Green Devil Face

This is a dungeon dressing piece from Fat Dragon Games, and also a feature of that classic megadeathkill dungeon module, The Tomb of Horrors. I can't remember if it was actually named as such in the module, but I've always known it as the Green Devil Face.

Because I am incredibly slack about tuning and maintaining my 3d printer, I tend to get a lot of stringing and zits on my prints these days, and this is no exception. However, in this instance I don't really mind so much, since it's supposed to be an ancient dungeon thingummy, so a certain amount of cud and cruft is to be expected.

I really should get on to tuning that printer though.

Autoblinda 40/41

I printed and painted these some time ago, but I seem to have neglected to display them to the outside world, so here they are. They're Italian WWII Autoblinda 40 and 41 armoured cars (the AB40 is on the left, with two MG in the turret).

The digital models come from TigerAce1945 on Thingiverse.

Glue For Soft Plastics

1/72 polyethylene cannon — Airfix in front, unknown manufacturer behind.

Selleys AllPlasticFix

The soft polyethylene plastics used by Airfix, Revell, and the like for their 1/72 figure ranges are notoriously terrible to glue. Almost nothing will bond with them, and up until relatively recently the only practical method of gluing pieces in that material together was to effectively encapsulate them with PVA or epoxy or the like.

However, a few years ago this product appeared on the market from Selleys: a two-stage primer and glue system which will attach one piece of polyethylene to another (or to other materials) without needing unsightly globs of gunk everywhere.

It comes with a felt pen primer, which is scrubbed over the area to be cemented, and which prepares the surfaces for the second stage, a clear viscous liquid cement. The joint grabs quite quickly — I usually allow about ten seconds, but depending on circumstance it could be anywhere from 2 to 30 seconds.

Once the glue sets, the join is very strong. I've done head-swaps on 1/72 figures using this stuff, and then shaken the figure violently by its head without getting any separation.

It's not amazingly cheap; here in New Zealand I pay about $NZ12 for a pack, but that's not a great deal more than a good quality cyanoacrylate in the same sort of quantity. It does seem to have a fairly limited shelf life once opened, so it would be a good idea to have your gluing project all set up and ready to go en masse, rather than relying on having the glue remain effective a month or two later.

Paint Rage! Aaaaaaaaagh!

This is something that really gets on my tits. A named colour in two paint ranges by the same manufacturer with entirely different hues.

I'd like to think that I could spray a model in VMA Middlestone, and then if need be, touch it up with VMC Middlestone, and I don't think that's too high a bar to set. This is just shoddy laziness.

Napoleonic British Artillery

Airfix

HaT

I've just been sent some Airfix Royal Horse Artillery by a kindly soul, so that my Napoleonic Brits can have some guns to support them.

Here they are, compared with some HaT Rocket troops, who wore the same Light Dragoon uniforms.

The Airfix figures are smaller than the HaT models: the most upright of them is 25mm from the soles of his boots to the top of his crest, whereas a comparable HaT figure is 27mm. The Airfix figures are better detailed than the HaT, with crisper frogging, and some detail showing on the helmet band and cuffs. The crests of the Airfix helmets are also more 'woolly' looking, whereas the HaT crests are quite smooth.