cerebros wrote:I've had to order a couple of new brushes as my 0 is a bit knackered and doesn't hold a point after a couple of sweeps over a model, and my 0000 also looks like it's on its ways out.

After hearing all about them from Dan, Wayne et al on various podcasts I've decided to give Windsor and Newton brushes a try, so I've ordered a replacement 0 and 000. Assuming these work out I'll also be buying a 2 as well since my current one also appears to be near the end of its life.

Good choice!

BTW - any pics of the new stuff?

Russ Veal wrote:BTW - any pics of the new stuff?

I keep meaning to take some and post up.

Now that the wife has found the charger for her digital P&S I'll see if I can remember to take a few tonight. I would dig the SLR out but a) I'm lazy (it's up in the spare room, the wife's camera is on the coffee table) and b) I'd need to faff around a bit with my Gorillapod to set the SLR up for shots whereas the P&S's macro mode is good enough that I can handhold and still get reasonable focus on the models.

Have you ever read a sentence 3 times and stll had no clue what it says?

cerebros wrote:Techy camera stuff, I'm still to lazy to take the photos

Hopefully that's translated it for you Russ!

Dave wrote:

cerebros wrote:Techy camera stuff, I'm still to lazy to take the photos

Hopefully that's translated it for you Russ!

Spot on!

So much for the virtues of using the camera close to hand. I seem to be having the shakes tonight so only two pics came out reasonably sharp.

This first one is of one of my archers



While this one is of one of my Dragon Princes



Annoyingly the place I ordered my brushes from sent them by Recorded Delivery so of course my brushes are now somewhere at the depot so I probably won't get my mitts on them until the weekend (it also means no lie-in on Saturday )

Right. Hopefully can start using my new brushes tomorrow. Haven't had a chance since picking them up this morning as I've been sorting through piles of old bank statements and stuff to see what needs keeping and what needs shredding.

Also had a 1000 point game against the wife and her Dark Elves which was either a win or winning draw to me (I'm not going to drop victory points on her yet as she still barely knows the contents of the DE book). Wasn't a bad game as we'd both gone for slightly experimental lists. Well the wife's would have been experimental in any case but I decided not to take a bolt thrower but instead took a noble in a Tiranoc chariot and a mage as well as a lion chariot, 5 Dragon Princes, 6 x Sword Masters, 5 x Sword Masters and 15 Spearmen with full command and the War Banner. She took 10 crossbows, a bolt thrower, 5 Cold One Knights with full command, 10 Witch Elves, 20 Warriors with full command and an assassin and housing the Master, plus a Level 2 Sorceress.

Was one of those games that seems to be going one way then goes another. Seemed to be going the wife's way when my Noble failed his fear test to charge the cold ones (forgot that High Elves get to re-roll psychology tests) leaving the Lion Chariot to go in solo. It only scored 1 hit and no wounds and the Knights had the Always Strikes First banner so over the two phases of combat they killed the chariot without taking any wounds in return. Meanwhile my Dragon Princes got mostly skewered by a volley from her bolt thrower so I was expecting to take a pasting but then in my turn 3 I managed to get Conflagration of Doom off on the Cold One Knights, doing 15 hits and killing 4, and then getting a fireball off on the surviving champion and killing him.

I was also surprised when my spear unit beat her warriors. The assassin (who hadn't been tooled up at all which probably didn't help her) failed to get through the armour saves and in return my guys took the remaining wound off the master, killed a warrior and ended up winning combat by 4 and running the warriors down.

Well have made some more painting progress this week - I've been painting the leather on the models with a base coat of Calthan Brown, although they're all going to need another coat of it as it stands at the moment.

I've also spent some time today experimenting with magnetising knight models onto horses using some leftover Flex-O-Metal I had from magnetising movement trays, plus some of my neodymium magnets. Initial results are a bit mixed. Twin 3mm magnets holds the model to a degree but it's a case of the model will hold for a few moments but will then fall off. (I only ended up trying twin magnets because I was rather off in my aim when I started drilling my hole for the first magnet).

A single 6mm magnet might work but so far I'm having difficulty drilling the hole for it. I'm not sure i've got the right drill bits for the job as I had a look again at the set and it turns out they're masonry bits. The size of the hole needed is also problematic as it's nearly the width of the underside and I noticed that I've actually drilled into my vice ever so slightly. It's also something I could have done with trying out before I'd started painting up any of my knight models as clamping them in the vice is obviously going to end up taking paint off - not something I want happening to the five I've already spent several hours painting up.

I think after Christmas I might search out slightly smaller diameter magnets to try - probably 5mm. (I would get some now but money is going to be tight over the next few weeks, what with Christmas plus the car needing repairs plus its service and MOT next week). That does mean I'll probably have to halt work on knights for now, apart from practicing painting horses on some of the broken ones I've got.

Oops. Can't believe it's been more than a month since I last updated this.

Suppose I'd better do a quick summary of what I've been up to.

Painting has progressed reasonably well on the units of spears and archers I was working on. I've got the archers to the point where I've done my first test spray of my matt varnish on one model, although I nearly had a fit when I took my models outside into the sunlight to pick one to test and realised when I touched up the helmets the other days I'd used Chainmail rather than Boltgun and so they had odd light spots all over them.

Assuming that I'm satisfied with the results of the varnish I'll hopefully do the rest of the archers today so I can get on with adding some static grass this weekend and I'll actually have a unit finished.

As the cat has now started walking all over my painting table again (having had a brief break from it since I moved it) I decided to magnetise all the infantry models I'm working on so that hopefully she'll find it harder to knock them onto the floor. So far that seems to be working.

I've also been experimenting with how best to magnetise my metal knights to the horses (I'm not keen on gluing them on so that I can be more flexible with how I store and transport them, as well as if I decide to repaint them in future). At present I'm not having much joy. I've given up on using the magnets I've been using for magnetising bases as they're a bit too wide and deep to get onto the models without damaging them. I've also tried some 6mm x 0.5mm magnets and sticking them to the inside leg of the knight models but unfortunately due to the thinness of the magnets they're not strong enough to grip the strip of Flex-O-Metal I'm putting on the saddle.

Frankly I'm a bit stumped at the moment at how best to magnetise the knights. If my knight models were plastic I'd be sorted as they'd be light enough to stick (although I'm not sure how I'd cope with having to re-glue lances every five minutes).

Can't believe how quickly the weeks have gone since my last update.

So, quick rundown on progress since the last one:
- Varnish tests have not gone well. The varnish I used seemed to remove a bit of the contrast on the model and I also wasn't overly keen on the final effect when I brushed on some gloss varnish to try and bring back the shine to the metallic areas. So far I've decided not to varnish my plastic models, although that still leaves the bulk of my army which are metals to find a solution for.

- I've decided to give pegging knights and mounted characters to their horses a try although I haven't got round to doing this yet.

- Have got a bit more painting done on the batch of 10 spearmen, plus have done a teensy bit of a conversion to create a unit champion model for them.

- For the last two weeks have managed to get about 20-25 minutes of painting done during my lunch at work. If i can keep that up I should have some models ready to bring home for finishing off soon.

Meanwhile, aside from that I've also been assembling the wife's Hydra. Although it seems as though the damn thing is now mostly made up of Green Stuff due to how badly the tail and most of the heads fitted to the body, even after a small bit of trimming of parts here and there. Have pinned everything as best I can but there's a couple of heads I'm not entirely confident about. Just hope I don't come across anything quite so bad in future.

I've also had to pin a Phoenix Guard standard bearer as I just couldn't get the arm with the standard to stick on. Hopefully the pin I've done will be sufficient.

Finally, I've been stripping the paint off a number of models (since a lot of them I got from ebay and were very badly painted even before I got anywhere near them) so that I'm ready to roll with undercoating and painting them up as soon as I can. Decided to strip the Bolt Thrower crew I'd already painted up as I wasn't overly happy with the paint job and there's only 2 of them. The White Lions, Spearmen, Sword Masters and Archers I've done with white cloth I'm just going to paint the cloth in my blue scheme over the top and to hell if they look crappy.

On the to do list right now are:
- Experiment with pegging knight models to horses
- Figure out what colours to paint my Repeater Bolt Throwers
- Figure out what colours to paint my Dragon Princes' lances.
- Put static grass on my blue scheme archers
- Finish painting the 10 spearmen
- Finish painting my White Lions command group
- Magnetise the bases of models as and when time permits
- Figure out how to base the wife's War Hydra to take advantage of/hide the fact that the left rear foot does not go parallel with the right front and rear feet and so could prove problematic.
- Probably a lot more things that need doing.

I'm planning to upload some pictures as soon as I get my laptop back and have a chance to sit down and sift through. Hopefully next weekend.