Shadowsword WIP Part 8 - On Display

First of all there will be no pictures in this post, sorry.

But I have finished my Shadowsword. It is however currently on display in GW Hanley (Stoke-on-Trent) as my entry into their painting competition for this month. If anyone is local, please pop in to have a look.

Being magnetised I decided to assemble it as a Stormlord, and have dubbed her "Revenge".

Again I apologise for the lack of pictures, I will post some soon, but I'm getting married tomorrow and am then off on my honeymoon.

Thanks for reading.

Shadowsword WIP Part 7 - Painting

The construction side of things has finished, and painting has begun. So here is a pic heavy update.

Starting off with all the pieces laid out in a box, most of which have already been primed. Some of the pieces have also been masked up so that the black primer stays. The tracks of the tank have also been masked, but this can't really be seen in this picture.

 

Everything then received several light coats of Vallejo Model Air Black Green. Normally I use Citadel Orkhide Shade, but having heard good things about Vallejo, I thought I'd give them a try. I also wanted to try and make this tank look like some panels had been replaced or resprayed recently, so I gave them an additional coat to really make them appear green. This can be seen on the picture of the whole tank. This super heavy also bears a blue recognition stripe, like my Baneblade "Vengeance". My first attempt at hazard stripes can be seen as well, thought I'd try small scale first. The pipework has been painted Boltgun Metal and Brazen Brass before getting a Badab Black wash. The panel lines have also received a wash.

Here you can see the detail of the troop section, just a simple drybrush of Boltgun Metal followed by another light drybrush of Mithril Silver. The eagle symbol was painted Boltgun Metal and then highlighted Mithril Silver before being washed with Badab Black, this is how I painted all of the eagle symbols on the tank. The lascannon's themselves were painted with Boltgun Metal (getting an idea on how I paint metal here) and then washed with Badab Black. Not much progress here yet unfortunately.

Next up are the fuel tanks. Again these have been painted with Boltgun Metal and received a heavy wash of Badab Black. They will probably get another wash, before being weathered. The mega bolter has only had a little work done, again just Boltgun Metal washed with Badab Black. I think I might have to copy and paste that sentence for everything.

 Next up is the Volcano cannon itself. The main barrel was sprayed with Vallejo Model Air Black Green, but the muzzle has received my usual metal treatment. The only difference is that I have also put a streak of Asurmen Blue wash for heat discolouration. This will be complimented with several other washes to tie it all together. The barrel and muzzle will also be weathered to make them look like one piece.

And finally, the other weapons, including the main mount. Again these have been sprayed with Vallejo Model Air Black Green. Nothing has been done to the mount, but the other barrel has been drybrushed with Boltgun Metal followed by Mithril Silver. Like the Volcano cannon, this barrel/muzzle will also be weathered.

So that's as far as I've got with painting so far. I'm looking forward to getting onto weathering, as I have got myself some ForgeWorld powders to use. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave comments and suggestions. Cheers.

Shadowsword Magnetisation WIP - Part 6 - Main Weapons

Sorry for the gap between parts 5 and 6, my internet has been down due to a fault at the exchange which has taken them a week and a half to fix, but never mind.

If this is the first time you've taken a look at this project, please find the previous entries to this WIP here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

In this post I'll be concentrating on the main weapons for the super heavy, so here goes.

I'll start off with the Vulcan mega bolter parts. Above you can see the bolter barrels and the side of the weapon housing.

Here are more parts for the mega bolter. The left picture is the main weapon housing and the right is the targeting array that is mounted on top.

The fully assembled mega bolter can be seen in the left hand picture. The outer housing moves freely allowing the rest the of the weapon to tilt slightly. The right hand picture shows pretty obviously how I've magnetised this weapon. On the inside of the main turret are two corresponding magnets which hold the whole weapon in place firmly. These magnets can't be seen once the weapon is slotted in, so trying to hide them was not necessary.

 Next up is the mount for the rest of the main weapon options. This is actually made up of three pieces but I only took a picture of the finished part. Normally the mount would slot into the turret and be fixed in place by an armour piece on the top and the guide hole on the bottom, which can be seen on the right hand pic. However, as I want to be able to swap the weapons around drastic measures had to be taken.

 

And here is the result of these drastic measures (I've noticed that the mount is rotated the opposite way to the one before the butchery began). Basically I had to cut out the short section between the guide hole and the end of the piece. This was then smoothed out and test fitted to the guide peg on the turret. Now the mount can be inserted and removed easily, the fit is snug enough that it won't move around too much, and because of this fit I decided not to magnetise it. Obviously you can add magnets in the same places as the mega bolter for extra security if needed.

The weapon barrels were another problem as well. The main Volcano cannon barrel and muzzle push fit nicely so did not need magnetising luckily. I did need to magnetise the Stormsword cannon, which also meant magnetising the Tremor cannon for the Banehammer. To do this, I grabbed a few bits of leftover sprue and cut them down to fit inside the weapons. When the fit was right, I glued the sprue in place. Having left the glue to dry, I used super glue and added a cylinder magnet to one of the pieces of sprue. Again having left that glue to dry, I double checked that the pieces would attract to each other before I glued the final magnet.

And here is the fruit of my labour. On the left you can see the two pieces laid out separately and on the right is what they look like once they have been built and held by the magnets. Thanks for reading this, I'm off to buy some more black spray paint so I can get this

beast primed and ready for painting.

Shadowsword Magnetisation WIP - Part 5 - Lascannon Turrets

Time for a (relatively) short update on the Shadowsword. As before the previous posts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Today's update is about the lascannon turrets that go on the top of the side armour sponsons.

 

First of all, just a few pics of the individual pieces laid out.

And then the rest of the pieces, including the lascannon's themselves.

I did wonder if I needed to magnetise the turrets onto the sponsons, as the turrets do sit nicely in place, as they were designed to be held by gravity. However then I thought, if the tank is being moved/carried/placed on terrain, the gravity hold probably won't be enough. So I started off by putting a magnet into the guide hole on the top of the sponson. I've bought some new magnets recently so this one is 2mm wide by 0.5mm thick approximately (very fiddly).

Now if I'd just glued another magnet onto the guide peg, the turrets would sit out of the mounting and look stupid. So I marked the peg about 2mm along and then began to careful file the plastic away. Once I'd reached my mark, I placed another magnet on the one already glued and dry fitted the peg. Some more filing was needed, and I re tested the fit until I was happy. The magnet was then glued onto the end of the peg and left to dry. Once the super glue had dried, the peg was inserted through the turret and glued in place with plastic glue. This process was then repeated for the other turret.

Here you can see one of the turrets mounted on the sponson. And also both of the turrets mounted. I made sure that the magnet polarities were different for each turret mount so if I decide to go with a camo scheme, the turrets will always end up on the right side.

And finally, here is a picture showing just how strong these little magnets are. Even with a bit of shaking the thing would not let go. Thanks for reading.

Shadowsword Magnetisation WIP - Part 4

 Onto part 4. Previous parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. In this part I'll be focusing on the fixed turret and the armour/standing section.

 

Here you can see all but one of the turret pieces laid out. The only piece that is not included in the photo's is the rear of the turret.

 

And miraculously the rear piece appears and finds itself glued to the rest of the turret. There are a few things that were not glued on at this stage. They are the turret hatch and the gun mounting armour sections. This is because I didn't know which front armour I would be using.

Now it was time for me to get some magnets set in the turret. Fortunately the edges of the turret are thick enough for me to drill a few holes in, which I made sure lined up properly with the armour/standing piece. Once these hole's were drilled, I glued in some magnets, again taking care to double check the polarities.

With the turret magnetised, I moved onto the armour/standing plate (that's what I call it anyway). This is the piece that can either go at the front of the tank or at the rear depending on which way it's flipped round.

Again I drilled some holes, being very careful this time, as the plastic is quite thin, and then glued in some magnets. This was especially tricky as one magnet glued wrong would mess up everything.

I haven't got any pictures of the pieces in place as I forgot to take them, hopefully I'll add them to part 5. Thanks for reading.

Shadowsword Magnetisation WIP - Part 3

Welcome to Part 3, please take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 to see what I've been up to previously.

Taking a break from the fiddly sponsons, I moved on to the engine section/stepped troop section that goes at the back of the super heavy. Given that this area needed to be used in differently in the variants, I grabbed the magnets and blu tac and started to fit things together in a trial run.

 

First off though, are these little armour pieces, which go on the inside of the engine bay, and can only be seen when being used as a troop carrier. The armour piece at the top is actually from the front of the tank, but I didn't realise that until after I'd taken the photo.

This is the top cover for the engine. All I added here was a small magnet in the section that overlaps with the back of the tank, nothing too complicated.

At first, I wondered what this piece was for (not really looking at the instructions :-S). Then I looked at the instructions, and saw that it'll fit underneath the engine cover to completely seal the rear section. I glued a magnet to each end, trying different alignments to see which would hold better. This was also due to lack of space to glue the opposing magnet on the rear section which can be seen in the pics below.

So here is the rear section. As mentioned above, this will be part of the troop carrier platform, or when covered, the engine bay. First of all I drilled a hole for a magnet to hold the top engine cover in place. I almost drilled this completely through the plastic, my mistake. Fortunately it didn't go through and I had a hole deep enough to hold 2 magnets for extra strength.

Next up were the magnets to hold the other covering piece. These magnets were placed by literally putting some super glue in roughly the right place, holding the cover in its place, and then dropping a magnet into the glue and letting the magnetic fields do the lining up.

Having left the super glue to dry (the current one I'm using seems to take a bit longer than GW's own), I tested out my magnetised covers. And they fit and line up great, with enough pull on the magnets that they won't fall off with normal tabletop use.

Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for part 4.