Over the weekend I managed to get a few things done on the magnetised Shadowsword. Having completed the magnetisation of the armour panels in Part 1, it was time to crack on with the side sponsons.

The sponsons proved to be the hardest part of the process so far, as I will now explain. If you've ever had the pleasure of building a Baneblade/Shadowsword kit, then you'll know how fiddly the sponsons are to build.

The pic above shows the sponson weapon parts: two weapons, weapon shield and central mount. The central mount slots into the top and bottom of the sponson housing and can move freely. To magnetise this piece, the two guide pegs on either end were removed (this has already been done in the picture above). Next up a hole was needed on each end for the magnets to be placed in. Using a 2mm drill bit, I made a hole the right depth to fit one magnet.

Before gluing this magnet in place I thought I'd check to see if my idea would work. I put two magnets into the hole I'd made (one fully inserted and the other fully out), and then dry fitted this piece onto the base plate for the sponson. I'm glad I didn't glue the magnet in place as the piece would not sit flush on the base plate. With a few clever uses of magnets and blu tac, I assembled the whole of the sponson housing and found that there would be quite a big gap with both magnets on each end. I grabbed the hand drill again and continued to make the hole deeper, being very aware not to drill in too much as I would break the join on the plastic.

Eventually I managed to get the hole's to a good depth on both ends, and tried my long winded test method from above once again. This time the piece's all went together perfectly, and I could glue the magnets in place. The pictures above show the magnets on each end of the central mount. I'm not going to glue the gun shield onto the mount so I can use either the heavy bolters or heavy flamers for games. I hope that the bit of plastic between the weapons doesn't break off (it seems a bit flimsy).

Continuing on the fiddly magnet theme, I now had to glue one into the mounting hole on the top and bottom plates. I did this by putting a magnet on the end of the central mount, and dabbing some super glue onto the exposed side. I put the mount into the hole on the bottom plate and then put a bigger magnet on the outside to hold the central mount in place while the super glue dried. Once dry, I carefully pulled the pieces apart, leaving the magnet glued firmly in place on the bottom plate.

The other larger magnet in the picture above is actually two magnets on top of each other. These were added to give the bottom plate some more magnetism in order to keep it attached to the larger top piece.

And here is the larger top piece. I added a magnet to the mounting hole in the same way as on the bottom piece. You will also be able to see the cylinder magnet on the armour plates. This magnet is pretty much in line with the double stacked magnet on the bottom plate. I could have got them to line up properly, but didn't want to start hacking away at the guiding slots for the armour. Either way there is enough pull from the magnets to keep the top and bottom pieces together, and the central weapon mount helps to keep this pull evenly spread.

Here is the full sponson, with heavy flamers attached. As you can see the whole thing fits together quite nicely and with those extra magnets is very strong. I spend about 30 seconds shaking the thing about all over the place trying to get the magnets to let go as a test, and there was hardly any movement, which is exactly what I wanted.

And just to show that I'm not making it all up, here is the sponson on the side section. The second picture was me seeing what the sponson looked like in a different slot. I have been considering buying another set of sponsons so that I can have two on each side but maybe for another Baneblade :). Thanks for reading all of this, I'm off to magnetise the other sponson.

And finally here is a view underneath the base piece. Here you can see the thin resin area, and also a thin area on the edge of the piece as well.

Overall I am very impressed with both the model and the packaging. Nice clear pictures and the reproduced artwork help the box to stand out. The plastic tray could have been padded out to avoid damage during transportation though.

The detailing on the model is excellent. I really hope that I can do this mini justice and get it finished. The Finecast casting faults do let the model down. As I said before, someone with more skill than me would probably be able to fix them easily, but for now I'll have to work around them.

As a closing statement, I have e-mailed Games Workshop's customer service team with the pictures I have posted here and explained to them the problems I have encountered. I hope that I can get a quick response and that they resolve the issue. Thanks for reading.

Having provided a teaser pic a few weeks ago, now its time to actually show some more WIP shots of the Shadowsword/Stormlord (/Doomhammer/Banehammer/Banesword/Stormsword - that's a lot of /'s).

In order to be able to make all the variants, some degree of magnetisation would be needed - which really means magnetising everything! Surprisingly so far that has been quite easy, as can be seen in the following pictures.

I started off by gluing the front and rear sections of the side armour together and let that set. As the magnets won't be visible, I went for a larger size, 4mm x 1mm, to help them grip the magnets on the outer panels.

To make sure that the magnets lined up properly, and had the same correct polarity, I used an applicator magnet (magnet with some greenstuff for a handle) on the outer side. Then I applied a drop of super glue on the panel and using the opposite polarity applicator, carefully placed the magnet onto the panel. Using this process means that the removable panels can be swapped over to any slot without worry.

With the side section turned over, no magnets can be seen, in case I ever wanted to use the tank without any side armour, or sponsons.

Next up were the side armour panels. As the rectangular guide pieces are slightly larger than 4mm, I had to use a smaller magnet, only 2mm wide. I started off by drilling a 1mm hole, roughly in the centre of the raised piece. Then I widened the hole using a 2mm drill bit. A lot of time was then spent getting the hole just deep enough for the magnet to sit flush. Trying not to drill through the whole piece was the main worry here.

With the hole the correct width and depth, I used the same magnet applicator process as before to glue the magnet in place. Again, quite a bit of time was spent double checking the magnet polarity's to avoid any mistakes.

Here you can see that I managed to avoid drilling all the way through the armour panels, and there is no sign that these have been magnetised.

Next up was the top section. This was pretty much a repeat of the process for the side section. Once again the magnet applicator was used to get the magnets in the correct position. One thing to note, these magnets will be close to the one's on the side section once the whole thing is glued together. I thought this may cause problems with the magnets trying to attract or repel each other, but after dry fitting it doesn't seem to be an issue. If larger/different size/shape magnets were used instead then this may be a problem.

Once again the magnets aren't visible on the top side of the section.

With the top section finished, next to be magnetised were the top armour panels, and the top of the sponson. This was a fairly simple job. My 4mm magnets wouldn't sit inside the guide pieces again, but after removing 2 opposite edge's, the magnets fit perfectly. This was done for all three pieces. Using the applicators (I can't stress how useful these are!), and with several minutes of double checking, I super glued the magnets in place. Once the glue was dry, I checked that the panels fit correctly onto the top piece, and once satisfied, I glued the magnets on to the other pieces.

Here you can see the top armour panels for the other side of the super heavy. These were magnetised in exactly the same way as those above.

With the magnetisation of the top and side sections complete, I had some time to glue the inside section together, and add the running wheels to the front and back.

Having let the inside section to dry for some time, I was ready to glue the inside and outside sections together. This is a little bit fiddly as the pieces want to move apart at the top and bottom. To get around this I used the front and rear armour pieces, with some elastic bands, to keep the top in line. Then I used the long track section, with an elastic band, to keep the bottom correctly aligned.

And here is a pic showing the track in place on the bottom of the completed side section.

Next up I'll be magnetising the other side section and getting the rest of the tracks glued on to this one. Thanks for taking the time to read through all of this.

At the beginning of the year Mike over at Santa Cruz Warhammer ran a competition giving away a Penal Guard conversion set, courtesy of Victoria Lamb who runs Victoria Miniatures. The draw for the winner was made, and to my surprise it was my name pulled out of the hat.

When I got home from work on Friday I had a package waiting for me, and inside was the conversion set. And here are some pics of what I received.

 The conversion set in its bag.

And the set laid out.

Now this means that I can make up a Penal Legion squad. I hope to get this started sooner rather than later as I can't let this set languish on a shelf. WIP pics will be a must and I'll keep everyone updated on how I get on.

Finally I'd just like to say thanks to Mike at SCW and also Victoria Lamb for donating the set. Thanks guys.

Once again I've been distracted from hobbying by video games. Christmas was kind and now I dont have enough spare time to play all of them.

Also, as can be seen, I've got myself a new desktop PC and have started going through Dawn of War 2 as well. Many sleepless nights have followed.

Dont despair though, as I am still trying to build and paint something. In fact my current project is rather a large one.

For now I shall leave you with just the one pic, but there will be more. Thanks for reading. 

The tanks just seem to keep rolling off the production line at the moment. This Basilisk is another model that has been waiting to have minor touches added before it can be called finished - and now those are done, here are some pics:


This is Basilisk is "Tonitrus", meaning "Thunder", and has the designation B23 (B for Basilisk, and 23 is the vehicle number). Like I said above, "Tonitrus" has been waiting to be finished, and at the moment I actually feel like I want to complete some of these older projects before starting on anything new after Christmas.



I wanted to give the Basilisk a different colour marking to my Leman Russ', so instead of Mechrite Red, I used Iyanden Darksun. The yellow looks really sharp on the model, even after being dulled with two washes with Gryphonne Sepia. On the front of the tank I used gloss varnish for the lenses, the same as on my other vehicles, for the shiny "glass" effect.



The shells on the rear platform have been taken from the Baneblade kit, and just about seem right for the Earthshaker cannon. The crew are just plastic Cadians, with the commander shouting orders at the crewman with the firing button.



I like adding a top down view so that the layout of extras can be seen (which there aren't many in this case). For some reason I took an angled photo as well, which I may decide to do for any future vehicles.



With the crew being visible, I took some close up shots. The crew are painted in the same colour armour and fatigues as the rest of my infantry.



The tank name, "Tonitrus", has been painted on both sides. The scroll was painted using Bleached Bone and the lettering is Adeptus Battlegrey. Any little mistakes were touched up before the Gryphonne Sepia washes were applied.



And to finish off is a clsoe up of the winged skull motif on the gun shield, along with the skull transfers. I didn't realise how of centre the Earthshaker cannon was until I saw this photo, that's Imperial engineering for you :-).

Thanks for reading, and I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Any week (or two), and another tank for the Emperor's Fist tank company.



This week's finished tank is 621 "Veneratio" (Honour). Veneratio is 2nd squadrons command tank.



Being a command tank, I wanted there to be some defining feature. The comms aerial's are straight from the accessory sprue, but the turret device is not meant for the Guard. It has in fact been converted from the Apocalypse upgrade sprue, using the pieces for the Chaos vehicles. Whether the Emperor would approve is another question, but once I'd trimmed off the heretical markings and given it a fitting paint scheme, it fits quite well with the tank (and the melta-bolter combi weapon will come in handy!).



I decided not to try modelling "mud" again, as seen on the previous tank. I think I need some ready mix filler to give some bulk before I try again. Instead I stippled and drybrushed on Graveyard Earth and Calthan Brown, with a very light drybrush of Snakebite Leather to simulate muddy dust. The colour tone is slightly different to another of my tanks, but variety helps to add to realism, or at least that's what I'll say if anyone notices :-).



And to finish up, the arial view of the tank, and also a close up of the turret detail. I need to put another coat of gloss varnish on the lenses just to make them extra shiny. Thanks for reading.