A few months ago I purchased a built and painted ForgeWorld Artemia Pattern Hellhound off of a well known auction site. The tank had been painted to a decent standard and looked like it wouldn't require much work once I'd stripped the paint.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the pieces before my attempts to put it back together again.

 I've only got round to putting the front plate, bottom and slab of resin that makes up the top piece and fuel tank tub which coincidentally is the piece that needs the most work (look at the battle damage!).

Nevertheless I will persevere and hopefully something will get finished soon.

Thanks for reading.

Has only one seen my mojo? My painting mojo? Nope, didn't think so. Never mind. Luckily my building mojo is here and it's been in full flow.

I started off with something simple and added some ForgeWorld armour plates to my Capricorn Chimera conversion.

Nothing too fancy but gives this Chimera a bit of a meaner profile and works nicely with the autocannon turret.

Next up was another Capricorn Chimera conversion. This one again wasn't anything too complicated. I built the Chimera kit up as per normal and then added the Capricorn rear hull piece.

I also added a ForgeWorld rear door.

I did have some issues with the Chimera turret fitting. I started off by removing the locking pieces to just have the circle plastic left. Unfortunately, the turret kept wobbling and wouldn't stay up properly, even with a bit of weight in the back. To fix this, I bought some nylon washers off eBay which had the right size cylinder to fit in the Capricorn turret hole (after some gentle (aggressive) sanding of the hole). With the washer rotating easily,


I completely removed the plastic nub from the bottom of the turret and stuck the turret to the washer. Now the turret fits nicely and doesn't fall forward.

For once I took some pictures of how I magnetise things. To start, I mark off how much space the magnet will need and then remove the plastic that is in the way using a combination of hobby knife and file. Once the plastic has been removed, I dry fitted the magnets and removed some more plastic if necessary. To make sure the magnets were placed the correct way up, I marked the top using a blue pen before applying a large amount of super glue and carefully placing them down.

While waiting for the super glue to dry completely, I started on the underside of the tank chassis. Using one of the magnets, I marked out how much of the guide plastic I would need to remove at both the front and back. With this removed, I checked the fit for the magnet and removed more if needed. It was a bit trickier getting the guide off due to it's location - hence it being a bit untidy.

As well as getting on with building, I've also been buying and I grabbed a ForgeWorld Artemia Pattern Hellhound off eBay. The paint isn't too thick so it shouldn't be too bad to strip off.

The Inferno Cannon needs a bit of straightening out and there are a couple of gaps on the chassis, but this should be a relatively quick clean up. I'll be going for a camo pattern on this one instead of leaving it plain like the other hellhound Ambustio - it might even get a bit of extra armour.

I've got an urge to finish off the Purple Knight so I may finally get some painting done.

Thanks for reading!

My FW Artemia hellhound can now be moved on to the completed shelf! Other commitments have stopped me from finishing this off sooner after the good progress I had made. Here are some pictures and details of the finished tank:

I feel like I'm flitting between projects like a bird searching for food at the moment. But at least it stops me from getting burnt out. Having done all of 10 minutes more to the Mahreens, I decided I would revisit one of the (many) unfinished projects I have on my shelves.

Just a short update to give you an idea of what I've been up to on the Hellhound and Manticore.

I've been trying my hand with custom transfers, which are pretty simple to do, but require an ability to be very precise with a hobby knife. Either way, they give a nice way of applying names etc without doing freehand work.

The hellhound has been dubbed "Ambustio", which according to google translate is Latin for "Fire". It has also been given the designation H44,  H for hellhound :). I will be adding a Cadian gate transfer to the centre panel's as well, which is why there is a patch of varnish.

The manticore has also received some transferry love. This tank has been named "Nubis", Latin for "Cloud". And has been designated S92. I've been trying to keep the tank names along a similar path, so the artillery relates to each other a bit, my Basilisk is "Tonitrus" - "Thunder". The hazard stripes were made by combining two of the transfers from the Guard transfer sheet.

I told you it was a short update. This isn't all I've been up to, there is more to come, but I want to finish those bits off first. Thanks for reading, and as always comments and suggestions are appreciated.

 A double whammy for you all today. I am currently working on two models. The first is my ForgeWorld Artemia pattern Hellhound. And the second is the all plastic GW Manticore/Deathstrike.

 So to start off with, here is the Artemia pattern Hellhound. I've had this kit for a few years and like others has been sat unfinished. It was basecoated in my old scheme of Dark Angels Green, but I sprayed it with Fairy Power Spray, and left it to soak before attacking it with a toothbrush to remove the old paint. It cleaned up pretty well, with only the light basecoat of Chaos Black remaining, which was good enough for me.

I gave the tank another light coat of Chaos Black spray just to make it even and all the resin bits needed it as they had cleaned up beautifully (probably as I hadn't washed them down properly in the first place - oops!). One the basecoat had dried, I applied Vallejo Model Air Black Green straight from the pot using the Games Workshop spray gun, the results of which can be seen below:

For a cheap (ish) alternative to an airbrush, it did a pretty good job. The coat is nice and even, with no pooling or paint runs. How much of that is to do with the paint itself I can't say. The Model Air range doesn't require thinning. I sprayed the whole model, except the tracks as I'd left them off for ease of painting. 

I did mask up the barrel of the Inferno cannon as it will be easier to paint over a black basecoat rather than the green. I have got a heavy flamer to on the hull as well. If I'd made this model recently, I would have tried to magnetise the hull weapons, oh well. That's how far I am with the Hellhound, now onto the Manticore!

And here is the Manticore/Deathstrike. Doesn't look particularly impressive without a missile, or four, attached to it. The paint scheme is the same as the Hellhound, Vallejo Model Air Black Green over a Chaos Black spray undercoat. I have done a hell of a lot more to this model, which will all become apparent in the next post. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!