Saturday Workbench

Well, the cotton wool balls soaked in diluted ink didn't work very well - only the outer layers got stained and they took ages to dry. Scratch that idea. However, I have another plan...


I did a little bit of shopping this morning. Here's what I got:

At the back is an A2 magnetic whiteboard (A2 is 420 x 594 mm - the white board surface is slightly smaller than that, but I've still got a usable 16" x 22" area). This will be for my 1X scale arena - there's another pic further down to show you how it will be used. I also got some small magnets and adhesive dots for keeping track of things like speed and handling status during games.

The cushion does serve a purpose - the fibre stuffing may be a better alternative to the cotton wool for smoke and paint markers. I've got a few bits soaking in the ink mix at the moment.

As for the cars, at some point when I wasn't looking they leapt into my basket. I tried to put them back on the shelves, but they started crying so I bought them and brought them home. There are a couple of dune buggies in there for wasteland games or off-road mayhem.

As yesterday was payday, I purchased a few more Car Wars PDFs from E23 Warehouse. A lot of my time this afternoon has been spent printing out some of them, along with some 3X counters that I'd downloaded from the "St Paul's Area Road Knights" website. Now I've just got to cut them all out...

On Thursday night I put the four black Mercs into the stripping jar and had been scrubbing them every so often to remove the paint. The black paint was much tougher to get off these than the other colours were. Today I was happy that I'd got as much off as I could, so they got a quick rinse and were left to dry.

While that was going on, I took the A2 board outside and sprayed it with grey texture paint (having masked the shiny metal surround with electrical tape). I finished off the can - I'll need to get another so that I can do the rest of the MDF bases (I didn't get a chance yesterday at work). Here's how the board looks now, with one of the 1:200 plastic cards to show it is still magnetic:

I will probably do some work on it at some point to create some colour variation and maybe add some ground markings.

This evening I've been working on the Mercs. After a look at the cars to see where weapons could be mounted I drilled holes where required and prepped the weapons. I then gave the car shells a going over with sandpaper to roughen the surface a little to help key them for priming (see - I did remember!).

I then glued the weapons in place. While I had the superglue out, I fixed the wheels to the chassis.

I'll be setting up the spray booth and airbrushing kit after this post, ready to go tomorrow. Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have them finished.

More Swag

Having been prevented going to 4D Modelshop on Monday, I did manage to get there on Tuesday after work. I might have picked up a few bits apart from the 1.6mm masking tape:

Yes, some metal 1:200 cars and vans for the 1X Car Wars project. Whilst they are more expensive than the plastic ones, they make up for that with much better detail.

This evening when I got home, there were a couple of packages waiting for me. The first was an Ebay purchase I'd made - two long-nose trucks for £7 (including delivery):

The other package was from GZG - my order of 15mm and 6mm turrets:

6mm large and medium turrets

6mm small turrets - 1:200 pickup to show size

Hotwheels car added to show size of turrets

The small 6mm turrets will work well for the 1:200 cars and as droppers/dispensers on the 3X vehicles. Now that I know what's in the packs, I think I'll be placing an order for some more

Yesterday I received an order of MDF bases from Warbases for basing vehicles and for various counters (mines, spikes, oil, smoke etc). I took those into work today to spray with grey texture paint. I got most of them done, but still have a few to do tomorrow.

Last night I did a little test for making oil slicks using gloss gel with some black ink mixed in and small amounts of water to help spread it.

I probably don't need as much black ink as I used here but do need some water, I think if I get the right mix and time things right, I should be able to raise some "peaks" to paint up as flames for flaming oil jet markers.

This evening I've been dying some cotton wool balls in diluted pink ink for paint spray markers. The balls are drying out now. I'll post pics tomorrow once they are finished.

Another Three Dueling Cars

I surprised myself - I actually managed to finish all three of the cars I was painting up. So, here are some pretty pics for you.

The blue and orange are a bit darker in real life. Those two colours seem to get bleached out whenever I take pics.

I'll try to work up some designs for all four cars tomorrow - I'll be aiming at Div 15 for those who know Car Wars.


I've also unboxed the trucks which got delivered this afternoon:

I do like the pink truck. I think I'll have to do up a team of pink cars at some point to go with it *grin*


So, now that these cars are done that clears my workbench. Over the next few evenings I'll do some work on the 1X cars.

Monday Mayhem

So much for my plans. Just as I was getting ready this morning to head down to 4D Modelshop, I got an email to tell me that my order - which I wasn't expecting until Wednesday at earliest - had been sent out from the depot for delivery today. Curses! I had to stay in until it turned up.

So, I carried on with the 3 cars I'd primed yesterday. I'd actually done the base coats before I got that email, so it was on to the next stage - masking the green and the blue for some striping. I spotted that the tape on the green was slightly out of alignment, so I went to adjust it and - horror! It pulled off a big patch of primer and green. Into the acetone pot it went to strip.

Lessons learned - 
1. it might be an idea to de-tackify the masking tape by pressing it onto my trouser leg before applying it to the car
2. Maybe the primer hadn't bonded to the metal properly. In future, after stripping and before priming I'll rough-up the surface with sandpaper

However, I still had two cars to work on so I didn't let that hiccup stop me. I added the stripes to the blue car by airbrush and then painted up the turrets, weapons, trim and some details by hand. The orange car had some panels painted green by hand. There followed the obligatory touching up, then I sprayed the turrets, cars and plastic "glass" with Klear.

You may have spotted a mistake I made.

I hadn't glued the turrets to the cars before doing the Klear coat! What you won't have spotted is that I hadn't quite done all the details on one of the turrets.

By this time, I had sanded the green's metal and primed it. Then at about 5pm the doorbell rang and my parcel was gratefully received.

Once I'd unpacked the trucks, I gave the green car its green basecoat. I've decided not to do stripes on this one, but it will be getting some black panels done by hand. I should get those and the rest of the detailing done this evening, alongside finishing off the other two cars.

Sunday Drivers!

No, not a rant about folks who only drive once a week. It's Sunday, I'm posting about small cars and one of the Car Wars supplements was called "Sunday Drivers" (or Crash City for some countries/releases).

I did some more shopping this morning. I needed to buy a new printer as I'd managed to knacker the paper feed and print heads the other night by forgetting to switch off duplex printing when I went to print some pages on card. I also needed to stock up on nail polish remover for stripping paint off cars. I imagine you have already guessed that I might have picked up some more cars. You guessed right:

The helicopter is obviously far too small, but one of my colleagues has a young lad so he'll be getting that along with some other bits and bobs that I can't use. The main point to getting that pack was the tow truck and the vans.

If you're wondering why I bought 3 identical black cars, there is method in my madness. I already had one, so needed another three to let me make up a matching set for "Amateur Night" at the club.

Since posting yesterday, I've done some more work on the modded 3X scale car and also on the 1:200 cars. I finished doing the wheels and bumpers on the latter and have stuck them onto individual bases - I decided that it was going to be easier in the long run than mounting them in strips then cutting them. I'll finish them in small batches over the next few weeks. As you can see, the yellow looks much better over a white basecoat.

Did I say I'd done a little bit of work on the 3X car? That's a bit of an understatement - I've finished it! So here are some pics to show it step by step:

This is how it started out

There were a few bits where I'd managed to scratch off some of the primer and paint when fiddling around with masking tape. I touched those up with white primer before doing the next stage.

Masking tape removed - some bleed, but not enough to worry about

Must learn to be more careful when painting black/dark grey near yellows and reds

That is how I left it last night. Today I did some touching up, painted metal bits, gave it a coat of Klear followed by a thin black wash to try and get it into the recesses. And here are some pics of the finished auto-dueling car:

This was a good learning experience and will help with the rest of the vehicles I mod and paint. I now know that I need to get some extra-narrow masking tape (a quick trip to 4D Modelshop tomorrow). I also know that it is probably best to leave turrets off if you are planning to add stripes that go along the length of the car. Oh, and to make sure that the masking tape is firmly pressed down at the edges. The final thing I learned was that it might be better to black-line the recesses with a fine-tip pen than using a wash, especially over light/bright colours.



I decided last night to try to get another three cars done this weekend, so three cars got disassembled and the metal shells went into the acetone bath overnight. This morning they got a good scrub, then were rinsed and left to dry.

This afternoon I worked out what weapons I wanted to fit them out with, drilled any holes required, cut up the weapons to fit, glued them in place and left the superglue to set. I'm in the middle of priming them right now.

When I've finished priming this batch, I'll call it a day. Tomorrow should see me getting them almost finished.