if I hadn't already spent a good few months programming a tool to do just that, my Space Marine painter. Now I know your thinking how on earth is that going to help finding a colour match ? perhaps Argos has written one for the Imperial Guard ? ... well not yet, I have a few (Chaos marines, Sisters, Terminators, Orks and even Tau) done but not Imperial Guard, although I might do one soon.

The latest beta version of the Space Marine Painter includes a colour matching program to tell you which paints you would need to use to get the colours you want on the model you painter. Now by simply opening the steel legion artwork in Photoshop (or other painting software), I can see the colours as Web-hex colour codes easily enough, and put them straight into the painter program. So first thing is to open the artwork and select three areas for light, dark, and medium shades of the colours I want, I could do more, but for the purposes of this demonstration three is enough: -









A: #bc8c42
B: #ad772d
C: #9b570c

Now I have those colours, I can simply paint some areas on the space marine painter: -










Once that is done, I then select the +++Finalise+++ button to see the closest paints to the colours I have chosen.










Interestingly, there are some colours in other paint ranges which are closer than the GW Paints!

The number under each paint represents a "Colour Distance" between the paint and my ideal colour, derived from a three dimensional colour space, the math to do that is horrendous, however I did all the heavy math lifting for you already  (for those interested here is a site with the math - http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?Math.html )

For the lightest shade as we can see Coat d'arms Military Leather Brown (2.13) is the nearest colour, with Iyanden Darksun (2.159) very close behind, but with such little difference I could use either.

For the midrange colour GW Snakebite Leather is the clear winner (2.971)

For the darkest base colour however Foundry Paints Tan (1.79) is much closer than GW Bestial Brown (5.54) and will mean an order being placed on Foundry in the morning 

I think I will add a couple of more data points (a very light shade, and very dark one) before finalising the colours, but I can do that tomorrow.

Hopefully this was an interesting example how a painter can use artwork with some online tools to derive a colour scheme for his army.

I am working in Wimbledon tomorrow at a Theater Lighting company, so might not get a chance to add something in the morning.


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## Azwraith

that program is really cool! 
the work is totally amazing and mind blowing.. make me inspired to do better with my assault marines! 

i did my first mould last night.. but its only a GS 1 side mold of a ..... maybe i shouldnt say lol XD


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## Kitsunex

hey i ran across this link today and figured i'd pass it along. its a tutorial on how to paint steel legion.

http://eek107.blogspot.com/2009/05/painting-tutorial-steel-legion.html


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## Winterous

Wow, that casting is really good quality.
Great work man, totally gonna watch this.

I myself have thought about casting IG with different helmets and coats.
I'm a nid collector though, so maybe some day.


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## Brother Argos

Well after a relaxing day with Mrs Argos, and a nice meal out, I got back to working on my Steel Legion this evening. The project is currently branching in numerous directions, first off there is continued sculpting to do, I also need to settle on a paint scheme and test it out a couple of times, and finally as the Armageddon pattern medusa arrived I want to start work on the swappable basilisk / medusa / griffon model I wish to make. As it was already dark by the time I got to do some work, and I like painting during daylight, the decision was between sculpting and making tanks, guess which won!

You guessed right, making tanks any time! 

As usual I made the tank sufficiently complex to hold my interest by making the decision to create one vehicle capable of being three different ones, to add some more complexity the same vehicle must be capable of adding any of the options in the rulebook, which means the following: -

Swappable heavy flamer / heavy bolter
Enclosed Crew Compartment (The Armageddon pattern gives me that innately, however I wanted to be able to field my Steel Legion in other conflicts without enclosed cabins too)
Pintle mounted storm bolter / heavy stubber
Hunter Killer Missile
Dozer blade
Extra Armour
Camo netting

Now as any of these might or might not be taken, it was important to be able to add or remove them as required. Lets take a look at possible solutions: -

Swappable heavy flamer / heavy bolter - simple enough, swappable with magnets.
Enclosed Crew Compartment - I had purchased the vanaheim pattern gun shield as the alternate to the armageddon, but I had a flash of inspiration more about this later on
Pintle mounted storm bolter / heavy stubber - simple enough, swappable with magnets, might need to create my own pintle mount and cast it.
Hunter Killer Missile - simple enough, swappable with magnets.
Dozer blade - not looked around the net for this one, but I am assuming someone else must have magnetised one of these somewhere!
Extra Armour - Going to simulate this with track guards I think, held on with magnets again.
Camo netting - not done this before, but sounds interesting and I had seen some things about it in one of the Osprey Panzer modelling series, so some research here
Basilisk gun / Medusa gun / Griffon mortar - Use heavy magnets to be able to add or remove the gun into the gun mount, need to buy them, want 3mm diameter, with 4mm depth, giving a support weight of about 0.4kg, more than sufficient for the task (the deeper the magnet, the stronger normally).

In addition, I wanted the back door to be able to be open or closable, Crewmen to be attachable or removable, and working lights (ok I am just kidding about this one, but wouldn't it be cool!)

So first up, I needed to fix the terrible warping of the resin in the crew compartment, I borrowed Mrs Argos hair dryer and with some careful application of heat, reset the warped panels on all the items I had, some took a couple of times as I tested fit and adjusted, but in the end all was straight and the way it should be. While testing for fit, I carefully removed the Resin feeds, filed the surfaces flat, and looked for faults. The glaring problem I soon found was the corner positions of the cabin had not cast properly and big bubbles underneath the armour plate existed, visible as A & B in the next picture: -










It is however noticeable that the warping has been fixed in the main, I will just have to fill the cavities with greenstuff / greystuff. Next up is a picture of the cabin while being test fitted, during this stage I make sure the components fit well together and think about how I will join them, do they need pinning for instance, where to glue for the best hold, etc. During this stage and while thinking about the model generally I started looking how I was going to swap between the Armageddon Pattern and the Vanaheim pattern. I came to the conclusion with some careful cutting work the top of the Armageddon pattern could be made to look like the Vanaheim pattern, and as I was growing attracted to the cool flooring and walls in the Armageddon pattern, I resolved to get another crew compartment top and cut it back to look like the vanaheim pattern. This would allow me to keep the cool back door, lower compartment with photo-etched floor, and gun fittings for all three variants (I would later live to regret this descision somewhat as it made things much more interesting). Here is the cabin during the dry fit stage: -










To make my plan work I would have to be able to swap the top of the cabin with the open top cut back version, so some solution of connectivity was necessary, the answer obviously was magnetism. I have been a bit favourite of magnets for some time, they enable me to be flexible when making models, and if done right are not noticeable. So I started to think about the locations for magnets and the size of magnets I could use there, I wanted something that would hold the top on reasonably well, but could be removed to swap the gun or change to the vanaheim pattern easily. Here are the locations I decided on marked on the next picture: -










Positions A & B show the larger 1.6mm magnets in use, these give about 0.12kg of pull each and are placed to pull the top part onto the bottom part for a snug fit, Magnets C & D are smaller 1mm magnets and pull the sides of the cabin in to create a tighter fit also, they have a pull of about 0.08kg each. All together they let me hold pick up the cabin by the top and the bottom doesn't separate. With the magnets working I started to think about the way to cut the upper cabin to create the effect of the vanaheim pattern. Here is a mock up of the effect I am looking for done in photoshop.










All was going well, when trouble struck and the door hinges, which were poorly cast, broke off. So building new door hinges will be added to the list above, here is a picture showing the damage: -










Well its 2am and my eyes are complaining, so time for bed. More tomorrow as we look at the gun arrangement, and a sinking feeling about it.


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## Winterous

Nice work man.
Forge world phales often, you think they'd use a better material for casting.


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## Brother Argos

This morning I got started early, first on my list after test fitting the crew compartment components was to assemble them and test fit the entire comparment into the framework of the Basilisk vehicle body.
The following two images show this being done: -



















I had to trim the "guide rails" on the inside of the Basilisk body to get the fit I wanted, but in the end it was a nice tight fit. Once I was happy with the fit I moved on to dealing with the bubble holes shown in the last post I got one done, and am waiting for it to dry completely before doing the other. I suspect I will need to do it in two stages to get the nice sharp edges that armour needs to look right, with some filing inbetween. Here is a picture showing the first stage of the bubble repair work: -










One of the reasons I am going to the trouble of making my own version of the Vanaheim pattern shield using the Armageddon pattern components is the wonderfully detailed interior, once I had assembled it and had a good look, I realised how cool looking it really was and knew at that point I wanted to have it for the inside permanently. Here is a picture showing the interior, with the photo-etched flooring and the shells underneath that: -










The two reinforced plates half way along the flooring are where the support posts for the gun go, smaller than the normal Basilisk support posts and as I was to discover to my cost a tighter fit by about 1.5mm. My plan with these would be to reinforce them into the floor panels with 1mm wire and glue them with superglue. I wanted a good fit because they would have two 3mm magnets with a pull strength of approximately 0.4kg each to support whichever gun/mortar was fitted.

Taking a break for lunch now, will show the posts in position and discuss the issues with the gun/mortar after the break


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## Brother Argos

Ok, first off the second bubbled area on the crew compartment has been filled (stage 1), and the final hard edge been added to the previously shown bubble, in a few hours they will be set and I can file the hard edge to finish it and add a hard edge to the second area. Here is a picture to show the work done on both bubbled areas, the one on your left is at the hard edge stage, while the other is setting and still soft edged, hopefully this is visible in the picture:- 










Putting this to one side to set, I looked next at the flooring, I really like the photo-etch and the rounds below it, however the middle had a tendency to sag as it was unsupported, to counteract this problem I added some supports in positions along the middle which should be impossible to see on the final model. Along the center I used brass 1mm rod cut to the right height, and at the end I used Resin sprue. In this picture you can see the lovely detail in the lower ammo bay under the floor and the supports used: -










After this was done I moved onto a test fit for the posts and the guns, I have the old style Griffon Mortar in metal from long ago, however it looks minuscule next to the Basilisk and Medusa, so I spent some time researching in the Imperial Armour volumes from Forgeworld and found that the Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar was basically the Griffon Mortar mounted on a carriage. Five Minutes later I had bid on and won a Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar on ebay, it was unmade and was £2 cheaper than Forgeworld, and would be quicker than the delay waiting for Forgeworld (sometimes two weeks or more). Moving on I then tried the gun posts in position, here is a picture showing them.










First up was the medusa gun, it was a perfect fit when in place, and with the compartment on it had full movement, so far so good 










Next up was the Earthshaker cannon from the Basilisk, and suddenly things were going wrong, first up the gun was too wide for the posts by about 1.5mm, so after some careful filing and using the micrometer to check accuracy I reduced the width of the Earthshaker by 1.5mm and tried the fit again, it worked: -










Next came the compartment test fit with the earthshaker, and suddenly I realised the plastic Basilisk gun was not going to work, I hopped over to the Forgeworld site to check the cannon used in their Armageddon Pattern basilisk and to my horror saw it was a custom version made to just fit. Damn ... I was faced with two options, one cut down the existing plastic basilisk and modify it in a similar way to the one on the forgeworld site, or spend another £50 and buy the forgeworld one and a whole new cockpit. Not a good choice really, one involved a time delay and added more work to the project, the other cost a significant amount of money.










Mrs Argos often thinks I choose the path of most resistance in some way to prove myself, I was starting to wonder if she was right.

So what do you think I chose to do next ?


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## Brother Argos

Here is a clue: -










Sadly next time I have some time to model I will be addressing the following problem: -










I haven't been tidying up after myself, and now my workspace has dissappeared, so I will be tidying up next time, so I have a clean working area to begin painting!


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## Winterous

Aaw, but the thing on top of the Earthshaker looks so cool D:
Oh well, I'm sure you'll come up with something else, even if it's just rounding off and filling the holes.


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## Azwraith

definatly went with the right idea... i mean you could go and buy the forgeworld cannon... but hey you like things to be a challenge.. and at the end of the day its your own customs built barrel


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## dirty-dog-

what exactly was wrong with it in the first place?

i reackon that it looked pretty cool, and nothing too noticable.


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## Winterous

dirty-dog- said:


> what exactly was wrong with it in the first place?
> 
> i reackon that it looked pretty cool, and nothing too noticable.


Couldn't move up far enough to be indirect looking.


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## Brother Argos

As misfortune would have it, I am at home today with my daughter Amelia who has flu like symptoms. She has been sleeping on and off all day today and as such I have had the occasional chance to tidy my desk.










On the upside my Forgeworld order was delivered today, with my Mars Alpha pattern Leman russ: -










with Vanquisher, Battle Cannon & Demolisher Ryza pattern turrets: -










Death Korps Leman Russ filters & Trench Runners: -










and the Hydra flak turret: -










As you can see the Hydra has some big warping issues, but I have my trusty Hairdryer now!!

I have done some preliminary work on the Earthshaker cannon, rather than spend another £50 with forgeworld, I expect some pictures later on tonight.


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## dirty-dog-

warping is an understatement.

but i cant wait to see how this does turn out, and the basilisk looked pretty awsome how it was, but im sure you can make it look better.

and there is alot of forge world goodies in this army....


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## dlakertor

Those models looks great. Your greenstuff on the cloaks look very smooth and the tanks look very world war 2 like. :clapping: great work, keep it up.
And hope your daughter gets better.


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## Brother Argos

Well after some fiddly detail work I have almost finished the changes to the Earthshaker Cannon

Recoil compensators have been added above and below the gun barrel: -










Numerous small twiddly details have been added to either side: -










Many bolts were added to raise the level of detail to match that of the Forgeworld castings: -










To help with the Rivet / hex nut work I used a Greif rivet maker, a fascinating tool which acts as a mould, you heat a section of sprue using a lighter and then plunge it while still warm into the mould of choice, using a sharp scalpel the rivets are then cut off the sprue and glued onto the item. In the following picture you can see the moulds and in the background the initial stages of the Earthshaker Cannon.










Next is a view from the rear shows the inside of the Earthshaker Cannon, it has the first stage of filling with Grey Stuff, and a central barrel. The next stage of the grey stuff will create a smooth flat surface flush with the end of the barrel. This should enable me to have the rear hatch of the gun open or closed (therefore I will be hinging it and adding a magnet too)










Finally there will be a small brass eagle added to the forward blank white plate, when they arrive (hopefully wednesday) this should finish it off.


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## Kitsunex

ok i gotta ask, where did you get those nut and rivet making tools? i gotta get a set now.


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## Winterous

Nice work on the cannon, I was expecting you to just round it off, but you kicked it in the nuts as well!

And I don't think that Hydra turret just warped.
I think it traveled through the warp, the guns are now TENTACLES!


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## Brother Argos

I got mine about 10 years ago at a small model shop in New York, however a few online can be found at: -

http://www.spruebrothers.com/Nexternal/miscelleneous-cat-186.htm


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## Brother Argos

I am working down on the south coast of England today in Angmering, at one of my smallest clients, lovely people, always very welcoming. Hopefully when I get home tonight I will be able to get some more done on the Medusa/Basilisk/Griffon, I am currently awaiting the special magnets I ordered for the project and the delivery of the krieg heavy mortar (griffon mortar on a chassis) from Ebay.

Currently I have three streams of activity: -

1. Sculpting more arms / legs etc.
2. Test paint scheme on cadians / test steel legion model.
3. Working on the Medusa/Basilisk/Griffon mortar.

I am going to try and balance them a bit better and rotate them to make sure they all advance equally. For some reason I am nervous about painting the test models, I worry that I won't do justice to the hard work so far, I should just get on with it really.


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## Brother Argos

Spent some time this evening playing with paint formulae ... still not happy, however here are a couple of pictures showing current progress. The bottom coat is all that's been completed, everything else is at various stages of completion.



















I tried two or three different schemes but nothing works the way I want it to.

Generally an unhappy evening, and I am even considering an alternate colour scheme.


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## inqusitor_me

man that is a good scheam.

Mabe its becouse the modle is not fully painted is the reson you may not like it.


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## dirty-dog-

i reckon before you give the scheme up you should complete one model to show ya what it will turn out like


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## Brother Argos

Ok, well the answer appears to be don't judge your own work in the middle of the night when your very tired and you haven't finished it. The black undercoat on the the other items was getting annoying and clashing with the coat too much for me. In addition I think one more shade in each direction (lighter & darker) will help too.

This morning while getting my daughters ready for school I grabbed 2 minutes and painted the boots in scorched brown, and very roughly shaded one of them. Its a long way from complete by the change from the unrelenting black to something more sympathetic with the coat helped a lot.










Anyway time to leave for work, today I am in South London, Balham to be exact at my own office for once. Hopefully a more relaxed day, although I already have two reports to write for clients.

Looking forward to getting home tonight and adding some more colours!


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## Azwraith

looks aweseome cant wait to see a finished painted dude
speaking of which im just off home now from work.. so time to finny my bits chaplain... found a skull head from a khorne berzerker that will suit just fine  and a halberd from a old mordheim kit that i might use


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## Brother Argos

Well coming into work was definitely the right idea, knowing I was here today I had directed some recent purchases to arrive here and they were sitting on my desk waiting for me 

First off, the Forgeworld Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar I had purchased off of ebay, delivered quickly (so positive feedback for him) and in much better condition than the FW delivery I had!

Please forgive the quality of the pictures, from my iPhone instead of my tripod mounted Casio P505.










I plan to use the mortar section itself with some adjustment to the fixings in the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon I am building, according to the Imperial Armour books, the Krieg Heavy Mortar is actually just a Griffon Mortar in a wheeled carriage, so is an appropriate model for the task, however being fussy, I checked the images of the Forgeworld Griffon Mortar and it is indeed the same weapon.

As if to complement its arrival, the lovely people at http://www.e-magnetsuk.com delivered my order of magnets I require for the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon.










I got four sizes of magnets for my project: -

1. 1mm Dia x 1mm deep : Perfect for small discrete fixings, like stopping doors opening etc. 0.1kg pull
2. 2mm Dia x 1mm deep : Good for larger doors and items, including wrists etc with replaceable weapons. 0.12kg pull
3. 3mm Dia x 2mm deep : There larger magnets work well for things like sponsons or other heavy potentially removable items. 0.4kg pull
4. 3mm Dia x 4mm deep : Now this is the odd magnet for me, I have never bought one before, but as with most magnets its increased depth makes it much stronger. The aim is to use them in the gun mount on the basilisk, the mount has a depth of 8mm, which is plenty enough to hold them securely. Each one of these magnets has a 1kg pull, so a pair on either side of the gun should give substantial hold, and still enable me to switch out the gun when I want. If they are two strong, the 3mm x 2mm are the fallback plan!

With the arrival of these items, I merely need to "reproduce" the basilisk gun I modified and I will have all the items for assembly, but I promised myself I would finish the test painting on the Legionnaire first!

There is the possible arrival of another parcel from Forgeworld, containing my small brass etch eagles, if it turned up it would of course be a sign that the Emperor wants me to work on the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon


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## dirty-dog-

That morter pic is about the same quality that the one i own is. kinda makes me feel a bit feeling the poorness lol specialy with all the FW stuff, ive always wanted to get something from forge world but never had enough money for it, or when i had the money i didnt have quite enough for what i wanted, or there just wasnt anything that appealed to me enough.

deffinitly keeping up with this project though. its the best i have seen so far, so keep up the excellent work.


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## Brother Argos

One the subject of BasiMeduGrifs (trademark of Argos Industries), I checked the size of the Griffon Mortar and its 2mm thinner than the Basilisk/Medusa gun size at the mount point. I will therefore be adding a couple of mm using plasticard so it can sit in the same gunmount.

Being stuck at work is making me nervous about the magnet solution, I want to try them and make sure everything is going to work the way I envisioned. The 3mm x 4mm deep hole will need to be drilled into the mount .. and then the magnet with superglue slid in and left very slightly proud of the surface. The same will need to be done for the Gun itself, once complete I have to hope the two gun mounts will hold the various weapons and keep them straight. The combined pull of the magnets is 2kg, sufficient to support the weight, and given the alignment of the magnets will slide into and out of place.

Here is an image showing the proposed location of the magnets: -










(image copyright tulkasulmar @ Bootcamp, used without permission)

Given the lack of pull "along" the length of the magnet and the fact it should all slide "across" the magnet and into place. Combined with the depth (4mm) embedded into the mount, I am hoping the magnets will remain in place and not pull out. 

Lets hope it all hangs together!

@ Dirty-Dog- : There is nothing wrong with not having money to spend on overly priced ridiculous toys. Having got to triple your age, I can assure you that later on more money is available and if your wife is generous you can buy them


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## Winterous

Keep going man, keep going...
:ireful2: YOU WANT A BREAK? I'LL BREAK YOUR ARM! GET BACK IN THE FIGHT MAGGOT!


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## Brother Argos

Oh excellent news from Mrs Argos, the (almost) final part of my Forgeworld order is sitting at home!!

This should be the Exterminator & Annihilator Leman Russ Turrets, A Manticore on a gun platform (swappable with the Hydra), my Brass etched aquila, and finally a Death Korps of Krieg Mole Launcher team (always loved that).

Definitely looking forward to getting home now


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## Brother Argos

Here are the pictures of the Forgeworld that was waiting for me at home tonight 

First off the Exterminator & Annihilator Leman Russ Turrets: -









Next is the Manticore and the gun platform, the Manticore and Hydra turrets are interchangable letting me get double duty from them 

















Finally the Mole Launcher (I want to have at least one team of them for my Steel Legion), and the Brass etch Eagles.









I am going to test the magnets tonight for the BasiMeduGrif, to make sure that theory will work. Followed by a little more painting


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## Brother Argos

Tonight the air was filled with magnetism!

Gentlemen I present to you the fully magnetised BasiMeduGrif ... oh and a Heavy Mortar on a carriage.

First up ... The guns and mortars themselves: -










Please note the 3mm magnets on the side of each weapon, ready to slide into place!

Here are the guns in situ ... first the Griffon Mortar & Heavy Mortar on Carriage: -




























Secondly the Medusa: -



















Continued in the next post ... the Basilisk!


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## Brother Argos

And now the Basilisk: -



















As you can see all the guns have been magnetised as have the gun mounts in the Compartment and the Gun Carriage.

I finished the Eagle and bolts on the Earthshaker cannon, and spent some time building up the body of the Griffon Mortar to fit the gun posts.

All the magnets are tightly fitting and glued with superglue, so far no glue failures, but its still early days.

It was a good night, with very pleasing results however as its 1:15am and I am travelling up country to Milton Keynes tomorrow I am going to get to bed now!


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## Azwraith

ahh my favourite thread to read first thing in the morning

everything is looking great!


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## dirty-dog-

i would agree with azwraith on this one, but insted its before i go to sleep, cause it takes away those nightmares and put goot dreams about forgeworld goodies.

thank god for who came up with forgeworld, and for those so darn talented model sculpters.


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## Brother Argos

Sorry, going to go off topic here for a moment as its been a good day for me 

If you own Dawn of War II .. and have the 1.3.1 patch you will be able to see the following 










Its right at the end of the credits, however it wasn't there when the game was released.

Some time age Dominic Chan (Mad Scuzzy), noticed a significant similarity between the buttons on the Army Painter in Dawn of War II, and our own Space Marine painter.

Here is a copy of their button, and our artwork.










It looked quite suspiciously like out Marine Painter image had been used to generate the buttons in DoW II, and we had not been credited or mentioned.

Well after a few months of emails and discussion THQ/Relic did the right thing and admitted they had used the images, although it had been a mistake 

They apologised, added our name to the Credits (see above) and a bag of goodies is in the post 

Nice to see the everyone get the credit they deserve!

Ok sorry for that, just was really happy ... back to the steel legion!


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## Winterous

That's awesome^27~!

*edit*
Where do you find the space marine painter?


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## Brother Argos

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/smp.php


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## Brother Argos

Last night was a quiet night for me, however I did some work on the last piece for a unified Artillery approach.

With the magnets in place and a common system for attaching the guns, the remaining piece to work on was the Earthshaker gun platform: -










This uses the plastic part from the Basilisk, which I modified last night to handle the gun posts from the BasiMeduGrif, this will allow me to use the Earthshaker gun platform for my Basilisk barrel or Medusa barrel. The modification puts the gun mounts into the exact same height and position as the plastic ones were, adds detail above and beyond the plastic one and allows me to use magnets.










There is a section of "filling" that needs to be done, and detail like nuts and bolts etc. need to be added but that won't take long.

With this complete I will have the ability to swap all the various gun barrels between multiple mobile or static platforms depending on my requirements (Apocalypse or 40k for instance). Obviously the same gun platform can also be used for the Hydra or Manticore systems too, giving me many artillery options as required.


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## Brother Argos

I have a question for you, I am in the process of working out what time I have at the weekend to work on this project. The project currently has three streams of activity: -

1. Sculpting - Arms, Legs, heads, etc.
2. Painting - Working on the paint scheme for test figure.
3. Modelling - Working on Vehicles, currently the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon.

As I have no idea how many people are following this log (if any), I have the following question for those that are: -

*This weekend which should I focus on for the log: -

1. Sculpting
2. Painting
3. Modelling

Please post below (if anyone is reading this) which you think I should focus on!*

It would be really nice to know how many people are interested and what they are interested in


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## MaidenManiac

This is just getting better and better 
Keep up the good work!


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## Winterous

Do sculpting infantry.
We want more infantry!


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## subtlejoe

Infantry, more infantry. I may have to send you a big check in the post to make me an army lol


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## Brother Argos

Ok the results across the various boards this log is syndicated too are the following: -

Painting : 24
Sculpting : 14
Modeling : 12

So the people have spoken and I will be getting my brushes out tonight!


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## Brother Argos

If we are going to discuss painting, I first need to show the equipment that I use for the task: -










I have a number of disposable palettes (actually my daughters clean them for pocket money) and as I am working with the shading for a basecoat I will us have 4-5 colours in the paintwells and occasionally mixes in between them. As the basecoat is Iyanden Darksun, I will be shading it with Snakebite Leather, Bestial Brown and for highlights Bleached Bone, these colours are visible already sitting in the paintwells, they have been watered down to the consistency of milk with a 50:50 mixture of Windsor & Newton Flow Improver and Water. I generally prefer to use multiple translucent layers of paint for shading, on the basis that I can always add another thin layer of paint, but its very hard to remove a thicker obscuring layer.

The paint brushes are a size 0 and size 000 made by Windsor & Newton and are from the Series 7 brush range. There is little to say about these brushes apart from the fact they could quite possibly the best miniature painting brushes in the world. I cannot speak highly enough of them, and can honestly say when I started to use them that my painting skill improved by at least 10-15%. If you don't have them, get them! 

There is a lint free cloth in the picture which I use for removing excess paint from my brushes.

Finally there is a large NY Starbucks mug (a present) which I use for my water, which I try and change frequently.

More details as we look at some images of the test Steel Legion Trooper, please bear in mind that these images are 2-3 times larger than the figure in real life and as such you will see details normally not seen by eyes in real life: -










These first two images show the results of shading the bottom of the coat, and ONLY the coat, nothing else has been done.

I started by applying the very thin coat of Bestial Brown into the recesses around the coat below the belt, around the various items on the belt and in the depths of the folds. I tend to work in small areas of no more than 1cm square, once the paint has has been lightly applied into the correct location, I switch to the other brush which I hold in my mouth and is already wet with water and use this to feather the edge of the paint I just applied and blend it down into the other colour. Feathering involves using the wet brush to spread the still wet just applied paint and thin it out so there is no definable edge. Because of the shadows cast by the arms/gun and belt items, its hard to see, but there is a dark shade around the belt / belt items.

Next moving further down the coat I applied Snakebite leather and feathered it both above to the bestial brown and down towards the basecoat. This creates a subtle shading above the midway line.










Once these two subtle shades are applied, I use a very subtle "filter" of Iyanden Darksun (10:1 water to paint) to shade the Bestial brown & Snakebite Leather and make them more cohesive. A "Filter" is a very watered down paint, which exists to tone the colours underneath it towards the desired colour, often hard to see, but a useful tool none the less.

Next around the lower edge of the coat and on any raised areas (knees, folds, etc) a very thin layer of bleached bone is applied, and feathered as above.

This shading creates a subtle range of "darkened" basecoat, rising to a "lightened" basecoat. It is important at this point to realise we are actually making a decision, with this subtle shading little will be visible at the 2-3ft viewing distance of a wargaming table. Were we to compare it to a "high contrast" paint scheme which will appear just fine at 2-3ft, our figure will appear quite flat. However if viewed closely at less than 1ft or photographed, the shading will be more realistic, and not as "cartoon"-like as the high contrast paint schemes. Basically you cannot have it both ways, and to be honest I don't like high contrast paint schemes, so therefore I go for a more subtle scheme.










Next another "filter" layer or two are added to move the thin bleached bone layers into the same colour range of the basecoat.

Finally thin lines of bleached bone are added to the tips of each raised area to finish off.

Boots next ... although tomorrow I will be a little busy, going swimming followed by a trip to see Angels & Demons


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## Viscount Vash

Roll a D3 for it. Its all good. 

I would say armour, but sculpting limbs is probably the best option long term.


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## Winterous

*facepalm*
You know, one of the problems I have with painting is that they dry out too quickly.
Why the FUCK have I never thought of have a groove to put the paints in?
That would decrease the surface area of the paint, and therefore it'd take longer to dry out.

*faceboard*


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## Kitsunex

i used to have problems with it drying out quickly too, but since i've switched to the wet pallet i haven't had a problem. i used the tutorial i found on these forums. now i can leave paint over night and it doesn't dry out, i've been going through far less paint now.


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## Brother Argos

Not much progress today, however I have got most of the belt items painted, one of the gloves, and the ammo packs on the torso. In addition almost all the other basic block colours are in place.










On a satisfied note, I am pleased with how the Aquila buttons turned out 



















The leather items were Scorched brown basecoat, with Bestial brown & Snakebite leather highlights. The same basic techniques I used yesterday were applied again today, blending / feathering all the various shades.

For the blanket I used Wargames Foundry's Charcoal Black, highlighted with the Charcoal black (light), Wargames Foundry do a set of compatible shades as a pack of three, this one being shading for black. Further lightening of the colour was achieved with Bleached bone mixed with the Charcoal black (light), I used Bleached bone to keep a subtle hint of brown throughout most of the figure, where skull white would have had a harsher, less compatible effect. To tie all the colours together, I used a filter made from the base charcoal black.

The simple metallics on the dagger, were done with Boltgun Metal, Chainmail, and finished off with a badab black wash, to dull some of the shine.

The helmet is a mix of Knarloc green & Chaos black, very dark but hopefully will lighten somewhat later.


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## Kitsunex

That is turning out amazing! i love the detail you got in around the eyes.


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## dirty-dog-

wow this thread has been updated a fair bit since i was last on, 

keep up the awsome work.


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## Brother Argos

Late last night when I should have been modelling I was watching a movie instead "Der Untergang" (released in the UK as "Descent"), very interesting movie, slightly depressing but compelling watching.

Anyway, I only did a small amount of work last night, on the hatches and forward weapons of the medusa: -










Firstly as can be seen on the hatch on your right, I filed down the hatch to a reasonable thickness, which allowed the hinges to engage properly and not look incorrect as the one on the left shows. I then added some handles, to keep the style the same as the hatches supplied with the Medusa. The handles themselves are 1mm thick plasticard, with 0.5mm wire at the joint, quite a quick detail to do, and helps keep styling the same across the model.

After that I started work on the forward weapon, I wished it to be swappable in a similar way to the main weapon, so the first consideration was to create a location to put a magnet in. So first I needed to choose a magnet, the 3mm x 2mm depth, seemed the ideal choice. To support the 2mm depth I needed to add some plasticard to the open panel, I glued three pieces of 1mm plasticard together and let them set solid. After which, I glued the plate to the inside of the Hull, filling the weapon hole. Once this had set I proceeded to drill in successive sizes from 1mm - 2mm - 2.5mm - 3mm in the center (roughly) of the plasticard in the hole. The reasons for multiple drilling was to ease the pressure on the plate, if it had been drilled immediately with a 3mm drill it would have tore from its position due to the torque of the drilling. This way the hole was increase in size gently and stayed glued (less material to remove at each stage). I stopped and checked regularly to ensure the magnet would be about 0.1mm above the surface of the plasticard: -










On a side note both of the small rectangular hatches have been filed down in that picture, and as can be seen they look good with the hinges now.

Once the magnet was in place, I placed a blob of wet paint onto it, and pressed the gun into place. The paint marked on the rear of the gun where the hole for the magnet should be drilled. Using the same procedure as above, I drilled till I had a deeper 3mm hole. Then I put a magnet in place on top of the magnet in the plasticard, Then I applied some super glue to the magnet, and finally push the bolter down on top of it. Leaving it for a couple of minutes and then pulling them apart, I was left with a perfect fit.










Finally I repeated the process I used for the heavy bolter for the flamer, and once finished I cleaned up the magnet in the plasticard as it had dried paint on it.


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## Winterous

Hooray for changeable hull weapons!


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## Brother Argos

The flamer disappoints me though, it looks so old style. I have a plan to change it I think, more tonight if I can find the parts I need!


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## Brother Argos

After spending some time this evening looking at the flamer, I came to the conclusion it definitely needed to be "Updated". The Steel Legions are at least middle tech for a 40k IG army, not as high tech as Elysians mind you, but certainly they exceed the Death Korps, and at least equal the Cadians. This can be seen with their Portable Las Cannons and very cool looking missile launchers (almost more RPG looking).

With that in mind I set about upgrading the plug and play heaver flamer I had made yesterday, the core section of the flamer looked fine, it was just the nozzles that looked so old fashioned. So with a quick snip of the clippers, I removed the nozzles. Now a replacement had sprung to mind earlier, from the Catachan or Cadian command sprue, there is a new Heavy Flamer, so after couple of minutes rummaging, I managed to find one and started cutting carefully through the three feed pipes. Once I had finished I needed to find a way to join the old Heavy flamer body with the new Heavy Flamer Nozzle.

Obviously pinning would be important to keep everything straight, and given the dimensions involved I went for 0.5mm wire and drill, after some careful drilling we ended up here: -










If you look carefully in the picture above, you can see the thin wire extending from both sections, ready to be superglued. Here is the result after gluing: -










Something wasn't quite right, I could not put my finger on it at first, so I compared the old and new Flamers: -










Then I realised, in real life and 40k there is almost always a joining collar of some sort when a pipe joins onto something. Well some 0.25mm thick x 0.5mm wide plasticard strip soon gave me the collars I neeeded. One word of caution, pre curl the plasticard first with your fingernail to make the job easier, and be prepared to do the middle one last, with only partial strips of plasticard as there is not enough room to go all round the middle pipe once the other two are done.










It seemed to add that final part and "finish" it for me, although I must say this is one of those times where using green stuff instead of plasticard would most probably have been faster.

For me the final result was much closer to what I wanted for my Steel Legion, although I realised that I would need to reproduce the result many times when doing my Chimera and other vehicles.


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## dirty-dog-

Heavy flamer turned out nice, better than the old fashioned one, infact, its kinda a bummer that i didnt think of this when i put together my orky chimera.

i might do this with the second one that i get.


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## Brother Argos

I have contacted Greif about obtaining the Rivet Maker and some of their wonderful lenses, I will be placing an order for myself, but I wondered if anyone else would be interested in getting a rivet maker: -










Here is an example from the Forgeworld website of the lenses, a wonderful piece of modelling - http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Deathwingprometheus.htm










*If your interested in either of these products, send me a PM to discuss joint ordering*

Getting back on track, I will be working this evening on a removable stubber/stormbolter mount for the Medusa hatch.


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## humakt

Your attention to detail is phenominal.


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## Brother Argos

While considering tonight's assignment to do the removable stubber / stormbolter I realised that actually it encompasses a far bigger scenario. Realistically some better system for the hatch was called for, I had already decided that the forgeworld hatch was by far the better hatch for my work, instead of the chunky GW one. The forgeworld hatch however had some downsides, firstly no means to open and close hatch (no hinge mechanism), the hatch itself was very thing therefore hard to magnetise, and there was no fitting on the hatch to work with the weapons.

So what I needed to do was to have a hatch that fit the following criteria: -

1. Removable from the tank itself, this would enable the fitting of a command figure or gunner.
2. A weapon mount built onto the hatch which could take the desired weapons.
3. Open-able hatch so that a command figure could be fitted, which meant some means of hinging.
4. A means of attaching a searchlight although something with its own mount nearby to the hatch would work also.
5. A means of attaching a figure onto the hatch through the open hinged hatch.

There are also some ugly questions raised when one takes into account the built in hatches on the Ryza pattern turrets I have already purchased for my Leman Russes, not to mention the hull of the Medusa: -



















This either meant grinding off the previous hatch on each Leman Russ, and any other vehicle and adding my own hatch with modifications, OR some form of compromise. As I am sure you can guess by now I am a little bit of a perfectionist, so neither possibility was attractive to me.

Looking at the sprue for the Leman Russ, one can see the crew actually fit tightly into the underneath of the Plastic GW hatch, and with some small amount of cutting they do so under the Resin FW hatch also. This is primarily the reason we seek to remove the hatch to fit the figure from underneath. Perhaps if we trimmed the figures instead (remove the hatchlike bit from them) we could place them from the top instead, but then we have to make some form of attachment system for them.

Hmmm more when I get some thinking time at home tonight.


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## Brother Argos

Having considered the issues in my last post, I decided to start with the weapon attachment to the turret. I quite like the Gun mount, a small piece of plastic with the circular indents supplied by GW, however in my minds eye those indents are always holes leading all the way through. So that was my first job with a 1.5mm drill, it is lucky I often check how things are going when I am drilling in plastic, because I realised of all things the indented holes on each side don't actually line up. To get around the problem I only drilled to midway with each hole, luckily the holes are only slightly off so one can still see through the holes and not notice the mis-alignment.

Once the gun mount was complete, I also cut the storm bolter off the sprue, and check all the pieces for fit. Everything lined up ok, and the small pegs on the gun mount held the stormbolter attached. Now as I wanted to make weapon interchangable, I would have to replace the small pegs on the gun mount with magnets, and fill the holes in the stormbolter with magnets also. A bit of measuring took place, and I worked out that 2mm magnets could be put into either part of the storm bolter, and two 1mm magnets back to back could be placed into the gun mount where the pegs had been.

Here are a couple of pictures showing the stormbolter and gun mount when complete: -










and after gluing the stormbolter halves together: -










In case you are worried about mould lines etc, they would be removed when I had completed all the testing for the weapons/ gun mount.

The first weapon had gone so simply, I just knew this one had to be harder, and it was a lot harder. Firstly the joint into which the gun mount sits, was actually father apart than the Storm bolter, and in addition there was only a partial hole in the ammo container, this would make it hard to fit and glue a magnet. The magnet in the gun side went easily enough, once again another 2mm magnet sufficed, however with the ammo container I had to extend the container to get a closer fit to the magnet. Plasticard once again to the rescue, and with some slight adjustment I had created a steady place that could take a 1mm magnet. Unfortunately the added thickness of plasticard pushed the socket where the ammo container rested and the ammo container itself apart, another thin piece of plasticard between them and we everthing was working again.

Here are the pictures of the finished Heavy Stubber and gun mount, note the white plasticard work to make it all fit properly and hold the second magnet: -










and after gluing: -










Finally here are a couple of shots showing the gun mount in-situ on the hatch, I need to make a secure mechanism for that next ... a modellers work is never done!



















Tomorrow I think I will get some more sculpting done, as a break from magnets and tanks ... it is a different pace, much slower, and in some ways more rewarding.


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## NurglingStomper

It's always good to know that after a crappy day I can always check your thread out. It brings such a smile to my face. Keep up the good work!


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## Brother Argos

Last night I forgot the post the final photo for the above post showing the hatch gun mount in place without the weapons: -










Obviously it was a bit late last night


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## Brother Argos

I am considering my next Forgeworld purchase, this might well be the last for a while. I want to get a superheavy tank for my Steel Legion and preferred the new Shadowsword / Stormlord over the Baneblade.

Looking at the available options on the Forgeworld website I came to the following conclusions: -

1. I did now want an all resin vehicle, which narrowed the options considerably. Resin is harder to convert than plastic on many levels.
2. Of the remaining choices there were two variants, the ARKURION PATTERN, and the Death Korps ARKURION PATTERN.
3. Given these two similar choices I had to make decisions based upon the differences and which were closer to the "Steel Legions". First off the Death Korps had air filtration systems which worked well with the steel legion (gas masks all the time), and finally the gun housing on the Death Korps Arkurion Pattern looked "better" to me than the simple plate on the normal one. So Death Korps variant was the one.
4. At this stage the decision became between different variants of the vehicle, ShadowSword, StormSword or StormBlade. I was troubled by the fact that the first two were supplied as basic plastic kits from GW themselves,although I prefered the Death Korps styling. If I was to look at making an tank with interchangable weapons, the best choice would be to get the Stormblade, as it was the one which Games Workshop did NOT make, and then at a later stage I could make or buy the weapons and make a swappable version which game me all the vehicle options including the Stormblade.

Ok, so Death Korps of Krieg Stormblade Arkurion Pattern was the one I wanted, it would give me all the variable options I prefer for a vehicle and at the same time had the cool Death Korps look with the air / engine filtration systems. <click> purchased!










Image copyright Forgeworld

At the same time I got some Medsua shells, Chimera armoured skirts and a Death Korps Thudd gun (to complete my artillery collection).

That should wrap up all my Steel Legion purchases for a while!


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## Winterous

Wait...
Isn't that the same hull as the new stormsword kit from GW?

If so, couldn't you just buy the plasma blastgun and convert it?


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## Brother Argos

Look closely and it is a variant hull ... however the cost for the item is £93, the cost of the GW shadowsword is around £60 and the plasma blastgun is about 30 or so, and this way I get the complete model with variant hull , with plasma gun and air filters for £3 more.


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## Brother Argos

The final part of my Leman Russ turret order arrived after a month's wait, this should give me ability to change between any of the available leman russ weapons, and I will be making the Punisher and Eradicator weapons systems myself: -










More on the Leman Russ multi-weapon as the project progresses.

In addition I received some ultra fine photo-etch 1mm high numbers & letters, there have a number of uses for vehicles and general modelling: -










The more I use photo-etch on models, the more I consider trying to make some of my own specifically for this project, and possibly for other space marine projects.

Last night went well, I have some pictures I need to prepare and upload showing the sculpting progress from last night. They should be up shortly.


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## Brother Argos

Last night I returned to sculpting and figure work after a break where I had been working on my Medusa model and painting. I like sculpting, however of all the things I work on it is the thing I find hardest to do. It is this that means I tend to sculpt when I feel in the mood, rather than often and frequently.

Two new items were started last night, the first is the simplest and will require little sculpting, but the item needed preparation, so the cadian shoulder pad was cut away, and the area filed down to a reasonable shape and size for a shoulder. In addition the wrist was cut down also and smoothed off, in preparation for the glove: -










Next up, I started work on the long coat legs from the Cadian command box. This will be a relatively simple piece of work, the coat needs adjusting so that it doesnt go across to the right side of the figure and instead closes in the middle, to match the steel legion standard. In addition, the boots need to be changed to the SL style, and fancy buttons and fixings need to be added to make it office worthy. I adjusted the coat last night: -










Moving on, I needed to make some changes to a previous sculpting project, the pointing arm, specifically the glove. It resembled a rubber glove instead of a leather gauntlet, due to the smooth nature of the wrist, it needed some folds and weight added to it, I was happier with the final result: -










After that fix, I next did some work on an existing project and started work on the final stage of the running/jogging legs. Starting at the back of the figure, I added the hard edge to the bottom of the coat, and built up the corner points, before extending it around the coat, I got about 25% done, and will be doing the remainder tonight: -










The edging process is usually slow going as one has to blend the added material into the existing sculpt so that there are no visible joins. I use a Wax Carver #5 ( I must remember to supply a picture of it tonight), which has a nice end for burnishing, which is the name of smoothing action one uses. The boots on these legs also need to moved to the SL standard.

Last figure work for the night was further progress on the bare head with gas mask, I extended the gas mask strap over the head to join the back, I need to add a buckle at the join point still. There are still two more straps to do, and to rebuild the ears, once done this will give a nice alternative head, and will match the finished helmet I already have (which can be slung from a belt): -










There was also another sculpting project started last night, which will be shown in the next post, with an explanation.


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## Brother Argos

With the arrival of the new Command boxes for Imperial Guard, we received a number of flags, some like the cadian flag are customised to those regiments, others like the sunburst with the skull inside it are more generic. I had planned to do some regimental/platoon flags for my steel legion especially after the description of the Steel Legion in the new IG codex cites Commisar Yarrick saying "So raise high the black banners of vengance - now is our time". With words like those one has to respond and get the Black banners flying!!

Obviously I haven't numbered my regiment, as I need to peruse the various sources of decals (Death Korps from FW, Imperial Guard from FW, Imperial Guard from GW) to decide which would be the best number to use (most occurring or easy to generate number). So I will have to leave a space for the number, and instead concentrate on the background and history of the numberless regiment. Here I started to take inspiration from all the sources of information I could find about the steel legions of Armageddon, which are sadly not many. The books in question are Codex Armageddon, Imperial Guard 4th edition codex, Imperial Guard 5th edition codex and the Black Libraries Battle for Armageddon sourcebook. In addition I have some online sources, including some of the content from the Armageddon website when it was still up.

Taking all these sources into account, the field is wide open for historical regiments. After the second war for Armageddon was over, a number of almost destroyed regiments which had served admirably were put to rest, and their insignia, history and backgrounds were recorded for posterity, this was all under the assumption that the threat to Armageddon was finished fifty years ago. With the renewed threat to Armageddon a lot of these cached regiments were refounded using their previous history to inspire and motivate their new troops. Knowing this I could have some historical background for my regiment, citing specific battles and locations from the second war for Armageddon five decades ago. The historical background of the 2nd war was recorded in some nice detail in the Battle for Armageddon source book and as I flesh out the history that will be my main source of inspiration. As a side bonus, the flora and fauna of Armageddon was documented in the same book, so I will when making bases and a display stand have some unique plants and animals to decorate them with.

In addition knowing I wanted a typical Ash waste (grey and white, with some rotting flesh highlights) I would be placing my force in relatively close proximity to a Hive, so one of the defensive lines most probably. All of this added detail will focus my work on the bases when I begin work on them eventually, and keep a cohesive picture of what's happening to them and where the unit is. This will hopefully keep the final outcome cohesive and add to the overall level of detail for the unit.

Anyway back on track, we were talking about the banners. While perusing the Battle for Armageddon book, there was an emblem used for Armageddon in the book, which was created specifically after the second war to represent the struggle and sacrifice of the people of Armageddon: -










While considering the emblem I came to the conclusion it would perfectly represent the newly presented flag of a second war regiment refounded to fight in the 3rd war. Rapidly putting two and two together I realised the new flag in the Cadian command set with the skull in a sunburst could be altered to fit my needs. By removing the skull and the scrolls I could sculpt the sun rays and towering hive spire onto the flag. One thing held me back though, the flag had been shot up and had a purity seal attached to it. So first off I needed to remove the purity seal, and begin to rebuild the holes in the flag: -










As you can see I am about 1/3 of the way through the process, and once all the green stuff has set it needs to be sanded with a very fine sander to make sure it is flush with the flag perfectly. Once the flag has been repaired, I will clean off the skull and scrolls and beign work sculpting in the blank spot. In addition I will need to add some scroll work in other places on the flag for the eventually to be chosen regimental number / name / slogan.

As I have always liked the mini drama that the regimental banner of the Vostroyans represents (its very striking), I will eventually make my own!


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## Brother Argos

Well it was a pleasant return home tonight, as in the fastest time I have ever seen Forgeworld delivered my last order all complete. So here are the obligatory pictures of the items delivered and then all the pieces for my army will be in place apart from the sculpted items!

To start with here are the Stormblade pictures: -

First off the main body plate: -









Then the Plasma weapon and engine plate: -









Followed by a couple of pictures of the remaining bits and pieces: -


















In addition the plastic baneblade (not stormsword) sprues were supplied.

Next up was the Thuddgun, the final piece of artillery I was looking for (the colossus can come later). All my initial testing shows it will fit the gun carriage like the heavy mortart, and in addition I could mount it into the body of the Basilisk / Medusa / Griffon Mortar both in open and enclosed mode with perfect fit. So I might well be making my own custom mobile Thudd gun on its own chimera, I wonder what to call it ... obviously some mythological creatures name, but which one ?










Lastly the Chimera extra armour and medusa shells, the extra armour is the final piece of the chimera puzzle for me, now I just need to work out a way of fitting it. The medusa shells are for show and to make custom arms holding the shells.










Tomorrow hopefully I will have some more sculpting to show ... although it is getting late here!


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## Brother Argos

I managed to get some more Sculpting done today, some simple things and working on a couple of the almost finished tasks.

First up, a number of prepared items, with the areas to be worked on stripped down using a scalpel: -










In this case, the shoulder of the powerfist and the wrist of the bolt pistol arm.

I then proceeded to fill in a few more holes on the flag, I tend to use left over mixed green stuff for this rather than throw it away: -










As you can see only a couple more holes to fill in, but they are large, I might cut and fill them in with plasticard to reinforce them before adding green stuff.

Moving along I managed for the first time to finish a glove in one sitting, something I have only managed using pro-create before: -










After that I added the hard edge (stage 3) onto the set of legs I have been working on: -










All that remains now will be the other side which should be doable in one sitting.

Obviously things were going quite well so I decided to work on the bare head with gas mask: -










I have cut a hole into the green stuff on the back of the head to fit a buckle to hold it all together, and add a strap leading to the top of the head.

As a final treat I did some work on the female tank commander torso: -










I added the webbing on her right hand side, and in addition removed the bottom parting of the coat (it was on her right also) and recreated a central parting.

Quite a busy day ... but I have a good green stuff vibe going on!


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## Brother Argos

Well I have missed a day of posting, but the good news is that I sculpted that day, just didn't get time to post. Its a bank holiday weekend in England , so I was out in the garden tidying up the cherry blossom and getting the garden ready for summer, I also cooked my first barbecue of the year in the lovely weather. Just so you know, I will be out visiting various locations around southern England if the weather holds, taking my daughters to see cool stuff like leeds castle! This of course means less sculpting / modelling / painting etc as I will be spending time with my family.

Anyway back to the Steel Legion! The sculpting enthusiasm is still continuing, and a number items have been finished and are now awaiting reproduction. However as usual I will start with the early stage work first. Here are the items that have been whittled down in preparation for green stuff work: -










Of note is the preparation of the officers coat, the boots cut back and the trousers tidied ready for green stuff and the Steel legion boot style. The first arm is the grenade arm, the cadian shoulderpad removed and some extra clothing wrinkles added. Lastly the gun holding hand, which is a lot more work than it looks, the Cadian weapon holding hands start off attached to the gun and not the hand, therefore the gun needs to be cut up and the hand slowly worked at till the gun portion is removed, whereupon it is re-attached to the arm awaiting the Steel Legion glove to be sculpted. Its a fiddly process at best and normally I managed to cut the fingers off of one hand before getting it right.

Next up is the 3rd set of legs I am working on, the static guard pose legs from the Tank sprue, over the past few weeks, any spare green stuff has been smoothed onto this pair of legs to build up the coat ready for the time where detail will be added. Well today as the second set of legs nears completion I decided to start to add detail and put in the overlap at the front of the coat, and cut out the gap at the back: -










Nothing special with this, but it is pleasing to have almost finished the running/jogging legs, which is a segue to a picture of the almost complete second set of legs: -










The hard edge at the bottom of the coat is now complete, with a slight upward flick, this lightens the bottom of the coat somewhat and adds to the feeling of movement. In addition one of the boots has almost been completed. I am looking forward to completing this set of legs as it will add much needed variation to my current small selection of Steel Legion components.

Work continues on the gas masked head with no helmet, a small brass ring was added at the back and the "elastic" parts of the gas mask have been tied back into it, well 2 out of 3 have been so far: -










Once the mid strand of gas mask on the right hand side is done and another ring added at the top, I will have finished the gas mask head and it will be ready for reproduction.

In a sudden rush of understanding, the optimal path for completing the Steel Legion gloves finally clicked. Often when I am working on things I will try and seek the best way to do something, and after a while I find something in my head clicks and I find myself able to do things efficiently and well. Well it finally happened with the Gloves, when I switched from my normal Wax Carver #5 tool, over to a Clay Shaper, the Cup Chisel size 0 - Extra Firm, in case anyone is interested, the shape of the tool lets me smooth and build the glove shape really quickly and let me get three arms finished: -










There is a little tidying to do on them I suspect, but the speed at which they were done was a significant improvement!

Lastly the most pleasing finished item was the female torso. After some research I had started adding the webbing to the torso and wanted it to be in the currect shape given the different anatomy. I am quite pleased now she is finished, with a mix of plasitcard webbing on the back, and green stuff on the front. This torso is now going to be reproduced at this stage, to enable a number of variants to be produced with different amounts of ammo packs in different locations on the webbing, and also the aquila buttons to add the final steel legion feeling!










I think the next post (most probably tomorrow at this rate) will be about the sculpting tools I use on a regular basis, and why / how I use them. Till then I hope you try some sculpting yourself!


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## Winterous

That's some great work man!
With the female torso, am I right in understanding you're going to separate that from the bottom and use it for infantry?


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## shas'o7

Wow!!!

I just read this whole thread tonight and I am in awe of your skills!

+rep


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## Brother Argos

I think it is true to say when one practices something that one usually improves, well with regard to sculpting I find that to apply doubly so. So over the last five weeks since I began this blog and yes that is all it is although it seems longer, I have been doing more sculpting than ever before.

Initially there is the confidence that repeating things brings, with minor variations to add a small problem, the gloves represent this improvement nicely, basically the same shape with a little twist depending on the position of the arm and hand. As a method to improve ones skills I suggest a minor modification to your troops like this, for instance five weeks ago, this took me about an hour to get the glove into the shape I wanted, and often I needed to add a second stage to get the edge correct. Now after eight or nine other gloves made and finding a better tool for the job the time it takes to reproduce the glove has fallen to around 15 - 20 minutes, and hopefully with no added stages.

Moving on to more complex work, I find myself confronted with the problems of folds in cloth, all kinds of issues arise such as where should the be, where do they start and end, and how shallow or deep should they be. This is in addition to the issue of thinking about how the folds will appear when painted. To be honest it is all a bit too complex and often results in choosing the simplest path rather than best one. However with this kind of problem we have the answers in front of us, Games Workshop (and lots of other figure manufacturers) produce hundreds of figures in a variety of poses and clothing styles which give us all the clues we need. In my particular case there are a number of Steel Legion troopers all with the same clothing in a variety of poses, so when I am considering adding some folds to a coat, I look amongst the Steel Legion troops I have and see if there is anything similar to take inspiration from.

Finally however one has to actually create something that one doesn't have an example for which means understanding how cloth and folds work. It is at such times that I turn to an excellent book by Burne Hogarth, which explains how and why folds and wrinkles in cloth come into being. This book is a bit much for someone starting sculpting, however I recommend downloading a copy from Sribd ( Here ). It won't help much to start with, but if you spend time sculpting it will act as a good guide later on. It goes without saying that the further works of Burne Hogarth are helpful also, so if you see them download them also. You might not use them immediately, but later on they give some fascinating insights.

Another important area for people wishing to sculpt is which tool (or tools) should they be using. It is safe to say that it can be summed up simply, whichever tool you are comfortable with and that makes the right impression on the sculpting material of choice is the right tool for you. A slightly glib answer possibly, but at the core of it there is a definite truth that cannot be ignored. Sculpting at its simplest is using your hands or an implement to make a mark upon a surface. Some people do some excellent work using scalpel blades, needles, toothpicks and home made tools. Every single tool on that list is appropriate as long as the sculptor achieved the result they wanted. Basically anything that works for you is the right tool.

Personally I use a small variety of tools that I am comfortable with, I mainly sculpt with green stuff, therefore I tend to keep my tools "wet" at all times, and use saliva to do so (yuck but it works well).

My primary sculpting tool is a Wax Carver #5, initially recommended to my by a sculptor at Games Workshop during a chat, it proved to be hard to find. However it is stocked by Tiranti's in London under the name "Dental Tool SG", now you can see why it took an age to find originally, the only clue was the text on the tool said "Wax Carver #5", and it doesn't even say that any more so new people have NO hope of finding it. This tool is wonderful for a sculptor, here take a look at it close up: -



















One would think the first picture showed the end of choice, but actually its shown in the second picture. The small pointed spatula (for want of a better description) is excellent at smoothing, tidying up edges, pressing things down and burnishing them and all round sculpting. I do 80% of all sculpting with that end of the Wax Carver #5, and the other end lets me do score or cut lines with both the internal and external curved "blade". Beyond those two the thin necks of either end let my roll out and smooth green stuff in preparation for placing it onto the figure also. I tend to use my thumbnail as a pallet to store the Green stuff while I am sculpting (thanks to Mike Anderson at GW for the tip), it reminds me often to use small amounts of Green stuff rather than waste big lumps. I cannot recommend this tool highly enough!

The next tools of choice are Clay Shapers, these tools come in a variety of sizes and hardnesses, I use the smallest and hardest ones, and they are often helpful to get a smooth surface with green stuff. The one big advantage they have is that being made of silicon rubber, the green stuff will not adhere to them, so no need to spit on them all the time! Here you can see the entire range, I recommend getting them once you have become comfortable with the Wax Carver #5.










The next set of tools are quite expensive and rather specialised, but can help you with a number of small fiddly pieces of sculpting. I ordered them (and they are all hand made) some time ago, and they were made and sent to me. They are amazingly tiny as the following pictures show: -










Here is a closeup of the ends with a ruler for scale: -










You do NOT need these tools until you can use the ones above, and they are VERY expensive at $120 a set. However they are made by Perfect Touch at http://www.perfect-touch.com if your interested.

Lastly is a double ended dental pick, which is great for making small holes or occasionally clearing bits of Green stuff out of small holes.










Which you can see with in the picture above with the Wax Carver #5

Hopefully this was an interesting insight into how some of the sculpting with my Steel Legion was and is done.


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## Winterous

Sweet, very informative post!

And I agree with the 'Whatever suits you best' bit.
I really only use three tools for painting.
My GW regular brush, a toothpick, and a toothpick with a smaller carved point.
They do it all great.


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## Azwraith

awesome post dude +rep. i use a hole heap of different wooden tools for animation putty
they are pretty handy.. but i use toothpicks for holes and chainmaila nd the like.


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## fallvictim

This is a very informative post, i only use three tools for sculpting but you have quite an assortment.


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## MaidenManiac

The whole post about sculpting tools is very informative and good!

Have a reward for a good bunch of advicesk:


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## Brother Argos

Well back to work after a few days off with my Family!

To ease me back into the Steel Legion after a quiet time I resumed work on my Artillery project - the Medusa / Basilisk / Griffon / Hippogriff (the chosen name for the Mounted Quad cannon). One of the side developments of this project is the ability to use the same weapons (magnetised) on a gun platform. I have always liked the cruciform shaped gun platform used by forgeworld as it reminds of the gun platform for the 88mm flak 36 as seen here used extensively by the German forces in World War II. The gun platform can mount the Hydra turret and Manticore turret, which obviously when combined with the ability to field the Earthshaker cannon and the Medusa it becomes an attractive option. I had put a little work into the gun platform previously (which uses a basilisk base plate) and last night I continued to work on it. 










To accomodate the more detailed Armageddon pattern gun mounts I had to cut into the base plate and rebuild it using plasticard, once this was done I had to add some detail such as rivets to make feel the changes fit with the rest of the base plate. You will also note the use of "Brass etch" rivets, more on them later!










Here is the base plate with the gun mounts in place and one of the magnetised weapons fitted. If this all works out I will be able to swap weapons between either the Medusa / Basilisk and here.

Obviously the Basilisk base plate comes with a Basilisk Gun shield (the large curved bit at the front), which I must say I dislike as a modeller for a couple of reasons, firstly on the front the winged skull is poorly sculpted, while the rear of the shield has NO detail at all and looks incongruous because of it. On a personal level I also dislike it because in the Armageddon ash waste where my Steel Legion is "based" a high gun shield in a desert-like environment gives away position. Strangely this was also true for the above mentioned German 88mm flak, and they either removed or altered the shield to something lower. So I decided to lower the shield in some way and add more detail. Looking at the forgeworld site I saw the Medusa had a lower shield ( Here ) and looked quite nice, but having bought a bit too much Forgeworld at the moment I decided to make my own instead.

Firstly I cut down the normal shield to the required height which was just enough to cover the gun mount and weapon, and then started adding detail to the front, similar to the above linked Medusa shield.










I used the rivet maker for most of the rivets, especially the large hex ones at the top. The rest was built up from plasticard after I had removed most of the centre section. In keeping with forgeworlds Medusa shield I trimmed the corners of the shield using a modellers small set square to get an accurate 45 degrees. I then switched to the rear to work on the lack of detail and try to bring it to life.










Using some plastic strip I created a reinforcing structure behind the armour plate, and then added a number of small rivets made from Brass etch. The photo is over exposed a little and makes it hard to see the rivets at the bottom of the plastic strip, however trust me they are there.

In addition to make the support frame more realistic I added some hex nuts to the points where the gun shield attaches to the basilisk base as can be seen here: -










and with more detail here: -










I am quite pleased with the final outcome, however after looking at the pictures above, I have decided to add a small brass eagle at the bottom of the front of the gun shield to give it that final touch.


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## Winterous

Great work man, the little rivets are well placed and oriented.
And the details on the shield look good (big bolt is awesome).

But uh, what do you mean by the Hipogriff / Quad Cannon?
Do you have a picture of it?


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## Azwraith

i think he means the name he is given to his vechile is the Hippgoriff? not 100%

the riverts are amazing and the gun mount looks awesome i like how the back end of the barrel looks like a gun from in a bunker or something you should model some troops in that are like holding ammo/shells and such that would be cool.


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## Winterous

I was just wondering what vehicle it is that he named Hippogriff, or if he made up rules for it.


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## Brother Argos

I am using the Forgeworld Quad Cannon from the Death Korps, and mounting it into the Basilisk / Medusa / Griffon chassis.

It was a quiet night last night, only got a couple of things done involving the Earthshaker cannon. I was tidying up the Earthshaker barrel and the breech, it was the second time I had worked on this the first being a rough fill which I had allowed to harden and act as a base for this second layer: -










I am unhappy with the breech mechanism in look / style and have considered creating some form of interrupted screw to make a more realistic breech. I will have to see how time goes as its low down on my priorities and would take a fair amount of effort. More information can be found ( Here ).

Just to clarify, I was using some nicely made Brass etch hex bolt heads on the gunshield, they were from Mig Productions and are very finely detailed, however a little thin in my opinion. for those that thought I had got my own Brass Etch stuff going, I am sad to say I still haven't received my Etching system yet, although I have plenty of things to try out when it does, I will keep you informed!

Here is a picture of the Mig Productions Brass Etch, both round and hex, notably without connectors which is much easier : -










Placing them can be a bother however, I tend to extract one on the tip of my scalpel and place it about 2-3 mm from the place I wish to glue it to. I then dip the tip of a Dental pick shown here (the sharp pointy one): -










Into one of my home made glue trays, I made these years ago, so I could add a droplet of glue into one and keep dipping in and out of it while still active. The left hand "dip" is for superglue, the right hand one for polystyrene cement: -










I then transfer the small droplet of glue to the desired location on the model, and then using my scalpel slide the brass etch nut into it and press down slightly. Finally I use a lint free cloth to quickly dab away any excess superglue.

I am looking forward to the weekend, and hope to get some more painting done (unusual for me).


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## Winterous

Yeah man, doing the 'interrupted screw' would look wicked!
I implore you to try that, even if it's not actually functional (but just comes out like it does now, for ease of display).

And um, how do those brass circles and hexagons stay in the sheet if they aren't attached?


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## dirty-dog-

you have made alot of progress since i was on holiday, and alot of forgeworld purchases aswell.

i definitly cant wait to see the steel legion infantry put into proper production so that you can pump out infantry factory style, 

And on a side note, have you though about making your own tanks? i think you would be great at it, and now that you have models you would most likely make you have the right dimmesions and scale for them aswell.


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## Brother Argos

I spent almost all this weekends hobby time painting as well as being a grumpy old man! When I am being creative (as Mrs Argos calls it), I tend to swing between manic phases and grumpiness and as such I am sure my daughters and wife tend to tiptoe around whilst I am modelling. I think I will need to buy them some presents for putting up with me for the past month or so!

The good news is the painting on the test figure is now complete, however I still have dusting (pigment powders) to do on him. He is therefore at that lovely factory fresh stage at the moment, before he hits the battlefield with a thump.

However before seeing the almost completed figure I am going to go through and pay some attention to basing. To determine which base colouring I am going to use I need to know where my troops are "located", a quick scan of the local terrain gives us four variants as follows: -

1. Ash Wasteland, for some reason orangey-red in colour, the one used for almost all the pictures in codex armageddon. Almost desert like, is doesnt fit into the colour scheme the Steel Legion use for their vehicles at all, and I must admit I don't like it, so this one if not the one for me!
2. Equatorial Jungle, where the remnants of the last Ork invasion are hiding, and being attacked by Armageddon Ork Hunters (the Armageddon version of Catachan Troops). Obviously its a jungle environment and green. Once again not a winner for the Steel Legion.
3. Hive Urban environment inside a hive, possible and attractive at some levels. One to consider!
4. Hive Outfall, the immediate vicinity around a hive, shown in the Codex Armageddon at the bottom of page 20, and also seen in the craters in the picture at the top of page 20.

Well with the last two in mind, I also start thinking about one of my other requirements for my Steel Legion. The need to fit in with my other armies planned and already existing, i.e. my Salamanders and my future concept army, the Adeptus Mechanicus represented by Legio Invigilata and its accompanying Skittari (from Forgeworld Voss nearby to Armageddon). Looking quickly through the exisiting documentation for Armageddon we can see that all three forces were present and mentioned at Hive Helsreach, fighting within and immediately around the hive complex at both the Ironsides Shipyards and on Hel's Highway.

With the terrain to be fought over, and the location known on Armageddon it was a straightforward conclusion to do a mixture of Hive Outfall & Hive Urban bases, this would also tie in nicely with the colour scheme of the Steel Legion vehicles. So shades of grey with the occasional offset colour seem to be in order, with additional small items for flavour.

Moving ahead here are a few images showing the initial four stages of the base: -










A. I used a tube of Polyfilla Extra fine (fine spackle in the States I think) in a tube to add some depth to the base, one of the things people often fail to with basing is adding volume (i.e. depth) to their bases. This simple measure creates minor height variation and allows you to change the stance of each figure slightly.

B. Using some Fine sand and small stones while the Polyfilla is still well I add a fine gritty texture to give the feeling of rubble / ash. This will allow us to use dry brushing techniques to paint the base later.

C. In addtion while the Polyfilla is still damp, I use a pair of legs in the same position as my trooper, to place footprints in the ash. Obviously ash / grit gives way under the pressure of a footfall, therefore the figure needs to have his feet "in" the ash, rather than resting on top of it, for added realism.

D. Finally I use some plasticard to add a pipe, broken and jutting out of the ground, it occupies the central area of the "empty" part of the base to add some detail to it. This should keep the base from the potential monotony of shades of grey.

One quick side note, I use a mixed tub of basing material for most of my bases, with an assortment of different materials from slate, to small stones through to fine sand. I then just push the bits I want on the base while it is in the tub. Here is a shot of my basing tub: -










From here on we need to add some shades of grey and some offset colours, the next picture shows most of these stages, however I must apologise as one of the pictures became corrupt before it was transmitted from my Camera to my Pc and is therefore not available.










A. The first layer of colour is Adeptus Battlegrey from the Foundation paints range, a good wet brush was slopped about without much care at this stage, not too think, but fair coverage. The next picture is missing, so I will have to describe it here, a light drybrushing of Astronomicon grey from the Foundation range was put over the top of the previous coat.

B. I then switched to using Washes, and some Badab black wash was placed randomly around the base to create darker areas. This was then followed up with a mix of Devlan Mud/Gryphone Sepia 50:50 once again randomly applied around the base overlapping in some areas the black wash. The aim of this is to create colour variation and tone, the real world is full of small tones and shades in everything we look at, and to make something feel "right" we need to recreate this by adding small variation on our basing.

C. We got to the final part of the ground painting, this was quite simply using small amounts of Rotting flesh, Bleached bone, and Skull white paints on the very tips of the ash to add highlights. You can quite clearly see where the feet will be going by this stage, and the base has a more realistic feel, apart from the pipe.

D. At this point I realised the pipe had a nice clean edge, which is of course very unlikely. So I took a scalpel to the edge of the pipe to give it a jagged appearance.

The pipe was all that remained to finish the base, and I wanted a rusty feeling to it, so I switched to using Mig Pigments, which are powdered colours to finish the pipe. Here are the powders I used: -










Here are the various stages of the pipe: -










A. I made a mistake and in a very traditional way, I coloured the pipe with Boltgun Metal, a waste of time, I should have done it with Scorched brown.

B. Next I added some of the Old rust pigments and used an white spirit based thinner to dissolve the pigment onto the pipe. This lets the pigments dissolve and flow over the pipe in a natural way.

C. This was repeated with both Standard rust, and Light rust, so that we got some nice rust tones on the pipe. Finally a sprinkling of powder was added on top to give a more realistic finish.

D. A close up showing the "powder" nature of the rust on the pipe, giving it a much more realistic feeling. At this stage a small amount of powder was added under the pipe as rust tends to leech its colour onto the surrounding area.

Lastly I put the legs back on to see how it would look: -










The edge of the base needs to be painted black at this stage, but I am sure you don't require a picture for that.

Later on I will upload and show the finished test figure on the base, but today I am off up to work in London near St. Pauls at one of my Financial clients for the day.


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## Winterous

Looks sweet man, exactly what a rubble-strewn ash waste should look like.
But a lot smaller.


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## Brother Argos

Finally home from work!

Here are the pictures of the test figure, the painting was finished late last night: -










I am pleased in general with the sculpting, conversion, casting and painting of the model, it feels most strange to look at a figure and know it looks nothing like the original cadian frame it is based upon and that I can reproduce that figure as and when I require it.










In this second image it is possible to see the Greif lens used in the barrel of the Las Carbine, giving it that distinctive glow!










From this view I am pleased with the bedding and canteen bottle, although I think I will sculpt my own canteen bottle in the end.










The right arm seems somehow bare, I am thinking of adding a triangular insignia on this arm, which I have seen in a couple of the Steel Legion illustrations. I will wait till I get my Photo-etch kit and see what I can do with that. The other way to tell squads apart might be to paint a colour stripe along the epaulette/shoulderboard, and use that to tell my future squads apart.










I am pleased to see the Las-Carbine barrel looks far more normal here, for some reason the first picture shows it almost gleaming! When in reality it has a number of washes of badab black on it, and looks more normal in this picture.










Lastly the comparison picture, showing the same basic Cadian frame that my Steel Legionnaire is derived from on one side, and on the other side the Steel Legionaire most similar in pose to mine. Looking somehow stunted. Looking at this picture has the biggest effect on me, and showed me clearly how much work I had put into the project so far.

There still remains the "weathering" to be done to the figure, to make it fit with the environment more. Basically some mig pigments worked into the books and lower coat most probably. But apart from that there is little I would change. Some people commented the base was quite plain, however I feel it sets off the figure nicely and I suspect as I sculpt some ash waste detritus in the future, I might go back and a couple of simple items.

Now to make some more ...


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## NurglingStomper

Wow your painting is amazing. I cnanot wait to see this army even a quarter of the way done.


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## inqusitor_me

wow man fully painted it look well like steel legien ok you're task is 9 more like it by next munday lol...jk


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## THAT-FAT-GUY

not that its my business but may i ask how much money has this project cost and how do u afford it what kinda job do u do????????????????????????????????????


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## Winterous

:security:
Heads up, I think this guy is actually stealing these models from GW.
It's that good!


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## Azwraith

more like GW are stealing there new plastic steel legion models from brother argos!

(if they ever have them)


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## Winterous

Azwraith said:


> more like GW are stealing there new plastic steel legion models from brother argos!
> 
> (if they ever have them)


*hopes*
Only way I'd collect IG, if they make a greatcoat-wearing set, with heads and accessories for a variety of IG forces.
Like Death Korps, Valhallans, Steel legion, and maybe even Voystrans.


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## NurglingStomper

Winterous said:


> *hopes*
> Only way I'd collect IG, if they make a greatcoat-wearing set, with heads and accessories for a variety of IG forces.
> Like Death Korps, Valhallans, Steel legion, and maybe even Voystrans.


Amen to that. Hooraayyy for great coats!!


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## Azwraith

my fav IG are Vostoryans so if they make a resin set for them.. im so collecting'em


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## Brother Argos

I am a Computer security consultant, I help companies protect themselves from things like Viruses and hackers.

The project so far has been expensive, but not more than a couple of days worth of my working time.

Thanks for the comments guys, it really helps to get the energy together for the next step


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## Azwraith

Go! Go! Go!

*does the pass on energy dance*

i cant wait to see the next development.. really opens my eyes to what is possible.


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## dirty-dog-

wow, dammm, hurry up and finish the componants to do a squad, then cast em so we can see a painted unit of these guys, i really cant wait to see these guys done and dusted, i mean, how awsome do these look, im sure people will agree to me saying this, cause this is the most brilliant work i have seen in terms of modeling AND painting.

Keep up the astonishing work Brother Argos, Keep it up.


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## Brother Argos

Oooh I got a new Award!!!

However I am sitting here tonight, not really knowing what to go next, I have lots of sculpting and modelling for this project, but feel a little out of it.

I think the only answer will be to push on past the feeling and try and get some stuff done.

Sculpting enough for a few more steel legion parts would be a good start I think. I would like to get that next pair of legs finished.


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## contorter

Your models is just amazing. You sure motivates me to continue on my own projects.  True inspiration


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## Winterous

Grats on the award man, you deserve it.

But yeah, gotta get some variants in.


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## dirty-dog-

definitly gratz on the award, i got one too, but mine was nowhere near as deserevd as your one is.

definitly keep going, your motivating me to sculpt some plague marines out of AoBR ones, so far i have five done and i only start 2 days ago.

P.S,

\/ \/ \/ \/ I agree with below Post \/ \/ \/ \/


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## NurglingStomper

Congrats on the medal there buddy. You def deserve that. But on with the updates!!


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## Brother Argos

Well last night the urge to create returned with vengance, I finally staggered to bed at 3am, which is unusual because normally I only put a couple of hours a night into my work, but I was pleased with the results of my efforts.

While fiddling with the Gun Platform for my Earthshaker I had come to dislike the diamond mesh flooring which can be seen clearly here: -










I had always thought it looked a bit odd, as though it was stuck on afterwards to cover up a plain section, the very way it is raised from the floor level around it seems odd to me.

So I started cutting, which I have to say is a longwinded, difficult and boring job. You cannot relax or slip because you would damaged the part of the model you want to keep, which means you need to focus on quite a mundance activity. However as you can see I cut lots of bits out: -










Which left me with a great big empty space, which I then needed to fill. As I planned to fill the space with my own mesh, I started by adding a support frame, measuring the thickness of the remaining flooring, I found it to be 1.3mm thick, while the photoetch mesh I had was 0.3mm thick. This left a rather convenient 1mm frame to construct to make the floor mesh level. I had lots of 1mm strip which I started cutting and gluing around the edge of the hole as can be seen here: -










The circular sections around the pipe were painful and had to be done a couple of times till I was satisfied with the results. Looking back I did not need to worry as the mesh would cover it and obscure the detail.

Next came another long-winded, but careful activity, cutting back the mesh to fill the frame I had created. I started on the long straight side first to get the a good working edge right, once this was done I worked my way down the sides, snipping small pieces off, piece by piece till the frame lined up with the edge. Finally I then cut across the other remaining side, carefully snipping away till the mesh fit around the circular pipes. Here you can see the finished mesh, its not glued down yet as I plan to make further supporting framework first, but the shape is basically correct: -










I really liked the see-through nature of the mesh, but as mentioned above, realised it needed more supporting framework underneath. But at 3am I decided bed was important as I had to be up at 6am for my daughters and work.

Here is a final shot, with gun mount fitted to get a feel for the work.










During the work I managed to break the surrounding frame in one place which needs filling and smoothing. In addition I knocked two of my brass etch hex nuts off, which need to be re-attached. But I think it was worth it for a nice see through, level floor


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## Winterous

Oh that is just awesome dude.
Love it, but um, how will you get the crew to stay on?
O_.


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## Brother Argos

why would they fall off ?

You can just glue the feet to the brass etch ?


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## TheKingElessar

That's truly excellent work...+rep.


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## subtlejoe

Sir, this work is amazing! you must be some form of wizard  you should try orks, your creative mind would really work wonders..


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## NurglingStomper

Wow this is amazing as always good man. This thread makes me so happy. If I can I will rep you again good sir.


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## Brother Argos

A quiet night last night, sleep was high on the agenda. I had decided after seeing lots of pretty pictures of the newly released hellhound images that the changes to the side plates would be annoying. The reason for the annoyance would be that I would have OLD looking vehicles, even though they were newly made with lots of custom work, basically they would look dated within two months of being made.

So I came to the conclusion I could do something very simple to make sure I was compatible with the future style, here take a look at the new Hellhound side plate: -










Changes to notice are the side plate has been thinned, and recessed detail has been added. Well we might not be able to do the recessed plates, but we cut the our larger side plates down to a similar size and very easily make out vehicles look more modern. One can observe that the plate has been reduced to the same depth as the strange piston like thing on the front edge, therefore giving us something to measure to work out the new depth. Basically after measuring the side plate has had 2.5-2.6mm cut off of it, therefore armed with a scribing tool and a ruler, I marked out a cutting line along the top edge. Then with my Dremel vice holding the side plate securely and the Games Workshop Razor saw in hand I started to cut. 

I must admit at this point a particular weakness of mine, I am terrible at cutting a straight line with a saw, and try to avoid doing so most of the time. However this time I managed by being careful and slow and managed to hold the line! Here you can see the reduced thickness side plate with an old style plate next to it for comparison: -










As you can see any sensible person at this point would be happy, and have basically ensured their vehicles match the new style, but I have a curse, the curse of being a perfectionist. It can occasionally be a benefit, and lead me to learn and expand my abilities as a modeller. It encourages me to purchase any interesting tools I see, even if I cannot use them at the time I buy them, because I might need them later. It makes me have a well stocked plasticard collection, just in case I need a particular shape and size. Sometimes it rewards me with some stunning work, that I look at and think, Wow, did I do that?

However most of the time it drives me to do things I don't really need to do, and wastes my time chasing things I can never achieve. As I am sure you noticed in the picture above, I looked at the newly reduced side plate and thought, "Hmmm, It doesn't match the GW one, I need to keep working on it till it does". What a waste of time, in 2-3 months time GW will release the hellhound pictured above, and I could just reproduce the side plate from that. But the curse kicked in, and I started thinking about how to add the recesses and cut outs shown in the Hellhound picture.

Firstly I needed to cut out the column of three small slots on the right as we look at it. Small slots like this close together are a real pain as the thin remaining pieces between them need to be perfect or the whole thing will look a mess. So I started by grabbing a stencil and a scribing tool, these tools are made by Hasegawa and I purchased them a while back from a hong kong dealer on E-Bay (notice the curse again): -










This tool is useful for scribing shapes into plastic/resin to add surface detail, or to mark out places to cut. I particularly wanted the row of shapes just up and left of the bluetac, as they fit perfectly the size and shape of the cut outs on the hell hound. So I scribed the shapes onto the surface and used them as a guide for cutting out carefully with a scalpel and a drill. Any small slips or mistakes I corrected with procreate putty, which helped keep the sharp lines and edges required.

Once this was done, I marked out using the templates again a larger rectangle in the next panel. The aim this time was simple, I would remove the entire panel, round off the corners with pro-create, and then use it as a template to make the panel to fit back inside it. I cut out the panel successfully, trying hard to keep the lines straight, and once complete, I padded the corners with Procreate putty. A while back I had worked out a method of rounding corners easily, simply pad the corner with green stuff or Procreate and use a plasticard circular rod pressed into the corner, make sure it is touching both edges on either side of the corner, and whatever remains will be a nice smooth rounded corner made of putty, although protruding both above and below the opening. Once set the putty can be cut flush with the surface on both sides using a scalpel, leaving a virtually perfect rounded corner. It takes a little time waiting for it to set, but I can always get on with other things while waiting, compare this to trying to cut out a perfect flush rounded corner and it is much easier and sometimes quicker.

Here is a picture of the work so far on the panel, I went to bed soon after this point for a nice early night with Mrs Argos: -










More tomorrow, when I will be finishing the frame under the brass etch on the gun platform and adding the remaining panels to this side of the chimera side plate.


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## Winterous

That's some good work and all.
But, how do you know they're going to remake all Chimera chassis to be like that?
Frankly, I think they'll just make the Hellhound like that, and leave the others.

You know, to make it look less like a Chimera.


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## Brother Argos

Ahhh ... thats where one has to use spies!

Here is a picture showing the Chimera chassis with the new side plates, in addition the new IG codex has illustrations showing the new side plates on all the artillery. Therefore Watson using logic we can deduce the are recutting the sprues for all chimera variants given all the evidence.










Could be wrong, but I doubt it, and I must admit after seeing the new plate in situ, I prefer the look to the old style anyway


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## NurglingStomper

Well good luck at recutting those hulls. Ahh what am I saying, you can do it.


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## Brother Argos

Just in case your interested, a very nice guy called Wodon over at Boot Camp told me the following about the "Strange Piston Thingy"



> The strange piston thing on the front of the Chimera hull and the matching brother on the Leman Russ is actually the adjustable position Tension Idler for the track assembly. Basically the front wheel is on a fixed axle, as opposed to the Roadwheels which are spring mounted to "float" over the terrain. The rear position is the Drive Sprocket. Of course against all logic the Leman Russ has a Drive Sprocket on the ground, but that is another story.
> 
> The "Strange piston thing" allows the crew to move the Idler's axle to change the tension on the track. When doing suspension repairs the first step is to release this tension be sliding the Idler back to the rear. Once repairs were done and the track refitted the Idler would be forced back into position. As this is mechanical tension it was the work of many hands or a specialized tool.


It is cool to find this kind of stuff out, so I thought I would pass it on


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## Winterous

OOOOOH, now I understand the difference in the new one.
It's basically just skinnier, and has a fancy plate on it.
And might not have room for a fuel tank.

I think it looks heaps better.


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## dirty-dog-

ill second that it loods better, but brother argos's one looks even better because it would be easier to put an orky icon in the square that he has made. i definitly cant wait to see what you do with this basilisk.


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## Winterous

So yeah, what do you prefer about the old one Argos?


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## Brother Argos

Continuing work on the side plate took up most of my saturday work time. the first thing I noticed when working on the side plate was the change to the last panel (the one at the rear), when compared to the new images. In the new images its much larger and fits snugly, however when you look at the old one the following is evident.










Its too short by about a 1mm, so removing all the bolt heads, I set about extending the panel by 1mm, I used two sheets of 0.5mm plasitcard laminated (glued) together. When they had set I stuck them to the sideplate and trimmed them down to match.










I also took this time to widen the hole I made to match the changes, I also saved all the rivet heads so I could reattach them later. There were some gaps where the rounding of the edges of the original sideplate caused "dips" between the extension and the original. If they were small I filled them with a thin layer of super glue and filed them flush. If they were large I then went on to fill them with Pro-Create and smooth them with a Clay shaper. I also loaded up the corners of the hole with procreate and used the same technique as the previous hole to round the corners, I then left this to sit and dry for a couple of hours while I went out with Mrs. Argos.

Upon my return the Pro-Create had dried and I set about filing it once more to get back to a smooth level surface, most of the time any form of advanced modelling seems to be about filing!!










At this stage I noticed that the edges of the hole needed a little more tidying and did so.

I went on to try a test fit of the plate to see if my extensions had worked and I am pleased to say it was an accurate and tight fit. Although its funny when I look at the following picture the point which captures my eye every time is the large plate bottom right hand corner, where I had over trimmed the recessed plate and had to retouch the corner with Pro-Create. The difference in colour immediately catches my eye every time. It will be fine when I reproduce the side plate, and all the colours will homogenise.










After cutting and trimming the small recess plate I fitted it, returned all the bolts to the their rightful place (using the image of the hellhound side plate to show me the new locations for the bolts as they had moved) and lastly placed some of the Mig Productions brass etch rivets (0.5mm) into the holes on all the plates.










I have two remaining tasks for the side plate, one is to trim and tidy the edges on the small side plate a little more, and then to work out how to do the recessed handle on the large plate. The handle is going to be troublesome as it has square ends. I might leave that till after I had reproduced the plate and I have a more dense material to work with.


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## Brother Argos

Well I have had a good modelling day today, and put together this Female Steel Legion Sgt. I am very pleased with the female torso and it seems to work well with the new running legs.

There is still some more sculpting on the legs to do, but the style worked!










I was happy with the use of the small FW Elysian pistol in holster, although I feel the chainsword arm is positioned incorrectly, but as its only held together with Blu-tac I am not worried.










The rebreather on the female torso will be added after it is reproduced, as will the webbing based ammo packs, from observation almost all female soldiers wear items on webbing below their chest, so thats where I will be sculpting them, instead of on the chest as the men do.










The running legs are turning out ok, only one boot left to go, but with the new arms it will dramatically increase the variants I can make.










This is the angle where the chainsword arm looks incorrect, I think the once the arm is closer to the body (no blu-tac) and the green stuff added to mix it into the shirt, it will work.










The last is my favourite pose, leading her troops in the charge towards the Ork enemy, head tilted forward as she runs!

It was good today to get the urge to do some sculpting again, and do some more figure work!


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## Winterous

That looks fantastic man.
Exactly what an average Female soldier should be.
Not dainty, not beefy, but a solid in-between.

Gonna do some Female-specific heads?


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## Brother Argos

I doubt there will be female specific heads, as far as I can see gas masks and helmets stop that. I hope to make about 1/3 of my troopers as women, the number felt right for the last ditch recruiting before the arrival of the Ork horde in the 3rd war for Armageddon


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## NurglingStomper

I agree with Winterous on this one. It's nice to see you didn't over exaggerate the woman like some sculptors do. I would love to see you sculpt female specific heads. Great work so far.


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## TheKingElessar

I'm just thinking, perhaps for future female models it'd be better to shorten the mini a bit? It'd look wierd with them all the same height, irrespective of gender...


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## Winterous

He COULD do Female-specific legs, but that's more work for little difference.
Anyway, weren't you gonna do some heads with the gas mask hanging instead of worn?
If so, you could make a Female face.


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## Dezartfox

Brilliant work


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## Winterous

Aah, THERE'S the V40k Tim


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## dirty-dog-

loving the work on the side armour, definitly looks great, and about the female soldier, definitly like the fact that nothing is over exagerated, it just shows that your not desperet lol, and it means that your not looking at it as a cartoon, but more real life and thats whats great about the imperial gaurd players that are older because you really start to see some great things.

but rant over, Would you be able to do a pic of every seperate componant that you have so far? basiclly like a, what comes in the box deal except not for sale?

just want to see how much variation youve got from what you have.

Cheers


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## Brother Argos

Thanks for the comment Tim, good to talk again 

One concern I have had for a while is how the rebreather and pouches on my male torso would affect various arm combinations. In an effort to prepare for future sculpting of gloves and emblems, I gathered as many different Cadian arms as I could and test fit them to see if there were any problems. I was pleased that in most cases there wasn't a problem, the two key exceptions were the Flame Thrower arms, and for want of a better description the "Carefully aiming" arms. I found that with careful shaving on the inside of the arm, which is out of sight, it is possible to get them to work well with the Steel Legion torso. 

The flame thrower was particularly pleasing to get working, as it is one of the "missing" components from the steel legion range and part of the initial reason I undertook this project in some ways. Please bear in mind, no mold lines or barrel holes have been drilled, this was merely put together to see if the arms would fit with the torso using blutac, however the result was pleasing so less chatting and here are the pictures showing the flamethrower: -










I trimmed off the shoulderpads using a scalpel, and then used a combination of medium, fine, and extra fine sanding sticks to smooth the top of the arm.










Looking at the pipe running back to the tanks on the back, I want to replace it with some of the cabling from The Dragonforge which I normally use for the gas mask pipes. The reason for this will be the increased detail for painting purposes, I always find painting smooth pipes with no detail difficult!










I am not sure what to do about the lack of bedroll for the figure, when it is such an obvious accessory for all the other troopers, I might mount it vertically between the two gas bottles perhaps with straps going round, which would add some detail to the quite cartoony looking tanks. That makes me think of adding a small stop cock on the top of the valves too ... for added detail.










I love the final shot, he looks so determined thrusting his flamer forward to purge all before him!


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## Winterous

Looks good man, keep it up.


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## Azwraith

looks awesome man!

to be honest i think you should scratch build your own fuel tank because those IG ones just look way to cartoony in my opinion!


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## dirty-dog-

yea they do look rather cartooney, and your scratchbuilding is awsome, so why not make some Steel Legion ones? i mean, youve made a shitload of other stuff look good already.


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## Brother Argos

I am sorry there will be no update today, one of my larger Japanese clients had a security issue yesterday and I got home around 10pm and am going back in for 6am. I should be finished there by Friday and normal service will be resumed then.


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## Winterous

Brother Argos said:


> I am sorry there will be no update today, one of my larger Japanese clients had a security issue yesterday and I got home around 10pm and am going back in for 6am. I should be finished there by Friday and normal service will be resumed then.


Damn, good luck with that man.


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## Inglorious Bastard

This is an amazing thread, your work is truly an inspiration to me....just looking at your models makes me wanna start an armageddon army 

deffinetely +rep for you my friend

Cheers,

IB


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## jetstreamnz

Well I was actually sad to run out of posts to read.

This thread is epic and some of the work done here is amazing.

I could almost go home and stomp my first set of space marines .... (well not really)

Really looking foward to following this thread and seeing what amazing stuff is yet to come ... it is going to be a cool IG army.

+REP


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## Brother Argos

Well its Friday and I am back, my work for the Japanese client was successful and I got home early enough last night to get some Modelling done. I am just editing the pictures now, and uploading them, so I should be posting within the hour 

@ Winterous : Thanks for the Luck, it worked 

@ Inglorious Bastard : Start one then!, I am going to be releasing a website about Armageddon soon, and will be encouraging people with Armageddon armies to show their stuff on it! I am very please that you are inspired by my work, now go out and Inspire me with yours 

@ Jetstreamnz : Thanks for the kind comments, you more than welcome to follow me on my adventures with modelling


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## jetstreamnz

Bonus, just got the email saying this thread was updated as I am leaving work, so looking forward to additions ...

Going home to put together a stock standard devestator squad, but I am going to go get some green stuff in the weekend and have a go at something (probably filling the dents I make in models when trying to remove stuff like mould lines lol)

Maybe a simple base mod ....

Best thread I am following by a long way!


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## Winterous

jetstreamnz said:


> Going home to put together a stock standard devestator squad, but I am going to go get some green stuff in the weekend and have a go at something (probably filling the dents I make in models when trying to remove stuff like mould lines lol)
> 
> Maybe a simple base mod ....


Put some scrolls on the models, Devastators love to ordain themselves with scrolls and stuff, and it looks good.

What weapons will you give them?


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## Brother Argos

This is a small sub-project I have been waiting to do, I didn't have the neccessary components in my Bitz Box for once, so I had to purchase the components. I had ordered the Forge World extra armour panels for the "Chimera" type vehicles. I thought the look quite appropriate for my Steel Legion Chimera variant vehicles, specifically as the Germans in world war two had used such "Skirts" on a number of their vehicles. Here as a reminder is a picture of the Forge World extra Armour: -










As you can see one of the Forge world panels is broken in the middle, and they are both warped / curved. However both of those issues are easy to solve in the big scheme of things. What concerns me more is the fact that if I use them every single one of my Chimera Variant vehicles will have identical weathering / damage patterns. Now if there might be one or two, that would be ok, however with a Steel Legion force I plan to field a number of Chimera and having them all the same damage patterns would annoy me. So I think its time to make my own version, which I can them reproduce, and add unique weathering / damage too as required.

First thing I need is some patterned plasticard with the appropriate sized squares on, a quick measurement later with my Digital calipers and I discover the size of each small square on the panelling is 3mm approximately. This was a little confusing, as I knew that Evergreen who make the squared plasticard that the original would almost certainly be done with, only make squares in 2.1mm or 3.2mm. So a few other measurements later and I found the winged skull, which was obviously from the vehicle add on sprue, had also shrunk about 1.5-2mm in width compared to a fresh original. This change in scale implied that the original piece when made had been larger, and had been reproduced in resin numerous times (2-4 times) before being finalised. Moulds often slightly reduce the original in size, this is normally not even noticeable or anything worth worrying about, unless producing machine parts with a tight tolerance. The shrinkage will become more important later on!

Anyway I ordered the 3.2mm Sq plasticard and the smaller size in case, from http://www.netmerchants.co.uk in their modelling materials section. I used Netmerchants as they have next day delivery and so far have not let me down on any of numerous orders. They delivered as expected, and I had to leave it all on my desk waiting for a chance to get on with it. Well suffice to say I had that chance last night, and I jumped into it with both feet first. As I had a "template" to work from, it was simply a matter of counting squares to work out the sizes for each panel. As you can see from the picture below, the squared panels and the back panel were easy to make. I think I will be able to get around 5 sets of extra armour out of a single sheet, which at £5 is reasonable, however there is also the cost of the backing plate sheet, at another £5. You can see the panels cut in the picture below: -










The image above also shows the holes being cut into the corners, used to fix the front and back plates together supposedly in real life. The holes will have hex bolts placed at the bottom and in slight variant from the Forgeworld original I will be trimming the 45 degree corners slightly more than they did. For the hole drilling I stuck to my normal pattern of increasing the hole size gradually, in case the plasticard tears or deforms. I started with a 0.5mm, then 1mm, 1.3mm, and finally a 1.5mm drill. You can see some of my Pin Vice drills in the picture, I must admit I generally purchase new ones whenever I see one in a shop.

Once the plates were stuck together, I placed some of the Brass etch hex head bolts into the holes, using the normal dab of superglue technique used I had mentioned earlier in the log. I continued building plates and did the one with the winged skull on, and finally the end plate: -










This image shows the finished work, it has not been weather or damage detailed in any way, as that process will occur after I have reproduced it in resin, therefore ensuring each vehicle will have uniquely damaged / weathered extra armour. The frame on the back lines up with the top and bottom of the Side panels (the ones I was working on last week), and it is the side panels which will be magnetised for removal, therefore letting me add or remove the armour at will. The reason for that choice is because I will already have resin reproductions of my own side panels and the extra armour will be permanently attached to these and magnets placed to hold it all securely and tightly. You can also see at the bottom of the image is the top view, where I have more brass etch rivets to add detail, otherwise known as something to paint that isn't flat. 










Finally we can compare the two, they should look alike, but you can see on at the back how much the Forgeworld one has shrunk from the original size. I am pleased with the reproduction and now I can get on with the other side. The weathering / battle damage on the original helps to give it a lot of detail and interest, however with our prisitine version we can add that level of interest uniquely to each vehicle now.

On a small note, I am almost finished preparing a website for this log, and Tutorials about some of my work for the site, hopefully next week early sometime it will be ready.


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## Apoca6

NICE! do you mind if i eat your brains?! i wish i could do half this good on my own projects! 

keep up the good work :biggrin:


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## Winterous

That looks incredible man, your plasticard word is always pristine.


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## dirty-dog-

Greenstuff and plasti card work is still excellent, from this thread i have been inspired to sculp my own model from scratch, starting of with a beast of nurgle, just because well, i cant really go wrong with a chaos beast.

all i need to do now is start experimenting with plasti-card, which at the moment is a little bit too expensive for my budget lol.

and keep with the updates, it sucks checking this thread 5 times a day to see if it has been updated or not lol.


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## Brother Argos

It was a curious weekend, I had a quite a lot of pleasant surprises!

First suprise was the arrival of the Pro-Etching kit, followed closely by a new Digital calliper and lastly a micro-hole punch.

I was surprised at the quantity of items in the Pro-Etching kit, but I still need to get some Ferric Chloride and some Sodium Hydroxide before I can commence work with it. The supplier cannot send those hazardous chemicals internationally therefore I have to source them locally. I have noticed that Maplin in the UK supply the Ferric Chloride, but I am looking for a cheaper supplier (if you know of one please msg me or post here). I haven't got round to looking for the Sodium Hydroxide yet. Here you can see the etching kit in all its glory on the side in my kitchen, I will be going into detail about each component they supply later, and a full review and test of the pro-etch system when I have had a chance to try it out.










About 3 days ago I noticed that the battery in my current digital calliper was dying. Now normally this is simply a matter of replacing the battery with a new one and away we go, but I had been after a better quality digital calliper for some time. I had noticed on ebay that someone was selling a Mitutoyo digital calliper for a bargain price of £9 with only one day to go and no other bids. Now Mitutoyo callipers are good quality and normally retail around £125, so this had the potential to be a good purchase. In the end I got them for £13 + postage, and when it arrived it was in perfect working order, it has a finer resolution as far as measurement goes, and just generally the feel of it is far superior to my current digital calliper, which feels quite plastic / cheap.










Lastly among the arrivals was a Micro Hole Punch, with holes from 0.5mm -> 5mm in 0.5mm increments. Obviously the 1mm hole is great for making rivets out of plasticard if needed, while the larger sizes are good for making hole covers or instrument dials in cockpits. The one I really wanted however was 2.5mm, as it was the exact size of the shoulder emblem on the Steel Legion troopers, and would mean I did not have to try and make perfect circles out of Green stuff again! Oddly enough the ones I found in the UK were all sized in Inches, and I had to get one from an American supplier to get one in millimeters, weird huh? Anyway here is the Micro Hole Punch, with one of the punches in place and the rest arrayed before it. One normally slides thin sheet plastic between the clear plastic and the metal base and then insets the correct sized punch, and taps lightly with a soft hammer. Perfect sized plastic circles fall out of the bottom which can be used as you will see later: -










Moving on to finished work, I completed the alternate extra side armour to mirror / match last weeks one. The same process was used and once again it matches the Forgeworld version precisely. I think making these would be a good initial step for anyone wanting to learn hot to work with plasticard. As such I will be preparing an in depth tutorial on how to make them and posting it on the as yet unreleased website. Here is a picture of the finished side armour.










Finally, using the new Micro hole punch I made some circular emblems for the Steel Legion arms. I used 0.13mm thick plasticard sheet and cut out the holes using the 2.5mm punch, the reason for this thin plasticard was to stay in scale, and to have something that could deform to the rounded nature of an arm easily. I simply applied a small amount of plastic glue to the circles, let it work on the plastic for 5-10 seconds and then pressed firmly in the place I wished it to go on the arm. You can see the results here, all I need to do now is add the lightning strike using green stuff, and I am trying to think of a way to do that without green stuff if possible (anyone else thinking Photo-etch right now ?), Here are some arms with the plasticard in place: -










Ok, I am off to find some Sodium Hydroxide ... and a way to adequately ventilate my working area!


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## humakt

I found an interesting articel about doing your own photo etching that you may be interested in as you use a lot of this brass stuff. 

http://www.steelnavy.com/etching.htm

It appears a little complex, but no harder than what you are currently doing.

I like the extra armour plating. How big is this force going to be in the end?


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## Winterous

What IS photo-etching?
Lazors?


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## humakt

Winterous said:


> What IS photo-etching?
> Lazors?


Photo etching is a method of recreating an image onto brass by dissolving the metal around it. The trcik is getting the image onto the brass itself.


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## Winterous

Aah, so it's sort of like engraving with acid?


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## Brother Argos

Exactly ..


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## Winterous

Wicked.
Get to it chum!


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## Brother Argos

With the work going into the website, getting other modellers interested in Armageddon and working with me on the website and finally the Photo etch kit arriving and trying to learn all about it, I can honestly say I have been busy, but with little I can show you yet.

However I can give a run-down on how the Photo etch system should work, and a review of the various kit and what it does.

For those that don't know Photo Etching is the process of using strong chemicals to eat away metals placed within them. This process is used by people to make circuit boards for electronics as well as modellers. You can control the eating away of the metal by covering it a thin layer of resistant chemicals which protect the bits of metal you wish to keep.

So it is therefore possible to print this resistant material and laminate it to the metal and use it as a means to make thin sheets of brass containing shapes you wish to keep. Here is an example from Forgeworld showing what is possible: -










Notice how small the possible results can be ... If I manage to master the process I will be able to produce Steel Legion emblems for tanks, troopers, flags, etc. It also opens up possible avenues of modelling I haven't been down before and will give me some scope to add complex items to models without casting.

However its a bit of a black art, certainly in the wargaming field, although less so in the master modelling field. The pro-etch kit I bought for instance, has almost no reviews I can find on the web, which means I am working on faith. Lets hope it all turns out ok!

My first step was to try and identify and understand every piece of the kit supplied. So without further ado, I present an overview of the supplied kit: -










A - Photo Resistant film, used as the protecting film on the metal, its light sensitive and kept in black tubes to stop it reacting and becoming useless. It needs to be opened and used in a darkroom until you have it in place on the metal and wish to "develop" it.

B - Laminate Carrier film, to hold and take the metal sheet & photo-resistant film, through the Laminator without seperating.

C - Chemical Resistant Plastic tubs to hold the Sodium Hydroxide solutions, first one is used to remove the undeveloped Resistant film so the bits underneath can be eaten by the etchant chemical. Second one is for removing the remainder of the resistant film from the finished product at the end.

D - Pro-Etch Manual, describing the process, I am hoping to make my own guide when I have got on top of the whole process, so that its easier for other people in the future.

E - Etching Tank, the place where the etching takes place, usually 2/3rds full of etchant (Ferric Chloride) and with the metal sheet being etched held inside.

F - Etchant Resistant Tweezers

G - Holding Rod, this sits inside the Etching Tank and holds the Brass sheet horizontally (so the brass particles fall down into the tank easily)

H - Brass sheet supplied with the kit, I purchased more and can get more locally if I need.










A - Disposable brushes, for removing chemicals & brass particles from the sheet.

B - Micro Cleaning pads, to clean the Brass to a very clean bright surface, so the resistant film will stick to it properly.

C - Goggles, the chemicals and the fumes they release are VERY dangerous and the wearing of protection is not optional.

D - Plexiglass plates, for holding the film and metal during the exposure process which makes the film stick to the metal.

E - Gloves in a measuring pot, once again the gloves are important to ensure no risks are taken with the dangerous chemicals.

F - Laminator, to fix the resistant film onto the metal using heat and pressure.

G - Clips, to hold the plexiglass together during the exposure process

H - Aerator to ensure the etchant remains fresh while etching the metal

I - Apron, once again for protection.

As you can see there is a substantial amount of items in the kit, and a relatively complex process to follow. Because the kit travelled from America to England, the etchant (Ferric Chloride) and cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide) need to be purchased by myself, however if I was in the States they would have been supplied. 

I am waiting for the chemicals to arrive, and might well take a day off of work to test it all out sometime next week.

*On a final note*, if there are any people producing armies from the Armageddon 3rd war, either Ork or Imperial, who wish to actively contribute to an ongoing blog format website about Armageddon and the forces fighting there please contact me. This is for the following games: - 40k, Apocalypse, Battlefleet Gothic or Epic Armageddon.


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## smfanboy

wow just wow


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## humakt

I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. I'm keen to do this myself now I see how it can be done.


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## Brother Argos

As I have almost completed a number of arms, legs and torso's for reproduction, my attention has once again turned to moulding. Recently I have changed supplier for my resin, and lowered the price significantly from £40 per litre down to £12 per litre, thanks to Jeff Wilhelm for the advice. Silicon Rubber on the other hand has a fairly constant price and Tiranti's in London still remains my favoured supplier with their T20, & T28 ranges. The cheap resin supplier is TOMPS and while I was ordering from them I thought I would give their rubber a try incase it had better performance characteristics.










It has a lower Shore A hardness than my normal Tiranti T28 rubber and in theory should be more flexible when cast. This has a number of advantages, most particularly when a mould has overhanging sections which would normally tear less flexible rubbers. I hope to give this a try at the weekend, and plan to use it for the crew compartment top section on the Medusa, which I plan to reproduce, and trim back down to make a shield like the Vanaheim, but which in addition would still fit with the great compartment flooring/lower section.

While working up in town recently I got to go into the 4d modelshop, now they are an expensive shop, however they have some things on the shelves that I don't normally get a chance to examine first hand. One of which was a selection of Smooth-On rubber and resin products. I noticed specifically they had ClearCast Resin, which should produce crystal clear transparent castings of parts, now this intrigued me on a number of levels, firstly I could make some transparent view ports for my tanks (maybe even use a dye to make them reddish), secondly I was interested in making some transparent goggles for my steel legion, which would look pretty cool. So I purchased the box as you can see below, and added making seperate goggles to my list.










Finally because I had to make some working space for my Etching kit, I rearranged my work area and tidied up the moulding section, here is a picture showing the moulding work area.










On the top shelf, I have large mixing containers, tissue paper for wiping up spills, and alumalite white resin.
On the shelf below that, I have TOMPs fast cast resin to try out at £12 or so, alongside the can of French Talc, which helps with mould flow.
Below that, I have Tiranti's Rubber, both T20, and T28, with Silicon oil, which you can use to decrease the viscosity of silicon rubber, and also to prolong the life of moulds.
Then we have rubber gloves for handling chemicals, and some European Rubber that I only use for one off castings as it tends to decline quickly.
Finally you can see the smaller mixing containers, the Ambersil mould release spray, my digital scales and some of my Steel Legion moulds waiting to be used.
The draws in the white cabinet contain mixing sticks, tools, knives, clippers, and cleaning products.

Good news tonight, I got 2 arms complete with emblems, and did more on a set of boots. I also finished off the design of the website, backfilled it with 77 blog entries showing all the work I have done on the steel legion to-date and a friend added his first two entries also. I want to get the first tutorial done and then the site will go live


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## Brother Argos

A busy night as I did some sculpting and worked on the tutorial for the website, not much to show for it till the website goes live (most probably this weekend).

Here is a picture showing last nights sculpting progress: -










I am pleased with the emblems and worked on a few rough versions to test first. I got the lightning strike down to about 10 mins to sculpt and with practice it will fall even further. Although I also plan to make a brass etch version. The second boot is now sculpted using green stuff it is a little rough and is a base coat and now needs soothing and the skull and zipper at the back placed on it. This is the last item I am awaiting before the next round of reproduction commences.

I also have my sculpting tools and Optivisor at work with me today so hopefully some more sculpting at lunch time.


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## Brother Argos

Ok lunchtime sculpting went well, I added the zipper to the boots at the back, touched up some rough GS work, added the last strap on the Gas Masked head and finally did the last lightning strike emblem on an arm.

Photo's next time I am near a Camera


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## Apoca6

wow, can i come work for you? would love to have hobby time at work! and i love jetting off to america and the far east too :victory:

amazing work! and well documented too :biggrin:

look forward to seeing more!


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## jetstreamnz

Top stuff as always.

So well organised!


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## dirty-dog-

i think i have truely run out of words to call this. i mean, week by week i am astonished with your work, it is amazing.


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## Brother Argos

There will not be any updates till Saturday morning, I spent today at a clients till very late, and tomorrow I am at the hospital.

Normal service will be resumed shortly


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## Winterous

Why the hospital?


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## Brother Argos

@ Winterous : I am a Diabetic, and it was time for my Optician checkup!

Ok lunchtime sculpting went well again, finished the boots sculpting, need to add a small heel of plasticard and they are done. I also changed the sniper cloak and rifle from the new command set, scraped/filed the big pads away and rebuilt the cloak to hide the change.

Will get some pictures up tonight I hope, I plan to gather all the things for reproduction and takes some pictures of them also.


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## Winterous

Ooh, ok.
Well, looking forward to those pictarz!


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## dirty-dog-

kewl cant wait to see those new componants, 
and sorry to hear that you are diabetic,


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## NurglingStomper

Everything is looking good so far, as always. Good luck at the hospital.


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## Brother Argos

I have just finished the final sculpting push before reproduction, I thought you might like to see some of the results. I have one pair of legs, a female torso, two heads, seven arms, and numerous things like bedrolls, knives, canteens etc.

Here are the running legs, which to be honest seem to have taken forever, I kept on finding small things to change that I was unhappy with: -










The changes from the initial cadian legs were to cut off the original jacket bottom, resculpt a new jacket bottom to match the steel legion length, cut away the boot section, resulpt the boots, add zippers up the back of the boots, add ankles, add skulls on the top of the boots at the front, build the back heel of boot into the sole, and in one case build a complete new heel from plasticard.

The next significant addition to me "Steel Legion Sprue", is the female torso: -










The changes from the initial cadian tanker torso were to cut off the original legs and tank hatch, adjust the collar so it meets in the middle and add tidy up with greenstuff, make the female aspects of the chest, add the webbing to the chest area, add an eagle as a belt buckle, cut grooves out at the locations where the webbing was going on the back, place the plasticard webbing into the grooved shirt, and finally add plasticard triangles where the webbing meets the belt. Look at the magnified model, I think I will tidy the lower crease on the front of the shirt, it looks rougher than I like when magnified.

Next is the officers head: -










I shaved the head, removed the ears / ear cover, smoothed the head, altered the chin, altered the nose, rebuilt the ears, and added hair and an eye patch.

I think this is my favourite piece so far, I am really pleased with the way the gas mask head looks: -










The head is from the tank sprue, I cut off the ear coverings, shaved down the items attached at the back of the neck and side. The I extended the gas mask straps to the back from the sides, added a brass etch ring to attach the straps onto, ran the straps up to the center of the head, and finally rebuilt the ears. I am really looking forward to painting this head, with stubble!

Finally for the sculpting are most of the arms: -










As you can see all the arms have had gloves in the steel legion style added, the cadian shoulderpads removed, and on appropriate arms the steel legion lighting in a circle emblem has been added. The white plasticard was cut using my new Micro Hole Punch (for those wanting to know where to order from - http://www.micromark.com ) and made the horrible task of sculpting perfect circles redundant. 

With all of the above now complete, I will begin reproducing them, this will give me two pair of legs, two torsos, 4 heads, 11 arms, 2 Las-Carbines and numerous small items. I can finally start making some more of my first squad, with some of the variance I originally started the project to achieve. I have discovered legs to be really annoying to do, arms easy to do, and heads fun to do. Sadly the one thing I need more than anything else now is legs.

Its taken me a long while to get this far, but I hope it has been interesting so far. The work continues ...


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## Azwraith

definatly interesting cant wait to see more to be honest... your a real inspiration


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## Winterous

Yeah, you really don't need variation in torsos do you?
Good luck with the next pair of legs, maybe you should make a kneeling one.


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## AM.

:shok: Your skills are amazing.


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## jetstreamnz

Awesome update as expected, good luck with the legs.

And kneeling set would be cool.

Or a set where they are really spread waiting for impact/fire maybe?

I am sure whatever you decide on will be great.


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## dirty-dog-

they look great, an the gas mask head does look dam good, aswell as the running legs.

definitly cant wait to see some guys made from these componants now, itll be awsome.


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## Brother Argos

Well a nice present arrived on my doorstep this morning ... My Forgeworld Vendetta upgrade, here is the obligatory picture: -










In addition, to punish myself I have lined up three pair of legs to work on (one kneeling), for the next round of Steel Legion parts. I think with some more legs done I will have enough of a "Sprue" done to move onto the painting phase for troops.

Oh there was also a Death Korps Rider in the delivery today, but no promises, I am just looking incase. Actually I would prefer to do Motorbike riders, but cannot think of an alternative to the lance that I could replace it with.

Lastly, what do people think of Ogryn, worth doing some form my Armageddon Steel Legion force ?


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## Winterous

NOOOOO!
Don't do Motorbikes!

Alright, Armageddon wouldn't even nearly use horses, do Motorbikes 
Instead of lances, maybe you could give them like, little mallets?
Like in polo?


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## Brother Argos

With regard to rough riders, Deveran over at the boot camp suggested the following single-shot grenade launcher as a replacement for the explosive hunting lances (which are also single shot). I suspect something like this would fit the bill and keep with the mechanised infantry image.










It is similar too but slightly smaller than the death korps grenade launcher.


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## Apoca6

Looks good and would be very easy to reproduce :grin:


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## NurglingStomper

Wow looks good. I love your sculpting work man, it amazes me. As for your riders, motorbikes would look sweet. and the blooper shouldn't be that off,as opposed to lances(plus it'll look cooler)


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## Winterous

Brother Argos said:


> With regard to rough riders, Deveran over at the boot camp suggested the following single-shot grenade launcher as a replacement for the explosive hunting lances (which are also single shot). I suspect something like this would fit the bill and keep with the mechanised infantry image.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is similar too but slightly smaller than the death korps grenade launcher.


Dood,totally.
I was actually thinking of a one-shot rocket launcher, but then thought "Why wouldn't they just SHOOT it?"
So I didnt' suggest it


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## Crimson_Chin

Personally, I've always been a fan of shotgun gauntlets.

If I ever become a video game developer by chance, the first game I work on will be getting shotty fists in some way shape or form, the idea being as follows:

1. You punch something
2. The force drives the front section of the fist down, towards your elbow
3. This motion detonates the shotgun shells
4. Whatever you punched is now ickified.

It would be hard to make it look right on IG perhaps, but I've always been a fan of the idea. And you would have a helluva time explaining what your rough riders were wearing on their hands.


----------



## Winterous

Crimson_Chin said:


> Personally, I've always been a fan of shotgun gauntlets.
> 
> If I ever become a video game developer by chance, the first game I work on will be getting shotty fists in some way shape or form, the idea being as follows:
> 
> 1. You punch something
> 2. The force drives the front section of the fist down, towards your elbow
> 3. This motion detonates the shotgun shells
> 4. Whatever you punched is now ickified.
> 
> It would be hard to make it look right on IG perhaps, but I've always been a fan of the idea. And you would have a helluva time explaining what your rough riders were wearing on their hands.


That IS a cool idea!
You'd probably burn your hand if it wasn't properly insulated though


----------



## jetstreamnz

Winterous said:


> That IS a cool idea!
> You'd probably burn your hand if it wasn't properly insulated though


I would like to know what happens when the item you punch has no give :scare:


----------



## Winterous

jetstreamnz said:


> I would like to know what happens when the item you punch has no give :scare:


Ok, so it wouldn't work on midgets 

*edit*
Wait, I think I completely misunderstood you.


----------



## Brother Argos

Well the postman had a package for me this morning, sadly it was very damp, from the inside. This was concerning to me as I had recently got dangerous liquid chemical Ferric Chloride delivered!

It turned out to be something else entirely, it was the product I use for stripping paint off of old models. Now ... over my many years I have had the pleasure of living around the world and for a few years lived/travelled back and forth between London and Long Island, NY. While in the states I found and used an excellent paint stripper for my models, that doesn't harm plastics, metals or resins (disclaimer: always test something a little to make sure yourself) the sad thing being it was almost impossible to find outside of the USA. So after settling full time in South London, I was unable to get any more, and with all kinds of bans on travelling with fluids on planes, my chances of getting more had diminished, as had my stock of the product.










The product is called Simple green, I fill a small container, and literally drop the figure I want cleaned into it. Its possible to pull it out 20 minutes later and with an old toothbrush just wipe/scrub the paint off, or you can do as I do and leave it for a few days and its almost all fallen off. So far its worked on anything I have put into it even some old figures painted with enamels from ebay. Now with a vehicle you can just fill the bottom of a large bowl and do one side at a time, rather than waste a whole load filling the bowl, or alternatively you can fill the bowl and then filter/strain the old paint out and put it back into the bottle (using a funnel).

So as you can its good stuff, and hard to come by outside of Northern America, but as I was running out of it, I thought I would look to see if anyone was selling it anywhere in the UK before trying to order from the states. Well as you can deduce from the opening paragraph I did indeed find a supplier, it was Simple Green themselves in the UK, who had recently opened an e-shop for Europeans.

For UK & europe you can find it here: - Simple Green UK

In America its often available at Walmart etc, but if not it can be found here: - Simple Green - North America

Now be aware it can be expensive in the UK, however it is reusable and can last a long while. I haven't tried diluting it personally, so if anyone does try that please post the results.

I will take some before and after pictures over the weekend so you can see what it does


----------



## humakt

I have heard so much about simple green before and just never even thought to see if it was available in the UK. Great link.


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## Apoca6

DETTOL is your friend, i use it to strip resin, metal and plastics. Again, depending on the state of the figure and the amount on paint used on it, they are ready to strip in 20 mins. Wear gloves though! first 2 weeks i didnt and had zombie hands for the next 2 months :alcoholic:


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## Brother Argos

The question is does the paint fall off if you leave it in there ?


----------



## NurglingStomper

I know nail polish remover works real well for metal models.Not too sure about plastics though, haven't tried it. For metal models, 20 min and the paint starts coming off. Leave em overnight and the paint just sloughs off with a toothbrush.


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## Brother Argos

Acetone (nail polish remover) can melt plastic figures ... 

Good for metal though


----------



## NurglingStomper

Ohh crap......thank God you said that. I was just about to put plastic in to test it out. Plus rep for saving my models.


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## Winterous

NurglingStomper said:


> Ohh crap......thank God you said that. I was just about to put plastic in to test it out. Plus rep for saving my models.


You were about to put a MODEL in to test it?
That's just stupid 

Put a piece of sprue in there, that's what I do.


----------



## Apoca6

Paint falls off yes, toothbrush (not your own ideally) will get rid of the rest. and best of all you can get it all over the place, Supermarkets, Chemists, Grocers.

tried own brand supermarket stuff, but its rubbish.


----------



## Micklez

Thats Dettol as in the medical stuff with the ad 'Dettol protects' isnt it???


----------



## Apoca6

Yep thats it, Green shield with a white sword i think is the logo. 

The brown original is the one you want, not mega cheap but still cheper than simple green in the uk i think, and it is so readily available that i even picked up a bottle from a garage on a sunday after 4 :victory:


----------



## Crimson_Chin

Simple Green = amazing.

The stuff is nontoxic, biodegradable, and cleans EVERYTHING. I use it on my boat, as well as for stripping models. Great stuff.


----------



## dirty-dog-

the only problem with dettol is it makes the paint sticky, rather that flake off, and it goes everywhere, on your hands, clogs up toothbrushes, and well, it does a good job, just prepare to get something like chewing gum that sticks to your fingers and brush etc, if you dont have any dishwashing liquid, or if for somereason the liquid doesnt stop that there isnt much ya can do.


----------



## Apoca6

to stop it gooing your brush, dip bak in the dettol. it is messy the first couple of times until you get used to it. 

I can get a fair few minis done in a session with minimal mess now. like everything else, you just gotta practice :wink:


----------



## Brother Argos

Ok Apoca ... that sounds way more messy than simple green. Try the simple green ... really.

Ok, on to the bad news, I spent the weekend up in the Coventry with my parents-in-law, so sadly no modelling, sculpting (or fun).

Good news is the website goes live tomorrow with a couple of other contributors to help me


----------



## Apoca6

If you are doing it in a sink, there is no mess :biggrin: 

Will be doing some next week, will take a few piccies as I go.

Mean time keep up the great work!

Apoc


----------



## Azwraith

ahhh avatar change confuses me!  i use dettol cose its easier to obtain for me in australia


----------



## jetstreamnz

I have a batch of Marines soaking in Simple Green atm, also a set in Dettol, Dettol does a good job but its messy as people have said, I didnt wear gloves the first time I used it and I got the stuff everywhere.

Was at the local bunnings in the weekend and remembered peeps saying simple green was good so I picked some up, its also cheaper than dettol here in Auz.

The only reason I have mini's in both mixtures as I have alot of dettol left over lol

I have been buying lots of second hand space marines .... great savings and all you need is a little time to clean them up.


----------



## dirty-dog-

yea i have been trying the same thing with 2nd hand tanks for ork conversions, but new kits appeal to me too much. and i dont think that you can get simple green in nz, which sucks.

bummer about the sculpting new too Argos, im really looking foward for an update.


----------



## Brother Argos

For some time I have had an interest in the wars for Armageddon, ranging from the initial chaos invasion, all the way through to the third war where the Orks were brought to a standstill with the blood of Imperial martyrs. Almost subconsciously my army choices have reflect this interest, I have collected and cherished my Salamander Marines, the Sisters of the Order of the Martyred Lady, my recent Steel Legion troopers and my dream of an Adeptus Mechanicus army from the nearby Forgeworld of Voss. I wish to create rules to unite all these armies into a true Army of the Imperium, and field that force in games such as Battle Fleet Gothic, Epic Armageddon, Aeronautica Imperials and of course Warhammer 40k, all based around the defense of Armageddon.










Recently I, like many of us, have been collecting and working on an Imperial Guard army, the Steel Legion. As you know I have been maintaining a log of my work on this site and others. Amazingly, over time I have amassed a lot of of posts detailing this work, and realised that this work, with my passionate interest for the Armageddon conflicts, could form the basis for a website. I discussed this with a number of friends who all also had interests in the Wars for Armageddon, slowly an idea of a site detailing the History, Modelling, Painting and Gaming of the Armageddon wars grew into being. 










There had been an intense amount of information concerning Armageddon on the old Armageddon 3 website, this had been lost when the website had been shut, some of it had scattered to other websites but there was is no central resource for the Armageddon conflicts. With the help of some friends and hopefully invited guests, we hope to build a repository for this historical and gaming information. Somewhat in the style of the Bell of lost souls campaign packs we also hope to add detail to some of the smaller parts of the conflict across a range of systems from 40k through to Aeronautica Imperialis.










The painting and modelling articles will be a continuation of my work on the Steel Legion, with additional material from my armies mentioned above, as well as those of my friends who are building the site with me. While on the subject of friends, an introduction is in order, first off is Ragnar, a friend of many years standing who will be bringing his Space Marines, the "Praetoris Aeneas", Strikeforce Alpha 492 and the Phantine XXIII to the closing days of the 3rd war. Secondly is one of my Co-Admins from the Bolter & Chainsword SCC, who will be working on the "Exorcists" chapter, the Dieprian 756th, and the 609th Fighter Wing. We hope to get some assistance from various guests and also to add a few more permanent members of staff over time, including Ork Players, if you have some interesting modelling, painting, stories or gaming ideas please contact me and possibly we can showcase your work on the site.










The initial modelling content at the moment discusses, sculpting, painting, resin casting, magnets, photo etching and plasticard work, I am sure there will be something there to interest you and the first tutorial will be ready shortly showing how to make "extra" armour using plasticard. These tutorials will have video content demonstrating the modelling techniques used, and will form a growing library of reference material for modellers.

Anyway enough chit-chat, take a look at the site, leave comments, participate if you have some ideas and most of all enjoy yourself in the Battle for Armageddon


----------



## dirty-dog-

site looks awsome, so does the content, good work there, means more people can be inspired to do this type of work too.


----------



## Winterous

Well, I'll be looking into that site


----------



## AM.

I'd seen this in B&C, and it's a really nice project. I'll take a look regularly.


----------



## Brother Argos

Interesting day today, after the launch of Battle For Armageddon yesterday. I have scripted my first Video tutorial for the site, and have decided on the Hd recorder to use, the Toshiba Camileo H20, which at about £160 was a reasonable purchase and should cover my needs. I have worked out a way to shoot the Video as though seeing the work in progress from my viewpoint, but need to experiment to make sure it will work. It all promises to be quite exciting and will make it possible to clearly demonstrate things such as green stuff sculpting clearly. Delivery from Amazon is expected tomorrow.










In addition, as it was the end of the financial year and the company had done well, despite a very poor start, I decided to treat myself to a large FW purchase. More to be revealed when the delivery arrives 

Last night I gritted my teeth, and got every set of unique Cadian / Catachan legs I possesed out of the boxes. Overall I had 9 pairs of legs that were unique (plus the two pair I have already sculpted), but I am missing the running Catachan legs, and the standing to attention Cadian legs (metal only).

The problem I have with the legs is that they are hard sculpting work, but with all these done I will have more variants than any IG range. This is really the first point in the project where I have faced doing something I find annoying / difficult, so its a real test of determination for me. Last night I cut off the pockets on the trousers, removed the lower part of the cadian jacket where needed, and filed them down with a medium file. The reason for the medium file is to give the Green stuff something to key onto when I apply it to the legs. 

Obviously I am biting off a little too much at the moment generally, as I took progress pictures to show the legs this morning, automatically uploaded them to my PC using my EyeFi card on my camera, and then completely forgot to shunt them to web server to work on them  However I will add them this evening when I get home. I am hoping to do some basic "filling" with green stuff on them during lunch (my staff are getting used to seeing me in an Optivisor at lunch now).

Oh and tomorrow I might show you a neat trick with "Broken Glass"


----------



## fdshfn

nice job like the use of greenstuff


----------



## Brother Argos

It was a good lunch hour with basic filling done on 5 pairs of legs, the other four hopefully can be done tonight sometime, although I will be having a nice meal out with Mrs Argos, while a childminder looks after our daughters.

I will try and get some pictures showing the basic process I use for the filling, its almost like making a nappy out of green stuff and quite weird looking at first.

I took this with my iPhone, please excuse the quality, I felt as though I needed to show some progress after forgetting to upload last nights images


----------



## Winterous

Looks good, obviously not done, but I see no kneeling legs :O


----------



## Brother Argos

Its only the first 5 out of 9 .. the kneeling legs await.


----------



## Brother Argos

First off here are the photo's I forgot to upload yesterday: -










Here you can see the bottom of the cadian jackets have been removed and roughed up a little for the layer of green stuff to be added. The pockets have been removed and smoothed where needed too. On the officer legs the pouches and the chest have been cut off, these legs require a different process, where the coat parting will be moved to the centreline instead of the side and buttons/detail added.










Here you can see the infamous GS nappy, I take a rolled "sausage" of green stuff and run it between the legs, and then around the belt line. This puts around the right amount of GS in roughly the right places for what we need to do.

Starting at the top, I wet my fingers and push the Green stuff hard against the belt line, trying to squeeze a tiny amount of excess over onto the point where the torso joins the legs. The majority of the excess I draw down with my thumb, pulling and smoothing it as I work my way around the figure making the lower part of the new coat. As you can see most of this process so far has all been with fingers and no tools, as this is not the final layer of our GS work we can do this with no concerns. However I tend to keep the layer smooth anyway out of habit as can be seen here: -










As I am working I am thinking of the flow of the cloth and how it would wrap around the legs. You can look at the metal Steel Legion figures for examples to help with this part. Lastly using my nail I push the bottom line of the coat up a little to tidy the line, however once dry I often tidy up with a sharp scalpel to get a hard line.

If you are doing this yourself, you should have ended up with a set of legs looking similar to the last picture. Don't worry if yours look rougher, you can always tidy with a scalpel later, and to be honest its usually only the final layer that needs to be smooth.

I hope to have some time at lunch to get the last four lets nappied and smoothed, however they are crouching and things get a little more difficult. We should see tomorrow how that turns out.

If yesterdays Broken Glass comment intrigued you, here are the results of an experiment I did with some of the Imperial Scenery from Games workshop. I always look for simple ways to make my work stand out from other peoples, this includes my scenery. I also hate it when all the scenery looks the same on my table and like each building to feel different in a number of ways.

The following should make each window different from the next and consequently each building too and give a nice unique feeling to my scenery: -










The glass is laser etched clear plastic sheet, I am still experimenting with how to get the best out of it, but the principle is working well I think. Take a look at the picture, visualise a grimy battle torn building, think of a thin layer of dust on the glass, and see a steel legion trooper just visible through it, hiding behind the wall. There you go a glimpse into how I visualise things as I work on them, I try to see the whole scene in detail, and then work towards that detail.

Going to be a good day today, Camcorder arrives ... and tomorrow mystery Forgeworld purchase


----------



## Winterous

Nice work man, great as always.
The glass is good, it could always look better, but it would be hard to achieve such a level of detail (bending the plastic to get cracks and such).


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## Brother Argos

Its laser etched, I can laser etch cracks into it without cutting all the way through the plastic.


----------



## Winterous

Brother Argos said:


> Its laser etched, I can laser etch cracks into it without cutting all the way through the plastic.


I mean like, when you see broken glass, there's usually a 'web' of cracks through it.

If you can do that, then FUCK YEAH!


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## Brother Argos

Yes its possible .. hard .. but possible.

While we are on the subject of laser etching I thought people might like to see some previous work I had done: -


----------



## AM.

It looks great :good:


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## Winterous

:shok:

You've GOT to be kidding me!


----------



## MaidenManiac

:shok: Youre not real, thats the only sollution:laugh:

Insanely neat stuffk:


----------



## Apoca6

would the laser etch not be an easier solution than photo? they can etch soft sheet metal, so would surely be easy to do than the photo etch kit and no dangerous chems too.

or am i way off the mark?


----------



## dirty-dog-

im sure your a pigment of my imagination, no, wait, your too good even for that.

but as you said with the seeing the whole model/scenery first, then working to it is somewhat how i work too. just the final product usually comes out better because i had made changes and adaptations along the way. but there has been some projects where i have basiclly just started from scratch, with no plan and gone from there. like my artillary truck for my orks.


----------



## Winterous

dirty-dog- said:


> im sure your a pigment of my imagination, no, wait, your too good even for that.


_My_ imagination is green, what colour is yours?
(I think you meant figment )


----------



## Brother Argos

Ok, time to plead guilty. This mornings update got swallowed in an orgy of playing with the new Camcorder last night, now I could try and plead that I was preparing for the tutorial, but as I only have videos of my family and the hamster its unlikely you would believe me. 

The good news is that it works well and I should be able to do the close up, first person perspective tutorials that I want. Although I will need to purchase an HDMI -> DVI adaptor cable to make it all work. 

Oh and if all goes well and if the nice man at Forgeworld can be trusted, the mystery Forgeworld delivery should arrive today. I am quite excited by that, but by now you will have guessed what it is ... surely ?


----------



## Winterous

Haha, nice.
Good luck with your camera'ing :3


----------



## Brother Argos

Wasn't it obvious ?










Going to use it as scenery ... an exploded Reaver across the landscape of Armagedon!


----------



## Talos

You going to use a Reaver for scenery ?
Seems like a big waste but I am sure it will look awesome.


----------



## dirty-dog-

oooops, i did meen figment, but yes, mine is generally green too, dam orks......


----------



## Winterous

Brother Argos said:


> Wasn't it obvious ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Going to use it as scenery ... an exploded Reaver across the landscape of Armagedon!


:O
AWESOME!


----------



## Crimson_Chin

Reaver ... scenery ..

*twitch*

(smoke starts billowing from chin's ears, and the handlers run over to repair the fried circuitry)


----------



## AM.

Hmmm... it sounds interesting. I'll keep an eye here.


----------



## Concrete Hero

That will be some damn impressive scenery...

Can't help but feel like one of my lungs has filled with blood though


----------



## Brother Argos

Sorry for missing posting yesterday, but I was working at a clients all day and had no chance to get to the internet. So today is all about the weekends activities, when I got the chance to do something fascinating, my daughter Hannah (10yr old) wanted to spend some hobby time with Daddy!

Initially she started off building a really simple WWII kit of a V2 rocket in 1:48th scale, about 20 pieces, all fairly simple. She used the GW flush cutters to remove the model from the sprue and learnt how to keep the cutters close to the kit (I know its not the best way to do it, but I did not want her using my hobby knife/scalpel to tidy up). She then used my "Squadron" sanding sticks to tidy up and remaining marks of the sprue, and after about 45 minutes and some help with the instructions she had built a rocket. She learnt how to carefully apply glue (Revel Contacta Professional) to the model, and to not flood the area she was gluing and then to keep the parts pressed together till they stuck. 

I was truly impressed that she took the time and effort to do things the way I suggested, normally getting things done quickly and with the least effort is her way to do work. She was also proud of her work at the end and wanted to paint it and add decals (she called them stickers). I mentioned that could be another days hobby time, and she agreed.

After finishing the rocket it was my turn to do some modelling, and I assumed she would drift away and go back to playing, however she didn't, she hung around asking what I was going to make and suggesting she could help me, by cutting things out and helping me glue. So "Team Argos" decided on making one of the new Planetstrike Imperial Bastions as a project, Hannah helped cutting out the pieces and tidying them up, and then gluing them together. For one of my models, it might have slightly more glue visible than normal, but I have a certain emotional attachment to this piece of scenery now.

Some observations about the model, its relatively straightforward and GW did a reasonable job making the kit with lots of detail and options (I think they are also selling some of the kit as as the Bastion Upgrade Pack in the scenery section of their website). One suggestion I have is that the centre point of the flooring is unsupported so use some sprue to reinforce it underneath: -










The other thing I noticed was the poor look of the joints at the corners of the building: -










In addition as you can see in the picture above, due to the thickness of the walls the joints in the wall can be highly visible, this troubled me as well. So I set about trying to find a way to cover the joints on the corners, and to hide the joins where the walls met. Plasticard was my immediate solution and rummaging around in my plasticard box I found some Evergreen stripstyrene 2.0mm "Angle" (Code 292) although the 2.5mm "Angle" (Code 293) would work just as well.

Suppliers in the UK and USA have 292 in stock, if anyone knows a central European supplier of Evergreen please post, so I can include that in future as well.

This would cover the wall joint and was the same width as the reinforced banding found on the lower section of the building, so would feel to scale. I would need to apply rivets to the Angle strip to keep it in character with the rest of the building, which was going to be a boring task, but I did get to use the Micro Hole Punch that had arrived with the Photo Etching kit. The hole punch made the process fairly easy, and to keep the rivets to scale I used the 0.5mm punch.

In addition I added cover plates to the corner joints to conceal them, and used rivets to make a plausible looking riveted joint. The plates were made from 0.25mm thick plasticard, which I cut into 11mm sections, once I had four of them, I then cut out a 5mm square from one corner. This resulting L shape made the lower plate, while I then cut a 2.5mm square from one corner of the 5mm square I had left, this made the top corner joint cover. These corner joints were then glued to the corners and with a little pressure deformed to fit the slight angle of the corner. In the following picture I have used badab black wash to highlight the rivets, as almost no matter how I took the picture the "white on white" nature of the rivets and angle strip hid the rivets completely. I am sorry if the wash makes the work look slightly messy, but it was the only way to highlight the rivets and once the model is sprayed it won't be visible: -










As you can see the wall joint is concealed and the corner joints are hidden and rationalised away. I used the same spacing for my rivets as those found on the lower section of the model itself which was approximately 6.5mm. The black wash sadly makes the rivets appear larger and slightly uneven, but they are all accurately sized and spaced appropriately as will be revealed when an grey or black primer coat is added. Placing the rivets was helped significantly by a new arrival to the glue section, not easily available in the UK I had to order this via ebay from a hongkong reseller, the Tamiya Extra Thin cement. The beauty of this cement is the ultra fine applicator brush as shown in this picture: -










As you can see in comparison to my thumb in the corner of the picture, the brush is tiny, fine and comes to a point, allowing incredibly fine glue work. Having used it to place 100+ rivets at the weekend I must say it performed excellently and I will be getting a spare bottle. 

With the addition of bucket loads of rivets and being situated in the Ash waste of Armageddon, this model cries out for some rust using the MiG powders  and with light grey concrete-ish feel, lots of rust streaks running down the surface from the rivets when the acidic rains hit the wastelands.

With Hannah's help it turned out to be a fun piece of scenery to make and hopefully she will continue her interest in modeling.


----------



## Winterous

Looks good man, I'd be happy to have a little girl who shares my hobby


----------



## Apoca6

Nice, sounds like Hannah had a great time too :grin: 
my two would get fed up and wrap the bastions arount each others head :shok: but they are onlt 5 and 3 :grin:


----------



## dirty-dog-

I would imagine that having your daughter help you would be rather centimental.

and i hope she stays with the hobby too, then you can teach her all the tips and tricks to modelling and we can have another great hobbyist on these awsome forums.

But on a more modeling point of view, 
do you think that the bastions are good kits? i have been looking at getting one or two for a massive apoc games next year and really need some good terrain.


----------



## Brother Argos

Working up in London today, no updates from me, however I think SCC has been working on the 609th fighter wing on Battle for Armageddon.

Because of work and the clients needs I won't have the chance to do any modelling till Thursday evening as it currently stands, which means next update will be Friday sometime.


----------



## dirty-dog-

damm real life, but if ya didnt work you wouldnt be able to afford a revenant titan for scenery would ya lol

definitly can wait to see an update now.


----------



## Cleitus_the_Black

I haven't been able to read all of this thread yet, but damn this is great. Really I'm just here for encouragement, keep it up and I can't wait to see what you do next!


----------



## Brother Argos

Do you remember how I discussed being a perfectionist can help when working on something and sometimes it can hinder you?

Well this last three days it has driven me crazy, I have been working on the Bastion that Hannah and I made, and I wanted to get a nice concrete style finish to it. I have tried washes, powders and stippled painting, I could not find anything that worked for me.

So before I throw this model out of the window, does anyone have a good technique for painting/creating a concrete effect? Link to an article ? ... description of how YOU did it ?


----------



## Crimson_Chin

Alright, so I haven't tried it yet. But a good idea (try it out on plasticard/sprue) might be rubbing the thing with steel wool, or something that will leave it with some surface variation.  I've found it's really hard for me to PAINT concrete unless it's textured something like concrete - but like I said, I haven't tried this, so test it somewhere first.


----------



## Brother Argos

The more I think about the problem I realise the issue is that concrete has small holes in it as can be seen here ... 










The problem I have is that all "textures" applied are protrusive, and don't match what my mind wants, which would be "intrusive"


----------



## AM.

You'd try sandpapers of different grits.


----------



## Crimson_Chin

Dent it with crap.
Hit it with a rock.

Those are intrusive strategies. It might be a good idea to simply hit away at it with oddly shaped stuff, i mean not trying to break it or anything. But it's gonna be hard to get that kind of "small" instrusions, isn't it? Being that they're tiny intrusions, scalewise.

On a side note, GW bases, lightly sanded, make for pretty good concrete. I don't know how you achieve that texture, but perhaps if you hit the concrete sections with textured paint then sanded them down a little, that would give the effect you're looking for?


----------



## Munky

I wonder if there is a way to etch the plastic maybe with a solution flicked on at random from a tooth brush or equivilent.(possibly solvent that does a good job of dissolving plastic) obviously test this on a spare sheet of styrene lol.( I know you know that already mate )
Maybe something like the textured spray but sanded in some areas to give that distressed look.
Or even some dark grey flicked on to suggest pitting. Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.


----------



## dirty-dog-

you could try hitting it with a stiff wire brush, that would leave somewhat holes, or you could try drilling .25mm holes in it with a pin vice.

other than that maybe try getting some concrete textured plasticard? thats if they have such a thing.

with the wire brush you could also try heating the wires up and pressing it into the bastion, that would leave melted dents and then sand it smotther if it protrudes from the plastic.

hope this helps


----------



## Azwraith

yeah i think munkys idea is the best .. if you can get a highly diluted solvent and splash it onto the plasticard. it should create tiny holes.. then wash it straight away under the tap with some dishwashing liquid to remove any excess solvent. and then maybe a sandpaper int he other areas.

or spray it with texture paint first then sand that down a little then do the solvent technique.


----------



## tony161

I love everything you have done in this thread, but can you please post a pick of a finished SL squad of the ones you have made, because that would be so cool to see.


----------



## Winterous

I'm back!
For concrete, I would suggest:

Sand it lightly, that'll get the rough texture you want.
Find some way of random placement, like flicking paint onto the surface of the model.
On some of the points allocated by the random system, drill _tiny_ holes.

Good luck


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## 123birds

Love your stuff. Also for the concrete, i swould say get that one new GW brush that has the flat dry brushing head and drybrush the hell out of it. My one friend did and it turned out frikin amazing looking. also +rep


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## Winterous

123birds said:


> Love your stuff. Also for the concrete, i swould say get that one new GW brush that has the flat dry brushing head and drybrush the hell out of it. My one friend did and it turned out frikin amazing looking. also +rep


The problem is not the colour, it's the texture.
He wants it to look like real concrete, he posted a picture on the last page I think.


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## Brother Argos

Sorry for the extended absence, for the last week and a half I have been bed ridden with an ear/throat virus. At the worst point I was sleeping around 18 hrs a day and remaining in bed even when awake. 

Finally I returned to work yesterday and trying to catch up with my backlog after all that time away. So I will be busy for a couple more days catching up.

However as is always the case when you cannot do what you want to do, I have a whole load of ideas to work on. I think first up with be adapting the new Demolisher/Punisher/Executioner to work with the modified Ryza pattern turrets I bought from Forgeworld (I love the look of the new plasma weapon). In addition all the parts for my next steel legion trooper are complete and sitting at home in Silicon rubber as we speak. 

I am looking forward to getting back to my Steel Legion after an enforced absence.


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## Winterous

Good to have you back, I hope you didn't suffer too much 
I didn't know the new tanks were released, I'm gonna go check them out online


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## Brother Argos

I had them on advance order and they released early


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## Winterous

Brother Argos said:


> I had them on advance order and they released early


:O
Cool as.
Take some photos of the new bits, totally


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## dirty-dog-

Bummer about the Not feeling too good, but it is good to hear from you, and its good to hear that your back up and running.

hope you can catch up with work, cause thats not always easy to do.

Its also good to hear that youve got your steel legion guys done too, definitly cant wait to see them


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## Munky

Have you had any thoughts on the conrete texture yet im interested in what you go for?


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## Winterous

Mr. Argos, Mr. Argos, where for art thou Mr. Argos?


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## dirty-dog-

i agree, im missing the resin steel legion


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## Winterous

He hasn't been on since the day after his last post 
Probably gone on holidays or something, maybe he's got a huge project.
Still, a month and a half?
I guess he could have been injured, that would make more sense given the lack of notice.


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## dirty-dog-

or busy with familly/work


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## Winterous

dirty-dog- said:


> or busy with familly/work


If it was family then there's a few things it could be.

*Holiday:* He would have had time to tell us, as these things take time to plan.
*Unexpected guests:* He'd have a touch of free time in all likelihood, and they probably wouldn't stay for a month and a half.
*Illness or death:* He could be too busy or distressed to even think about using the internet, so this one makes sense.


*Work:* He'd most likely have time to tell us beforehand, or during.


Wow, I think about things differently to other people don't I?


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## dirty-dog-

yea, could be an emergancy or maybe he couldnt pay his internet bill due to too much forgeworld lol


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