Thanks for the ideas and the votes on the poll, the outcome is that the underside of the Valk will be done in the same camo as the rest of the model. Having this weekend off from work meant that I could get some work done on the model (note - I say some work). So I broke out the spray gun and propellant, grabbed the two paints I needed and covered the kitchen table in cardboard (so the missus doesn't kill me - and also as the weather in the UK is somewhat windy).

Things got off to a bit of a bad start as my Orkhide Shade wouldn't mix to the correct green so that went down the drain and I had to break open a new pot, but I eventually got the right colour and consistency, I thought. I also forgot to take any pics of this stage.

I gave the Valkyre a good covering and left it to dry for several hours. However when I came back, there were some pools of paint/water on the model. Turns out I'd used too much water to thin the paint down - school boy error, but never mind. Fortunately, I plan on weathering the model more heavily than my previous tanks so this should cover up the mistakes.

Next up was to get the Knarloc Green. I wanted to try just spraying the camo pattern on rather than masking it all out. Basically, I passed the spray gun over the model in a diagonal line to lay down several light coats of green - and here are the pics of the model with the spraying complete:



The first pics are just to show off the camo pattern accross the whole of the model. I've intentionally left the engines black as I didn't want them to be the same as the rest of the model. I'll be trying out some rust/metal ideas on these.



A couple of shots of the right side of the model. I covered the cockpit section with masking tape as it'll probably be easier to paint from the black base coat.



Some upturned beetle shots to show the camo on the underside. One with the door open and one with the door closed.



And some more underside shots. One shot of the opposite side to the previous pics, and one showing off the whole camo.

Overall I am very very happy with how the camo turned out. Next time though I'll try to take more care with my paint mixes and I perhaps won't do as thick contrasting camo lines.

Thanks for reading and please leave comments and suggestions if you wish. As always they will be appreciated. Cheers.

Just a quick update. With the build complete, it was time to spray the model black. I just had to do one thing first...



And that one thing was using some masking tape to hold the doors in place and to make sure there is no way that the spray can get into the interior. This was an immensely annoying job as the interior is too small to get a hand into so I ended up using bits of sprue to poke the tape into place - it did work though :).



I did suffer a little bit of frosting when the spraying was done, but for a base coat I'm not too annoyed. I only took pics of the Valk and the engines as the weapons really don't look anything special. Sorry for the crap quality of the pics by the way.

So it is now time to paint this bad boy up. I'm thinking of going with my usual vehicle scheme of Orkhide Shade with a camo pattern in Knarloc Green. My main problem is that I don't know if I should do this all over the model or have a light colour, such as grey, for the underneath. Please let me know what you think in either the comments section or the poll that will be on the right (or both). Thanks for reading!

Let me start by saying "oooh magnets!", closely follwed by "curse you magnets!".

This week I've continued the Valk project by magnetising the weapons, which I'll get onto in a moment. First off though I attached the cockpit section the main body and then added the landing gear.



The first pic is just all the landing gear laid out having been removed from the sprue and cleaned. For those that haven't built a Valkyrie, GW has done a very good job making sure that you can only glue similar pieces in the right place, so that everything lines up and sits correctly. The second pic is just a shot of the landing gear in place.



And here are some pics showing the cockpit section in place. I had to hold this in place for a while so that the glue took hold as I found that the section was moving away otherwise.



So moving onto the magents. I wanted to magnetise as much as I possibly could from this stage. I started with the cockpit sensor arrays and weapons. I followed the tips from Col. Corbane's article on magnetising the Valk, which can be found here. The instructions were really useful, and saved me from struggling through like a blithering idiot.

The sensors and weapons were done by drilling a 2mm hole as close to the centre as I could get. I started with a 0.5mm drill bit and then worked up to 2mm with a 1mm and then 1.5mm bit. Next I glued in a 2mm magnet, checking to make sure that the polarity direction was the same for all of them. This was done so that they would all attract to the magnet that will be placed in the housings on the cockpit.



Here are the shots of the side sensor and weapon mounts. Again, I followed Col. Corbane's instructions by using some green stuff to make a mount for the magnet to be attached to. So being very sure about the magnet polarities, I glued another 2mm magnet into each mount. And so this section was complete!

I was hoping that I could make a fixing so that I can have another lascannon on the other side, but the steps get in the way. So I'll have to try and make a double lascannon mount for a Vendetta conversion.



Next up I worked on the wing mounted weapons. The HK missiles were the easiest to do. Firstly, the majority of one of the fins had to removed from each missile. Then I drilled two 2mm holes in the top (they ended up being a bit close, but live and learn). Next a 2mm magent was glued in place. Again I can't stress how important it is to ensure the polarities are correct. I think I lost count of the number of times that I dry fitted everything.



For the missile pods, a little more work was required. The two cylinder sections were glued together as normal, but once they were dry a large blob of green stuff was place inside each on the section where the pods attach to the wings. Once this had cured, the mount was removed using a modelling knife. Now it was time to drill the holes for the magnets. The green stuff that was inserted earlier is for providing a bit of extra strength and also some extra depth to drill in to. Again two 2mm magnets were added. Next up is the wing mounts themselves.



The wing mounts were probably the most difficult part of this build. The first thing that had to be done, was to get some more green stuff and push it into the V shaped mount. I had a bit of overflow on the sides, but this can be cleaned off easily once the green stuff has set a little, after about an hour. The green stuff needs to fully set before anything else can be done, so leave it for at least 24 hours.

Now that the green stuff has set, it's time to drill some more holes. Break out the 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2mm drill bits again and drill two holes in the green stuff. Try to avoid placing them too close to the ends, or the green stuff may break, like it did for me - thank god for super glue! Once the holes have been drilled, dry fit the magnets into them, once again checking polarities. When I was happy with everything I glued the magnets in place. And that concludes all of the magnetising!

Now for some reason I haven't taken any photos of the weapons attached to the mounts etc, but I will get some done for the next update. Thanks for reading through this mammoth post, and feel free to leave comment/suggestions! Cheers!

Continuing my extremely slow construction of my Valk, I move onto the next stage, the cockpit.



The first stage is getting the two crew members placed in their seats and then getting their arms attached. This is pretty easy as the seats have the grooves in them to align the arms more easily. The only choice I have to make is which head to use. So I went with the closed visor for the copilot and the targeting head for the pilot. Once these were dry I glued the consoles in place and the two seats together. I didn't take any pictures at this point though.



Next up was the exterior of the cockpit. So again I cleaned up and laid out the pieces to get an idea of what I have to do. I can't believe how fiddly the nose section is. The sensor array is probably the most fiddly. But in the end it all fitted together nicely.



So here are a couple of pics showing the completed cockpit section, all except the clear canopy and side weapon and side sensor. I'm not too sure about the strength of the canopy support inbetween the two crew members, it seems like it may fall off with the slightest touch.



And to finish off, I've glued the wings onto the main body. I'm still trying to find my magnets before I attach the weapon mounts.

So next up is attaching the cockpit to the main body and getting the odd little bits finished. Thanks for reading, and as always comments and suggestions are grealty appreciated.

So its time to take a look at how this project is progressing.

When I started this project I thought about magnetising everything using Col. Corbane's excellent guide here, but I kind off forgot about it and by then it was too late. So instead I've decided that I'll just magnetise some parts, and by some I mean the wing mounted weapons and the nose weapons. However, I'm not quite at that part of the build, mainly as I can't find my magnets!

In the mean time here are some progress shots:



Firstly, I glued the other tail section onto the main body. I also glued the cross piece that runs between the two at the back. Both side doors open nice and smoothly, one side a bit to easily though. I did have a little problem, which was the little piece that goes on top of the heavy bolter support fell off. Obviously not enough glue. This proved to be a right pain to try and glue back in, but eventually I managed to get it back in place - after some swearing!



Next up, I got to work on the engines. At first I thought that the two separate top pieces for each engine were going to be a pain, but they fitted together quite nicely.



Finally came the wings. I chose to remove all the little rivets that are on the thrusters as they just didn't look right. So the first pic is all the bits laid out, while the second one shows them drying with the aid of some elastic bands.

The next stage will be to get the cockpit and pilot/co-pilot completed. Cheers for reading.

Time for an update on my continuing Valk construction project.

Things are progressing quite nicely, I think. I decided not to add any more detail to the interior. I think that the drybrushing does the job well enough and people seem to like it, so why mess with it.

My next task was to get the door gunners completed. This meant undercoating all the various components. I chose not to use spray paint for this and instead used the Foundation Undercoat Black, followed by a coat of Chaos Black. This gave the models more of a gloss finish which is what I wanted. Again I wanted to keep things simple, so I stuck with the drybrushing technique.



The above pic is one of the arm mounts and the swivel mounts. The other arm was already in place in the transport compartment. These pieces got the same drybrush as the interior, Codex Grey followed by Fortress Grey. And the other pic is how the other arm looks in the Valk itself.



The gunners themselves got a slight variation. Rather than using Fortress Grey as the extreme drybrush, I went with Skull White, for a really bright layer. The pictures here don't really show it, but hopefully when I get the big camera out this will show up better. I thought about different colours for the uniform but I think the black flightsuits work well, and will also be used for the pilot/navigator when I get round to doing them.



The arms got the same treatment as the gunner's bodies. I toyed with the idea of making the hands my usual flesh colour, but then figured that the crew would probably be wearing gloves. The heavy bolters got the Codex Grey/Fortress Grey drybrush. Again I was a little torn with what to do as all of my auxiliary weapons tend to be a bright green, but I decided to stick with the darker side this time. Painting them Dark Angels Green was also an option but I'm glad with how they turned out.



Now that the weapon mounts were done, I could finally glue my two transport compartment sections together. A little bit of glue and some elastic bands later and the back end was sitting waiting for the glue to dry.

The next stage is getting the engines ready and finishing of the tail sections before I tackle the wings. Thanks for reading!

So having got fed up of painting infantry, and not being able to motivate myself to finish my sentinel or any more Leman Russ' for the moment, I thought I'd start on a project that I was looking forward to - a Valkyrie!

Before I started I had a little think about how I wanted to build this model. In the end I decided that I was going to build the troop compartment and paint the interior, then build the rest of the model around it. So here are some work in progress pics:



The above pic shows the troop compartment pieces laid out after being removed from the sprues - and also the nearly finished Lascannon for my sentinel (stuck in the blu tac).



The next pic shows the end and a side glued to the base. I figured I'd be able to paint this more easily without the other side glued on.



And here is the other side glued to the roof section. Upon reflection I think that next time I'll paint the interior pieces individually before gluing them together.



This pic shows part of the tail sections and the engine components laid out. The engines look like they are going to be quite fiddly to put together. The pic also shows the intakes on the top of the troop compartment. The roof/side piece aren't glued to the bottom/side piece yet.



Here is the first shot of the interior. I started off by giving the whole of the interior a wash with Badab Black. Then I drybrushed all of it first with Codex Gray and then Fortress Gray (I think).



Another shot of the interior. The floor was drybrushed with Codex Gray, then Boltgun Metal then Mithril Silver. I tried to concentrate the heavy drybrushing on the areas that would see more wear such as towards the exits.



The final pic is just to show the roof/side section. I like the look that the drybrushing has given as I don't want to really over do the interior detail. I will be adding a few extra details though.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates.

P.S. if anyone has any name suggestions, feel free to leave them

P.P.S. my blog has passed 10,000 hits, so a huge thanks to everyone who views it :)