Sunday 3 June 2018

Let's roll!

Hello and welcome to Inso's World again.

This week has more or less revolved around chores, shaking off this bloody virus and continuing the tank company.

This is a short, sharp blog post revolving around the assembling and painting of tanks.

To start with, I got hold of some hair ties and some highlighter pens and made some plasma-cannons by cutting a segment from the side of the pen lids and gluing segments of hair ties in to them:



Click the Pix!

After gluing them to the turret mantels, filling the gap with some green-stuff and a spray with primer and base-coat, this is what they looked like:


Click the Pic!

Then it was a case of getting the three tanks assembled as far as they could be, before spray painting:


Click the Pic!

Then it was a case of waiting for the weather to brighten up so that I could get some paint on the tanks and their sprues... however, there was a limited window and my spray paint decided to run out on me... so I only managed to get one base-coated. While that was going on, I was busily painting the tank commander's tank for the punisher platoon (the third tank) and have managed to get it completed (except for decals) so here is where I am at the moment:


Click the Pic!

As you can see, the tank commander still needs to be painted but his tank is done. The plasma-cannon tank has been fully base-coated and will be ready for a wash when the paint is fully dry. I have chosen not to paint the plasma coils glowing and have gone for copper coils instead. I think the duller look will suit the style of my tanks and seems more practical than having a big light emanating from a tank.

So far, I have got the first three tanks to a point where they are ready to have decals applied and once the commander is painted and the decals are on, they will be finished. The second three tanks are at different stages, with one base-coated and the other two assembled, ready for paint. You will notice that one of the plasma-cannon tanks has the turret hatch open so I will be sculpting the second commander to go in there. I plan to paint them one at a time so that means (hopefully - assuming I can summon the motivation) I will have time to sculpt a commander by the time I start painting his/her tank.

Now let's talk about decals. I ordered some about a month and a half ago and have tried to contact the seller, to no avail, so I have written them off and taken the EBay approach to get some more. They have arrived and that means that I now have all the decals that I need for my tank company. I am disappointed about the decals but at least I have what I need to continue the project so it isn't all bad.

The plan this week, will be to paint the commander and get the first of the Plasma tanks ready for decals... but I am not going to set that goal in stone because my hobby motivation hasn't been up to its usual level recently... and I have some chores on the house to get sorted.

Before I finish, just a quick note about the mech. I will not be working on the kit until I have finished the tank company but I am feverishly pawing through pages of Pinterest images to get an idea of what I hope to achieve, when I eventually get started on the mech. It will very much be a case of 'watch this space'.

Right. That's it for today.

See you from the tank-factory!

5 comments:

CounterFett said...

Your plasma cannons are absolute genius. They look good.

Inso said...

Cheers :)

...and they only cost £2.50 (five pens and 12 hair ties)... better than the stupid money on EBay for Plasma cannons from Leman Russ tanks (that would probably have been too big for these anyway).

Da Masta Cheef said...

OMG! Such a great idea!!!

Simon Quinton said...

Brilliant find!

WestRider said...

Oh, wow, those are fantastic Plasma conversions. I'm going to have to remember that!