Flames Of War Romanian Puscasi Platoon & Sixes To Hit Wargaming Blog

Check out this great little guide to painting a Romanian Puscasi platoon for Flames of War on the new Sixes to Hit hobby blog

Also worth pointing out that these Romanians are now up on ebay so if you're looking at getting a Romanian force for Flames of War (especially following the recent Stalin's Europe release which includes a Late War Romanian briefing).

Sixes To Hit is a new member of The Glorious Banner Exchange. For more information on The Glorious Banner Exchange please see the side bar of this blog.

Brother-Slaughterer Markard & A Quick Tutorial On Pinning Minis

I've built Brother-Slaughterer Markard mostly because I was asked to do a quick tutorial for someone on how to pin minis and the parts to build him were close at hand. He still needs a little tidying up.

And now for said tutorial. Pinning is an important part of an hobbyists arsenal and can be really important in making a reality out of all the cool conversions we dream up or for simply making

Pinning is really useful for strengthening joins, especially on metal or hybrid metal and plastic minis where the weight of the individual parts can make it difficult to get a strong and durable bond with just glue.

What you'll need:
A mini...
Hobby drill
Pinning wire or paper clip
Wire cutter or clippers etc.
Glue (not pictured)

In this example I'm going to pin a chainfist arm to the terminator's torso (didn't need pinning but I needed to build the mini...)
Firstly, drill a hole in the torso where the two parts will connect together. I use a 1mm drill bit as this is the perfect size for the paper clips I use to pin the minis. I drilled the hole about 4mm deep in this case but basically, drill as deep as you feel you need to and obviously be careful not to ruin a mini by drilling too far. If possible try and get at least 3mm or so so that there's enough of the pin in each piece to make the join strong (and also to stop you having to work with an especially fiddly little pin if you don't have to!). It's nice and easy with plastic and resin minis but takes a bit more effort with metal parts.

Now if you cut down a paper clip to the size you'll need it to be to pin into both parts of the mini. This doesn't have to be exact at this stage as you can always go back and trim it down once you've drilled both parts. This is easily done with wire cutters. Of course, make sure you do this away from you and carefully, the last thing you want is a tiny metal pin pinging about all over the place!

Now if you glue one end of the pin into the hole you've already drilled.

The next part is to drill a hole for the pin in the other part of the mini, in this case the arm. You can either guess this one, generally it isn't too difficult to work out where the second hole should go to line up with the first. However, if you want to be a bit more exact I find it helpful to draw on the end of the pin with black ink or use black paint and then try a sort of dry-fit of the mini and you should be able to get a mark roughly where you need to drill.

Drill where you've marked out deep enough to fit the other end of the pin (or cut the pin down if there's too much of it still)

Then if you apply glue to both the pin and the connecting parts of the mini they should stick together really well and form a strong a durable bond.

Beyond strengthening joins pinning can be great for conversions and the like, it can be used to create gaps in a mini and/or as a frame to build up from with green stuff etc.
Hope that's of some help!

Making A Wet Palette

,Ok, I wrote this up for my gaming club forum but it's just as valid here although there are numerous tutorials for this out there, and many of them better written I'm sure!

A wet palette lets you mix your paints as you'd expect from a palette but because it's wet the paints don't dry up when you're using them.
It's dead simple to make as well.
All you need is:
1 tupperware pot (a lid isn't essential but if you have one the colours can last overnight etc.)
Toilet roll
Greaseproof paper (baking paper) - Cut a sheet of this the same size as your pot.

You need grease proof paper or baking paper. The supermarkets all sell it in rolls usually where the sandwhich bags etc are.

First roll up the toilet roll and line the bottom of the pot with it (about a finger-width in thickness does the job) .

Then pour in some water. Quite a bit so the tissue is soaked but not like a swimming pool with loads of water swishing about!

Then you just lay the paper on top.

Then just mix your paints on the greaseproof paper, the paper takes up moisture from the tissue below without being soaked through and so your paints stay wet so you can use them for much, much, much longer. Makes mixing and blending etc so much easier as well as being a good way to thin down your paints a little without having to keep soaking your brush!

It costs £11.99 for one of Galeforce 9's wet palettes or you can make that for a few quid if you don't already have these things in the house!

The Gorewing - Making GS Press-Moulds

Whilst I wait to start on the cool stuff I'm working on the little side projects that will be part of much bigger projects. Vague? Sorry. Currently I'm building a right handed chainfist for Rogoth The Berzerker but I've also been making a press-mould of Khorne's skull-rune. So I thought I'd document how I did this for anybody that is interested.

To start out you'll need


Green stuff
A base within which to make the mould. I used a 25mm circle base.
The item you wish to make a mould of (in this case the skull-rune from the chaos vehicle sprue)
I also have a second base and the square 40mm one but I'll explain them as we go along.

Mix enough green stuff to fill the recess of the base.



Smooth this out when you're done. Then take the item you wish to make a mould of and give it a good coating in cooking oil or some such, this acts as a release agent for later on. Once it's oiled up place it on the green stuff.



One of the key things to making a press mould is keeping everything straight when you press it in. To do this I used the flat side of another 25mm circle base (make sure to oil up this base too) pushed down by the flat of the 40mm base.



Now you'll have to wait for the green stuff to cure.



Once it has cured you should be able to remove the item. You might need a thin bladed knife or some such to carefully lever it out if it's a very flat object (as this was). Be careful as the knife can very easily slip as the item can sometimes be quite snug in the mould.
You should then have something that looks like this



Now to make a copy of this item you first have to cover the mould in oil, again to act as a release agent and stop everything sticking together and getting wrecked.



If you then roll out another ball of green stuff and you press this into the mould using the same method as you did with the item. Trying to keep it as flat and straight as possible. Make sure to use plenty of oil on anything that will touch the greenstuff to stop things sticking.



Leave this to cure again. Lots of waiting for this!
Once it's cured you should be able to 'peel' away the green stuff from your mould and have a clone of your item.



All you have to do then is cut away the excess green stuff with a sharp blade as I've mostly finished doing in the pic below.



You can then repeat this as necessary.

Hope that was of some use!