Stripping!

Get you mind out of the gutter we're not talking about shaking our asses for dollars oh no, no, no. This is much simpler article about getting paint off your mini's

No Stripper poles here (or in Iceland apparently)

Anyways moving on, you've probably got a pile of minis that maybe you painted ages ago and are just not happy with your skill at the time or maybe you scored a bargain on those monstrously painted space marines from Ebay. 

What ever it is that you've got you want it back to bare metal/resin and of course undamaged. So you're going to need some easy to acquire tools....

1: Simple Green Concentrate: It's the big Green bottle sometimes it comes attached with a smaller spray bottle (Keep that under the sink for cleaning purposes) it looks like this....

This stuff is great it's non-toxic (they had a little disclaimer on their website that said *This formula is orally non-toxic per The Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals and readily biodegradable per OECD 301D. ) don't drink it though. Never dilute this and never throw it away.

2: Brass wire brush: Similar too a tooth brush but with metal bristles I've used this on both metal and resin mini's it strips paint just fine and does no damage.

3: A suitable equivalent of a Simple Green Rancor pit preferably one with a sealed lit you don't need that pine fresh smell all the time save that assault on the senses until cleaning day.

4: A bucket, some hot water mixed with detergent/dish soap: This is where we are going to clean the abominable paintjobs away. Pro-tip - now you might also want to wear those yellow gloves people use when doing the dishes because that brush pierces skin so easily and that Simple Green stings like a mother f*cker.

WARNING: Next part involves manual labour/going outdoors

Leave your mini's in the Simple Green Concentrate for about a week, although my Flames of War stuff only took 15 mins before the paint was slewing off, pile your stuff in as much as possible and let the goo work it's magic.

The final step use your wire brush to whisk away those bad paintjobs take back your wishes, shine on you crazy diamond.......ahem while you're doing this be sure to dunk your mini's in the hot water/soap mix constantly brushing until there's no paint. I some places you'll need a scalpel blade to remove paint in the those hard to reach gun barrels. Once you're satisfied put your mini's aside to dry.

Now I can airbrush these Grants and give them the attention to detail they deserve and remember what Bob Ross said we don't make mistakes we have happy little accidents fortunately this is 2015 and we have Simple Green :P

For any Painting Commissions or queries please email me kingdan82@gmail.com  

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Product Review: Rubicon 28mm 1/56th Scale Tiger 1E

So a friend wanted a Tiger for his Bolt Action force, don't ask just..nevermind, so he arranged for a Tiger to be ordered now I intercepted it before he could get it so I set about looking at it an putting it together.

Now what you get for your $40ish dollars is a really nicely detailed kit with options for and Early Tiger, A Desert Tiger with Air filters or a late war Tiger a set of decals and some very easy to follow instructions. This vehicle is non Zimmerit.

This isn't mine I didn't take WIP pics I was too excited

The track wheels and running gear are a dream to assemble coming as part of the track itself no fiddly semi rubber track here once this is on the rest of the tank takes about 20 minutes to assemble. The vehicle itself doesn't have a commander but that's okay.

I spent a couple of hours painting and weathering this beast and it's come up tops surprisingly I'm finding this 28mm stuff good fun to paint I hope you enjoyed this short review. For any painting queries or commission requests please email kingdan82@gmail.com.  

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My Bolt Action Marines All Done!

So after a couple of weeks of casual painting I completed my 750 point USMC List for the Auckland Open although I didn't win I got 2 draws and one loss also a new found respect for Artillery after learning about it's ability to fire over open sights much nastyness.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures during the event because I felt ridiculously sick and forgot my camera and I didn't want to subject you to my phone camera. I also need to make another photobooth!

Below are the glorious 750 points of Marines 

The Whole Force

My Veteran Assault Squad with Shotguns, Pistols and SMG's

My Regular Squad with a BAR

The Boss (1st LT) and his assistant

My favourite The Medic (didn't save anyone)

Regular Sniper good for making NCO's go pop!

Regular MMG 

Regular Bazooka team 

The inexperienced Mortar team

My Regular M4 Sherman 

3 40mm Objectives

I hope you enjoyed this adventure in the Pacific for any painting queries or commission requests please email kingdan82@gmail.com

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DIY With Dan : Explosions!

This is my take on the classic flickering tea light and spray painted cotton balls explosion if you haven't seen this it's a cool little thing that enhances any knocked out vehicle or helps set the look for an artillery bombardment.

Step 1: Gather your tools

You will need A flickering tea light, Super glue, a hard metal tool, black spray paint and either a bag of pre-coloured firey coloured wool (I got mine from Battlefront a while back) or some cotton balls.

Step 2: Test your flickering tea light 

YAY IT WORKS!

Remember these are mass produced made in China dollar store things so quality is not high on the agenda so test it first because we're about to rip into this.

Step 3: Remove the outer casing

With your hard metal tool (lol) wedge it between the casing where they meet at the bottom and pry the internals away from the housing. What you should be left with is the LED and the other useful components remember to also test it again at this stage.

Step 4: Paint it black

Now I covered the LED in tape as well as some other components and also tested it. It's very important as you do not want the original white housing to show through. Now that it still works let's move on to the final step.

Step 5: Making the Explosion

Make a small nest shape with the flame colours this will give some indication and reason for the light source I've superglued this nest down but next time I might use PVA as superglue is very runny and my fingers kept sticking to strands of wool.  

On top of the nest add some grey/black to make it look like smoke etc. You might want to try and bind the fire with the smoke just try and thread it in there. Tease the wool and to make it look more explosive or just subtle as mine's for a knocked out tank.

Results

In conclusion it takes about 15 minutes to build one of these and requires very little skill or effort however the changes I will make to the next one will be to use PVA glue and to cover more of the tea lights base but other that I'm very happy with the result. Try it yourself and see how easy it is.

Thanks

-Daniel

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