Xmas Painting

In the last couple of days I caught up with some of the accusingly white Eldar models in my collection. I still need to add some base gravel and do the gems, but I'm very happy with the progress I made.

A tale of two Hell-Blades

Not too long ago, as part of my first Forgeworld order, I got a Hell-Blade body with badly warped tips and missing molding. As I understand is normal, Forgeworld customer service was helpful and - furnished with the details and a picture - happy to provide a replacement part.

Having worked a bit with resin now, I tried to get the warp out by heating, bending and setting the part with hot and cold water respectively, but was unable to get rid of the bent fork look.

When the replacement body arrived, I decided to get creative and used my hot air gun turned to 180 degrees Celsius instead. Funny enough, this did the trick. I scraped off the mostly missing modling.

The path was clear: I have to built the missing parts myself and get myself another Hell-Blade for my troubles! :)

Besides the Body, there is the tail including the pipes behind and the rear frame of the cockpit, the guns, the pilot, the cockpit cover and the turbine part at the end.

I used 1mm thick plasticard to make a tail section for the spare body, with some guitar or rather bass strings for the pipes. Heavy weapon team machine guns were doubled up and inverted to make twin-linked loooking machine guns.

The gun configuration is different, but clearly recognizable as what it is supposed to be. Good enough for me!

I cut templates out of paper, transferrred the outline to plasticard and cut out the two side window frames. Then I drilled small holes in each corner and lots of medium and big holes in the to be removed window space. Then I trimmed it down to a frame that can - after painting - receive a clear plastic sheet as window.

The original pilot is human rather than space marine sized. I guess that's why the ballistics skill is a point lower ;) I used a guardsman torso, trimmed down to remove the belt and back to fit and added a pointing arm as well as a combination of two other guard arms to make it look like he's fiddling with the controls. The head comes from a Dark Venegance cultist and ended up in my bits-collection when I converted loads of the buggers to look distinct.

Now I have to decide on a paint scheme. Decisions, decisions!