246: A Cork Tor Hill

Hills made from foam seem common. I think cork is a good material. When the edges are torn, it has a nice rocky texture. It's more robust than foam. Creating a landscape with visible rock strata is a good way to walk the line between looking natural and having some flat surface to put a model on.

- That's 9mm plywood. 6mm or maybe thinner would do, but I had an offcut. I bevelled the edge by variously hacking at it with a file, a surform (wood grater thingy) and a dremel.
- Toilet rolls cut to random lengths.
- 6mm cork sheet ripped up. I bought mine from amazon.co.uk. You can get it in craft shops. hacking up an old cork noticeboard would probably be a good way to go.
- (hot) glue gun and lots of it. I filled the inside of the toilet rolls around the edges to stick it good and proper.


I used caulk: mastic gun tube, used to squirt around top of skirting board, and paint over. I built this up in layers. and poked extra bits of cork in occasionally. I put the whole thing in a fan oven at 50 degrees to speed things up. This is still several evening's work. Not that long each evening, but it took a few days.

I flocked it with cork dust.
- coat with PVA
- chuck on cork
- shake off excess
- wait for it to dry
- coat with dilute PVA to bind up any loose bits.
This was repeated 3 or 4 times (with oven acceleration).

I added more random battlefield debris (ork, marine, eldar, ...). Painted and added some sickly looking grass.

Done!

245: Lighting a Rhino

Rebuild the searchlight. It needs a little more space to accommodate a standard LED.

I left one wire looking like a cable, and used the brass rod forming the pintle mount as the other connection for the circuit.

 I put the LEDs in brass tubes. This mostly stops light scattering through the plastic. I suggest that getting a pipe cutter (maybe from a plumbing supplier) is best for cutting brass pipe. The bevelled ends on the headlights are a bit trickier. I drilled out a scrap of wood so that the pipe fit in the hole. Then used a hacksaw. The wood stops the pipe collapsing as you saw it. There is still a fair amount of clean up required with needle files afterwards.

The bevel on the headlights helps to hide the LEDs from some angles of view, and helps them to project light cones.

I used the whole interior of the Rhino as a battery and switch compartment. The back door and top hatch are magnetised for access.

The paint on this model came out insufficiently metallic for Iron Knights.

Third Company Tactical Squad Cygnus can see where they are going.

The searchlight gives a high angle, which casts decent shadows.

244: Introducing a new contributor

I'd just like to introduce the newest contributor to this humble blog.

ColonelFazackerley will be bringing his considerably better painting and modelling skills to you all, as well as the gaming exploits of his Space Marines and Eldar.

We hope that between the two of us we can bring a bit more regularity to posting and up the content.

243: The Vanus Temple's many great tutorials

Checking back over the tutorials on The-Vanus-Temple to find the 360 spin code for my post on the 40K calendar, I realised just how much cool info there is on that website and wanted to catalogue and share some of my favourite links:

• There's the aforementioned 360 spin tutorial to produce Games Workshop like images that the viewer can rotate. 
• A little tip to use 5p pieces to keep Space Marine turrets in the tanks. 
• A tip to create green-stuff cabling. 
• A guide to make upright Necron Warriors that are taller than Space Marines. 
• A very simple method to add rivets to just about anything you want. 

I'd definitely recommend you go and check those posts out, and have a little look around on his site too, its very worth the time.

242: Facebook Finds - Henry Steele, The Overlords

Henry Steele is a contributor over on the Overlords group on Facebook and the weekend before last posted up this conversion which is simply amazing.

I absolutely love it and with full credit I think that once I get around to re-doing my Wolves will be borrowing heavily from it.