Adeptus Mechanicus Icon 3 - Basing Up

While I am now feeling a lot better than I was I am finding I still have little time to do any hobby stuff due to work annoyingly taking over.

All I have managed is the odd half hour here or there on a couple of mini-projects.

The first one is trying out the AdMech icon I cast up on a base.

I thought about having the icon popping out of some rubble, so I set about knocking one up.

By angling the mould you can get some part casts which are perfect for that half buried look...

All they need is a quick sand for a flat base and then they can glue them in place onto a base (a mini or a terrain base).

After an undercoat it looks like this:

Considering how quick I knocked it up with really very little care I think it looks decent enough. With more time spent putting one together I think the part angled casts will be perfect for this sort of thing.

It is now going to go into a box as I've got no use for it, I only built it as I wanted to see how the casts would turn out. I don't use the big flyer oval bases for my aircraft and I don't have any use for a rubble base so this is a bit unneeded to say the least.

Adeptus Mechanicus Icon 2

So the last week has been another quiet one with me still being in no state to do any real model work.

As such I only managed to keep my eye in by working on the Adeptus Mechanicus icon.

I gave the icon an undercoat to help highlight any areas which needed more work. I spotted some things which needed to be worked on more, such as the sunken area round the edge and around the eye and nose.

The icon then got another undercoat...

At this point there wasn't much else I could do but do a mould and get a cast done:

Few air bubbles in the mould which was annoying but no problem to clean them up on the cast itself.

Plan is to turn a couple of these into rubble for bases. Plus when (I say when but 'if' would be more appropriate) I build city fight and Zone Mortalis boards these will come in very handy.

Now there is a chance I will get asked the question so I will say now I won't be selling any casts.

Warhammer Quest - Part One...

...descending into the Dungeon (like Max Mosley, but without the uniforms).

As mentioned in my monthly roundup post I will be knocking out some Warhammer figures to use in Warhammer Quest.

A quick search provided the first models i'll be doing.



Five Ogres, had to order some replacement arms.



Seven Ghouls, again had to order some replacement arms.

The first ones i'll be painting though will be these skeletons. Have to say the old GW skellies are horrible. Naff poses, naff weapons and stupidly large skulls.

I have also improved the weapons a bit, by improved I mean roughed up. They looked far too neat and brand new for warriors who had dragged themselves from under the ground. I can't see the undead spending much time taking care of their hand weapons.



Part of our plan for the Quest stuff is to have bases matching throughout.

For this Maelstrom (from The Rising Sign) sculpted some 20 & 25mm bases, I did a mould for these and tonight I cast the first few sets.

The masters.

One of the skellies in place. He's got a headache he just can't shake.

And here are some of the casts.

I sanded the base of a few and gave them a coat of primer

I gave one of the bases a very (very) quick paint job to get an idea of how they will look finished.

I'm quite happy how it turned out. I added a few small pieces of greenery for moss growing between the stones.

When I actually do the bases for the models I will try and match the colours of the bases to the Quest tiles. So each 'unit' will have tiles linked to one of the Quest tiles. Of course that will probably mean that unit will never end up turning up in that tile.

Will try and get the skeletons done next week, working on them round the Karrier and Drone.

Terrain Pillars - First Cast and Moulds Available

As previously discussed I set abotu doing a Mk. II Pillar. The Mk. I was used to try out the Zone Mortalis rule set.

Mk. II is an improved design. I was able to do the first couple of casts today and the end result is a much easier casting process and a higher quality of cast.

The Mk. II Pillar Master

Comparison shot of the Mk II and Mk. I casts.
The difference in quality is easily shown.

As I cast two pillars I was able to slot some walls and doos in place to see how things fit together:

Walls in slotted into the outer grooves

Militiaman Bob showing the height of the pillars (70mm)

A door slotted into the central groove

So the design is much improved, so much simpler to cast than the orginal. I didn't use any form of vibrating table or other casting aid and I still only got a few small air bubbles. (Note: the two casts shown have not had their bases cleaned up, hence the rough looking edges).

The pillars are still meant more as a means to allow a quick, easy and relatively cheap modular board to be built. Unlik the Mk. I design though these have a much nicer finish so have a more permanent role, the former design was more obviously a stop gap to a permanent board being built.

Here is a shot taken from the test games I played of Zone Mortalis to show the idea of the pillars being used to put together boards:

Now to be able to put together a full board something in the region of 30-50 pillars are needed depending on the size of the board and the balance between rooms and corridors you use. The cost of plaster (approx £25 for 10kg) means that even with that many casts and the cost of the mould(s) themselves a board can be assembled within a reasonable amount.

The walls are made from 1mm card while the doors are 3mm Finnboard. The grooves in the pillars are .5mm over this size, so there is some leeway to the size you use.

So are you interested in purchasing one or two moulds?

The moulds weigh in the region of 400g which is a fair amount of rubber. This combined with the amount of time it takes to do the moulds I have decided on a price of £30 for one mould, or £55 for two moulds.

I will do a test cast with each mould to ensure the mould is ok. If there is a problem which means the casts are unusable (e.g. an air bubble here and there in the mould will be passed as ok) it will be scrapped and a new mould done in its place.

I recommend having two as it will dramatically speed up casting time, but if you have time to play with one will obviously do.

So to summarise:

£30 for one pillar mould + postage at cost.
£55 for two pillar moulds + postage at cost.

Time wise I will be doing any moulds to order, as such it will take a few days as a minimum before postage as each mould must be left 24 hours before the master can be removed. Also as each mould uses a fair amount of rubber I cannot gaurantee I will have enough at any particular time to do an order so an additional week may be required for new rubber to arrive.

If you are interested drop me an email...

rictusrd-blog (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk

Recalcitrant Daze - ZM Pillars and Gun Turrets 4

Moulds for Pillars on the way...

When I originally did the pillars to try out Zone Mortalis I had a few people ask me if they could have some to do the same thing. The original master was a very quick build and was destroyed during the moulding process (i.e. I had to break it up to get it out of the mould) which left me with a single mould. There was no way I was going to cast pillars for people as it would of taken weeks to knock enough out.

However I was recently asked again for pillars so I decided to make a new master, one I could use to do multiple moulds. I still won't be casting pillars for people, however I will sell the moulds themselves allowing people to cast as many pillars as they like in plaster.

So here is the new master.

The new design is the same as the first in principal - namely two outer grooves (1.5mm wide) for card walls to be slotted into and a central groove (3.5mm) for a door to be slotted in.

However the new design will use less rubber for the mould and less plaster in the casting. It should also provide a much easier casting experience as the original mould is very awkward and results in lots of air bubbles due to the thin walls which make the grooves for the card to slot into.

It is still plain and simple and I am not going to town making it perfect - it is still intended as a quick, cheap and modular way to try out Zone Mortalis or similar games set inside buildings/tunner sytems/space craft etc.

Like the Mk. I version the pillars are 70mm tall.

Some walls and a door slotted in place.

Gun Turrets.

Recently I asked if people would be interested in buying gun turrets if I built a new one. Well I think I had enough interested via the blog and forums to go ahead and at least do a new master.

So I got out the original master and it's current state is now...

I needed the lego to act as the internal structure of the new model. However it will be slightly smaller (the original was a touch too big) for easier set up. I was not happy with many aspects of the original design so this will be a good opportuniy to do a much better model.

While I would like to get the gun turret done ASAP I have a lot on my plate at the moment (some of which will come out in the near future) so I think it will be a slow build over the next few weeks.

Gun Turrets 3 - Is there interest out there for these?

Way back when this blog was young I showed a Gun Turret I had built and cast so I could use up some of the many spare Russ and Chimera turrets I had knocking around.

After selling a number of the gun emplacement sets I got thinking if people would be interested in gun turrets.

If there was enough interest I would do a new master for casting, similar design to the original one I built but better detailed.

For a recap this is what the first gun turret looked like:

The original master.

One of the cast turrets after the post cast details were added along with battle damage and basing:

The rear is an area which would see a big improvement.

Scale shot and an example of a turret in place

To see more of the original turret click here.

So what are peoples thoughts? Is it worth doing a new gun turret and is there enough demand to warrant doing it?

Ork Glyphs 3

Here is a full set of glyphs cleaned up and roughed up. Few air bubbles filled with GS and some dodgey rivets removed. I won't replace any rivets untill the glyphs are glued in position.

The masters and the cast pieces

And one of them got glued in place on the Weirdboy Battle Tower:

Overall I am quite happy with them. In fairness it won't be till after I do a few more vehicles and I see how much I use them that I am able to say if the mould was worth doing or not.

Ork Glyphs 2

First couple of sets cast up:

They turned out very well overall, majority of rivets cast fine and only a few air bubbles. Will take a while to get them all cleaned up though.

I got a handful cleaned up just to see how easy it would be to distress them. Thankfully it seems ok, my main worry was that they would be too brittle and would just break but so far no problems.

Tomorrow i'll get more cleaned up (at least one full set) and also add some missing rivets etc. May then get a few glued to vehicles to see what they look like in place.

Gun Turrets 2

Will be having a go at casting the Glyphs shortly but in the meantime here is the follow up post for the Gun Turrets.

Now that the main piece is out of the way we can move onto the killy part...

As I said in in the first post one of the reasons I wanted to make the gun turrets was because I had so many Russ and Chimera turrets spare. This is due to a number of my tanks using Forge World turrets, or being converted in some way.

The finished turrets:

x3 Battlecannon Turrets

x1 Vanquisher Cannon Turret

x1 Exterminator Turret

x1 Executioner Turret

x1 Multimelta Turret

x1 Twin Linked Heavy Bolter Turret

x1 Inferno Cannon Turret.

Example of the magnets in place.

 The easiest turrets were of course the Battlecannon ones, these were simply built straight with no alterations other than modifying the bottom of each one to accept the magnet. For the Vanquisher I simply extended the barrel. Personally I much prefer the FW Vanq turrets but the gun turret rules do not include a co-axial heavy stubber (shame), so I went with the simple option instead. The Exterminator turret was the much seen 'stick two autocannon into the hole' conversion.



Exterminator and Battlecannon turrets.

Vanquisher and Multi Melta turrets.

The Multimelta turret was a bit more involved. It is a Chimera which I added styrene to the bottom of to make it deeper. A spare end to a Marine Multi Melta was used (i think, it is possible it might of been the multi melta from the new HH kit) and a storm bolter (again, I think) for the weapon itself. Additional armour 'plates' were added around the turret.

Inferno Cannon and TL Heavy Bolter Turrets

These two were pretty straight forward. The Heavy Bolters come from a Baneblade/Shadowsword kit and were perfect for the job. A spare HH Inferno Gun piece along with some styrene tube became the weapon for the final Chimera turret. Both were deepened and detailed as per the first Chimera turret above.

The Executioner was the only turret that required any real work. The gun itself comes from the new Russ kit, but the old style Russ turret is nowhere near wide enough to take it, hence the styrene additions you can see above.

The turrets had searchlights added (they come with them as standard), though I didn't have enough for all of them so some just get the bracket added, with damage modelled on to show where the searchlight had been removed due to damage or blown off. Some skulls showing their CRM allegiance were added as well. Not many though as these aren't front line units so there won't be so many corpses to hack up for decoration.

The Executioner Turret in place.

The four gun turrets undercoated grey, you can make out the bits of stowage, skulls etc added to each one. I also added aerials which can be removed for ease of storage. The aerials come from the Baneblade kit.

That is basically it.

For now...after casting these four (along with another 20 or so for other people) I had an idea...

 I knocked up an insert which fits inside the gun turret mould thusly:

This allows me to cast 'hollow' gun turrets:

A hollow gun turret.

Which when introduced to a hammer gives you this...

So the plan is to make four destroyed gun turrets to swap when turrets get destroyed. Rubble would be added as well as wrecked turrets and so on. Level of damage would vary but it will always be obvious what they represent.

They are on the to do list - which is frighteningly long, so don't expect them too soon.