Chaos HellBrutes

                                                              Thousand Sons HellBrute

                                                                      Khorne Hellbrute

Striking Scorpians and Pheonix Lord Kandaras

                                                              Striking Scorpians

Pheonix Lord Kandaras

Scotty's 1/72 Tie Fighter from Fine Molds

Part 2

After waiting for nearly a week for my batteries to turn up I continued on with the tie fighter build. My original rig for the battery didn't work so well so I managed to find a button battery surface mount which is nearly small enough to fit in the bottom of the tie. I cut bits off and sanded it down and just managed to get it to fit right so the bottom lid piece will also fit. There's a magnet behind the battery holder which is mounted in the hole underneath the pilot seat and there's a magnet installed in the centre of the bottom lid piece so it can be easily removed to put a battery in for lit or a magnet in the batteries place for non lit. This will also serve as a magnetic mounting point for a flying base in the future.

The canopies were polished using tamiya finish compound and then dipped in acrylic floor wax. I masked off the canopies using the masking stickers supplied with the kit. These were printed on a kind of sticker and needed to be cut out with a scalpel blade. I've never used printed masking stickers before. They fit perfectly but the glue is very weak and the sticker material rather thick so I tried burnishing them down a bit with a blunted tooth pick to avoid spray going beneath the masks. I'm not sure how well they are going to work but I'll have to wait until the painting is complete to find out. Fingers crossed. Here's a great tip for gluing transparent parts to your models. Leave some acrylic floor wax in a paper cup over night. The next day the wax will be thick and sticky due to evaporation and the paper cup absorbing some of the fluid. This can then be applied to the canopy or whatever using a toothpick and when dry will be crystal clear.

I masked around the inside parts of the wings and sprayed them with black primer. I then gave them a coat of satin varnish which should give a bit of a textural contrast to the rest of the tie which will be all matt. I masked them before painting so a strong bond can still be attained when glued into the frames. I also drilled out a hole on the inside frame piece of each wing panel so I can mount a magnet in each later. I mounted a magnet in each wing arm of the hull. This will allow the wings to be easily removed and re attached to the finished model for safe transport.

Here's a pick of the hull fully built with the canopies attached. I sprayed the canopies and did some very basic pre-shading using thinned down black primer.

Thanks

Scotty

Scotty's 1/72 Tie Fighter from Fine Molds

Since I enjoyed bulding the X-Wing so much I've dove straight into building a tie fighter. This is a much simpler model than the X-Wing so It should build quicker. I'm going to do a light grey paint job on this one like on the first star wars movie. I'm going to do a build log for this one.

 I started today and got the Cockpit finished. Note I changed the kit part for the little computer thing on the front hull piece which was solid plastic. I thought a little H.U.D. would look cool, even if it's not film accurate.

I soon realised that, unlike the X-Wing model, when this is finished very little light will get into the cockpit and hence render detailing it nicely a complete waste of time. So I've decided to try and light the cockpit with an LED. Now then, I love models with lighting incorporated because it really brings a model to life. However I hate the fact that most lit models are powered externally and so they can't be picked up and moved around while lit. I also hate to see mounting holes on models. So if I'm going to light a model of a vehicle it must be powered by battery and be self contained. This is very tricky with such a tiny model but here's what I've come up with. I found a tiny little 3 volt button battery which is 10mm x 2.5mm, just enough to power a single LED and should fit in the hull underneath the cockpit. I couldn't find a battery holder small enough to fit which will also allow easy removal and installation of the battery in the model. So I'm making my own battery holder using magnets which will also hold the bottom piece of the model in place.

Well the circuit works well and the bottom holds in place very well so I'm looking forward to receiving my battery. To finish off the cockpit I added some tiny little detailing wires.

Scotty's 1/72 Hero X-Wing fighter from fine molds

So here's something I've been working on for the last week. It's not Games Workshop but I thought a few of you might like it. I'm calling it finished for now but I may very well be adding a bit more weathering.

Here's a few shot's of the painting process. For more finished pictures please scroll down.

So first off was painting and detailing the cockpit. I actually did this about a year or two ago and then put the kit back in it's box for another day. I'm glad I did.

After constructing the fighter into a few main parts I re-scribed most of the main panel lines using an old exacto blade and a needle in a pin vise. This should make the end paint job look better and the panel lines will take a pin wash way way easier.

This is going to be an airbrush intensive paint job so first I prep all of the parts onto sticks so I can move them about without touching them. I also decided to mask and paint the canopy instead of using the frame decals supplied by fine molds

First things first I primed the model with vallejo primer and pre-shaded some areas with tamiya flat black acrylic. Tamiya acrylics are alcohol based and absolutely suck it for brush painting but they can be thinned right down and airbrush very smoothly. Great for detailing and weathering.

Next up I misted over the model with vallejo model colour white grey and then highlighted panels with white. Yes it does look very light coloured but the weathering will tone it down a bit later. I'm painting red 5 from the death star trench run on the first Star Wars movie. The origional screen models were painted black and then progressively airbrushed with white.

After leaving the paint to fully cure I started adding the red markings. As you can see I opted not to use the provided decals as I felt they are a bit too colourful. Instead I masked them off and airbrushed them which allowed me to add a bit of fading. For the red colour I used vallejo model colour Carmine red. The chipping was done using a wet toothpick before the paint had a chance to fully dry.

I then continued to mask off and paint the other main markings and some metal for the engines. All of these colours were mixed using various vallejo acrylics. Then I sealed in the paint with 2 airbrushed coats of acrylic floor polish.

I then added the detail decals using micro set and micro sol. Most of these were tiny little dots. Then I gave it another thin coat of acrylic floor polish and did a dark grey pin wash in the recessed panel lines using windsor and newton oils.

Ok so I forgot to take photos as I was going along because the painting was going so well. But here's what I did. After the pin wash had been left for 24 hours to dry I did a gunk wash using artists pastels, tap water and dish soap. After that was fully set I sealed it in with a matt varnish from vallejo and did some streaking using various oil paints. After that I airbrushed some tamiya acrylic browns and black to add some weathering on the nose, torpedo holes and engines. I then airbrushed a little clear blue badger ghost tint on the engine nozzles to get a bit of a heated feel, a bit like on a motorbike exhaust. Like I said I may well do a bit more weathering but for now I'm happy with it. I have to say that these kits are amazing.They're very detailed, well molded and go together like a dream. Only minor filling needed to be done. One thing I really like with this kit is once finished you can change between wings open or closed and swap the landing gear from closed to open. I would love to get my hands on the 1/48 X Wing and do a full LED lit model.

Airbrushes used were a badger 105 patriot for the most part and a badger renegade krome for the weathering and pre-shading. I hope you guys like it.

P.S. I have something install for this model in the future which should be cool if I can pull it off, so watch this         space.

Thanks

Scotty