Onna-Bugeisha and Calvary

Face painting, one of my least favourite parts to paint as I've never really been any good at it. So I've started to force myself to try and improve, since the faces on the Samurai army I'm working on are so nice. 

Also just finished off my Samurai Calvary on my river themed bases. I'm pleased with the bases, but not so much with the horses paint job. Always room for improvment.

Magnetzing

 Some of the guys I know have been magnetizing their models on the bases for awhile now. I’d never found an easy way to find large bits of tin or similar metal for my transport’s boxes at a reasonable cost…. Until now. Having just moved into a new subdivision, there have been a bunch or large for sale house signs around that have been dumped into rubbish skips. Turns out they are awesome for using as large base plates in my plastic storage containers.  So I picked up some cheap magnets rounds that are nice and thin and come with a stick on adhesive.

So I’ve just been through and magnetize all my Zulu’s and also ¾ of my ACW Union army. Since we are in lockdown I’ve run out of magnets, so I’ll have to wait a few more weeks until we are released from our home detention.

 

Works a treat and will make transporting them to the club so much easier.

Necromunda ... Old School.

 Yep, that’s right , the old school version of Necromunda has made a return to my shelves, after I found a copy online along with the source book. I just couldn’t go past it. Both books have now turned up and are in very good nick considering their age, so I'll be digging though all my old models to find if I have any left and then printing off extras that I'll probably need. 

 

No guess if what I'll be going for first ... House Escher of course.

 

I've been busy testing and learning how to use my new Resin Printer, currently using this nice Cyber punck sniper as my test model.

On the LotR, I moved back to my FDM printer to do the Gorogoth, as the actual size was way bigger than I expected, and at the full size, printing in resin just didn’t make sense, plus I still need to learn heaps more before tackling large prints in resin.

I have got alot further with the setting and setup, so I'm getting half decent prints now in resin and I've got my process of cleaning and curing down. So much to learn, but its a good kinda of learning.

The Good, The Bad and the rather Drinkable drop

 Now that I'm over the shock of the flooding (The Bad), we spent this morning clearing the debris off all the fencing. From cupboard doors, tries and all sorts of trash, mostly plastic all mixed in with the copious amounts of weeds and grass. We also managed to untangle our log swing seat and cart it back to our section in bits using the ride-on lawn mower and trailer. It ended up about 100 meters away from its original location in the neighbours oppoiste boundry fence. How the hell it went over the fence inbetween our sections without destroying the fence I have no idea. The power of mother nature is truly amazing... if not a little scary. 

My hand on the tree below indicates the water level , and where I'm standing at ground level is about two meters above the normal level of the river. So its came up about 4 meters ... 150mm of rain in less than 12 hours is a hell of alot of rain. So glad the house is higher.

Onto more fun topics (The Good), my order of water washable resin turned up and I'm currnetly trying that out. Already the smell from the raw resin is way less moxious. So hopfully with some tips I've picked up online I'll get past the problem of the printes sticking to the FEP... or leaving small layers on the FEP in the vat. Even when I'm getting good prints.

Currently printing some Uraki  Orc's for Lord of the Rings, 

The local liquor store is still doing lockdown contactless deliveries, which is keep me in good spirts with a couple of very drinkable drops. One of my favourites of recent times, being the Suntory Whisky makes for very easy drinking and goes with choclate very very well.

Flooding

This morning I woke to find the entire local area under flooding conditions. with the water come up from the river some 3-4 meters, and getting scarily close to the house.  We were lucky and the rain has stopped and waters starting to lower. Our back paddock between us and the forest completely underwater. Fingeres crossed the weather holds long enough for the water to drop back down to normal. 150mm of rain in 12 hours was a hell of a lot of water.

So not alot of painting or printing done today. But I have learnt some more. Found this morning that some of the resin in the vat had cured, so my hobbies room is obviously to light. So i'll have to rethink the setup. For now its all cleaned down and I just dumped the rest of the resin into a contain and cured it. Not going to risk wasting more time with resin that has started to possibly cure in the vat. 

I think it will be a purpose built cupboard with extraction fan in the garage in the near future. in the mean time, some painting to relax is in order.

This and That

 So no printing done so far today. Spent the time watching videos on YouTube, and then changed the FEP on my resin vat, which was simple enough, just time consuming. So I'll be ready to do more printing later tonight or tomorrow. Mean while I've been working on my Pagoda dice tower and some horses for my Samurai Cavalry. 

Plus I just cleaned up some Magnaguard for Legion I printed the other day and put them on bases ready for undercoat and painting.

The fear of resin

 Half and half, My print last night, half was successful and half failed on my print of the Gorogoth. Half the print stuck to the FEP sheet, and the other half was fine. Learnt a few things and what not to do in the future. Had to do a full clean out of the vat and then clean up the FEP sheet, which was a mission. And had to learn a few more things on how to best clean it out. Interesting view on YouTube by various people.

Then second attempt on the parts that failed, also kinda failed,  it started sticking to the FEP and making a poping sound, which I find out later is meant to be ok. I stopped the print out of fear of the FEP breaking/tearing. And cleaned the vat out again to check it. This time the FEP had some serious parts stuck to it, and learning the hard way how not to do things. 

So tomorrow I think test cleaning the FEP sheet again, before I replace it. Be good to get in some practice and workflow methods of how to best handle the vat now that I've rearranged my room to accommodate the new printer.

 I also printed off some handles from my FDM printer for the covers of the new printer, so when I'm working with gloved hands and potential resin on them, it wont mess up the cover to much. Used 3M picture mounting Velcro so I can remove them later on if I decide I don't like them.

Lord of the Rings- Gorogoth

 Found this great model of a Gorogoth to print for my LoTR army I'm planning on building entirely from printed miniatures. 

My first attempt at printing something larger in resin, will be interesting to see how it turns out in the morning.

COVID face mask

 My new face mask is coming along nicely, with some paint is on it. I'm looking foward to walking into the supermaket on the weekend wearing it. (if I get it finsihed in time)  Still got alot of work to do on it, with padding on the back and installing a filter tand strapping as well.

I'm seriouly thinking that I may jsut have to make up a full size helmet to go with it as well. 

Sad Spider

 Found a really cool stl file of a giant spider so tried out with the pre support file on the new resin printer.

It printed well, but the number of supports was huage and getting them all off was a challange with such skiny legs, so ended up breaking a few of the legs off.

A good print though and another learning curve as well, as my printer settings are getting better and I need to learn alot more around supports.

it may be abel to be saved or I may turn it into a dead spider. 

First print

 First resin print... well it was very disapointing. I followed the instrucitons and tried printing the anycubic cubic test print.... complete fail..... twice. A bit of cleanup work when things fail.

Then I tried a goblin print with some of the default setting and bamm.. working. First one wasnt quite right on the exposure times, but second one worked a treat with some tweaking. All part of the learning curve. It's defiantly a learning curve as its very differnet from FDM printing. But the results are looking really good so far and I'm only a few prints in.

And now I just washed and cured two knights that came out really nicly ....

photos arnt great, (mobile phone shots)  but you get the idea.

Now to learn more about teh Slicer software and printing options.. And try somehting a bit larger

Photon Mono X

 My new resin printer turned up today :-)

Anycubic Photon Mono X along with the Wash and Cure station in there new place of residence. So spent the evening setting them and reading instructions  along with watching a few videos. Currently trying out the default test print with the resin I got as part of the deal.

A big learning curve ahead of me, as its very different from FDM printing. I'm already thinking of rearranging my room to have them near the window for better ventilation.

Packaging was really well done, no damage at all, even with one large puncher hole in one of the boxes from shipping. Setup seemed simple enough, so will find out in an hour or so if my first print works out.

The washing station, I was a little surprised on the 8.5L it can hold. Not that I'll be printing much that will fill it that high. But I'll need to order in some bulk IPA I think, once I get the hang of printing.

Face Mask

 So the second, larger print completed early this morning. The upper teeth had a bit of a failure, as I hadn't supported them enough in the print. But a bit of cleanup and some green stuff will see that right. 

Printing at 115% was spot on, and its large enough to fit me. With some light sanding and undercoating to do tonight, should see it ready to paint tomorrow.

I also tried out using some pva glue across the teeth to fill in a few small gaps, will be interesting to see the result. 

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha

 My order from Dixon Miniatures arrive on Friday, took 4 weeks, which isn't to bad all things considering the state of shipping worldwide and COVID19. I haven't bough many things from them before, only a few ACW models. So the additional models for my Onna-Bugeisha list for Test of Honour means I have a few correctly armed min's for my lists, which will help with the games and stop making people grumpy. Plus it will make my Hail Caesar army nice and varied. The minis look really nice and have some good detail on them along with very little to no flashing, so thumbs up there.

I got the Geisha/Towns women along with Onna-Bugeisha with Naginata (unarmoured) which rounds out all the models I need for Test of Honour and is a big start on an army for Hail Caesar.

On the painting front I've been working my way through the Hero's box and some of the cavalry, all the while slowly putting together some of the masked men box set I have. Between 8-11 parts per model, its a fiddly job. Also nearly completed my display board for the Onna-Bugeisha, still have to tidy up and highlight the back wall.

Fail!

 Well last night the print failed, or more accurately the printer failed. For some reason it stalled during the print. Nothing in the logs, so not sure what happened, hopefully its not an issue with the STL file. The one good thing is that I can tell using what was printed it is a little to small for my face. So second attempt I've upscaled by 115%.... 23 hr print, fingers crossed this one works.

Also managed to find the tracking site from my resin printer and its in Auckland .. whaoo.. hopefully I'll get it this week. It will be a good distraction for me while we are in full lockdown.

I'm already planning to make a LOTR army, entirely from printed mini's. Well that's the plan anyway, now that I finally caved in and got the rule books. Which I must say are very nice hardback volumes.

Mandatory mask wearing

 Just spent the last hour rearranging my 3D printer station and setup and preparing for the new resin printer to arrive. The CR-20 is relegated to the lower shelf, and I've just kicked off a 20 hour print after running a 10 minute test of a round base through it after the moving.

With NZ now in lockdown again and the fact we now have to wear masks. Thought I'd print off a Samurai mask, since there are a couple of nice examples on Thingiverse and my material mask I currently have is a Japanese Samurai mask as well.

 Cant wait to get the resin printer, based of the stats it will print way faster and of course way better for miniatures. I'm going to print of this mask in resin as well as a comparison.  The resin one will be for my display cabinet and I'll wear the PLA+ one.

Painting it should be fun as well, I'll get some use out of my spray booth I built the other month.

Smells like Resin.

 

I’ve had a very good start to the first half of the year with work, so got a bit of a bonus which I’ve gone and ordered a resin printer.

Now that they have been around for a few years and have improved so much, along with sorting out the bugs I thought I’d give them a go.

The main decider was the new wash and cure machines they have now, which will take away a lot of the mess and hopefully smell from the resin.... I hope.

Now it's down to the good old "hurry up and wait" for it to arrive from our Anycubic. Hopefully it wont get held up in customs. In the mean time I'm searching for some models to print up for Lord of the Rings.

 

 

The Big Man

 

Work in progress on the big man. Having fun painting once again

Test of Honour Dice tower and terrain.

 Been awhile since my last post, have been busy making and painting stuff. This is my latest terrain piece which doubles as a dice tower. Tested it the other night playing a game of Pandemic and it works really well. I magnetizes the base so I can remove the top Pagoda and use it as a sperate piece of terrain. Due to the warping of the base print, which wasn't to bad I mounted it on a 3mm mdf board and built it up with clay. Now just waiting a few days to dry and then some sanding.

Here we go again

 Here we go again ... full lockdown.