Friday, October 11, 2013

Op Sternguard rescue, part 2

Finally done with the cleaning phase. It took some tedious scraping with a fine needle to get all the brown goop out of the armor recesses. I discovered some blue primer in the very bottom of the layers, interesting! Anyways, the next step is basing after the greenstuff and superglue has completely set. I will leave some of the arms off as you see in the picture, to be able to paint the chests properly. Two arm fittings are the worst, but I will help it along by doing some greenstuff pre-fitting at this stage. That will make it so much easier to just pop the arms in place after the parts have been painted.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Operation Sternguard rescue

It's time again. I know I know, I promised myself not to buy any more second hand models on eBay. It's just not worth it with all the cleaning and the horrible horrible epoxy glue and ruined bits. But this had to be an exception. Since GW rolled out new models for the Sternguard Veterans, I knew I wanted a set of the old ones before they become hopelessly hard to get hold of. And I knew I wanted the metal ones, so there was at least a shimmer of hope of getting them clean. After only a couple of days of browsing the Swedish version of eBay, Tradera, I found these beauties for the bargain price of $14 plus shipping.
Mmmm that's a gorgeous paint job right there. I have to admire the brush control here. How in the name of Jebus himself did this guy manage to get such a thick coat of paint on so neatly? I also like the ambitions. "Three colours to play in the tournament? Ok, you got it! Blue-black-red-DONE."

Nevermind though, I'm sure he (or she) is very nice IRL. And I love Crimson Fists, I wish I had done my army in their theme. Now, on to my project. Time to see what these suckers have under their coat(s) of paint.
Emperor, I am melting!
After the first dunk in the acetone free nail polish remover (thank you, darling!) he is looking very surprised and a bit soggy. The top coat basically falls off, and the black plastic in the slotta base melts and gets stuck to the skin of my fingers. A hot tip is to break off all plastic parts if you can.
You used WHAT as a primer?
This is after a good scrubbing with an old toothbrush. That brown stuff is really awful and just won't come off. It's not regular primer because it sits quite thick in places. Two or three dunks in the bath of horror later, and they look like this:
Almost there now.
Good thing that these guys use regular space marine backpacks, because the original ones are ruined...

Stay tuned for part two - reassembly and priming!