A Big (but not really sexy) Dwarven Dirigible

I’m not able to stay in the house that I’m renting right now and I need to clear out the figures. I’m calling this one cancelled and shipping it early to @brennon

My special order of the acrylic rod was at one of my favorite shops in the area and I was glad to have it in hand to replace the piece I had lost from the original Kickstarter shipment. I also picked up some greenstuff as I knew there was immediate need and use for it. Gap filling is a success so far and hiding the ugly misalignment with something visually distracting is a go. I might add a few more things to snazz it up but probably not by much. Soon I’ll actually be basing and then priming this thing.

More work going into the balloon has been achieved while I was supposed to be “working”. 5 minute epoxy and more brass rod has gone into the resin to render this a pretty solid piece. The weight is a little daunting when fully assembled and held in the hand. My only concern is if a 3/8″ rod will actually be able to support the piece.

The balloon sections were cast slightly off as can be seen so I’m going to go back and tend to the gaps as best as putties can allow. I’m also going to be repairing the slight damage I inflicted while drilling a spot to tap. Looking at it now I’m not so apprehensive about how the final work will look in person when comparing it to the render.

I also got the chariot base for the whole thing done yesterday so a full 100x50mm is covered and waiting for paint work. The inspiration of the bare ground and rock outcropping seemed to work overall instead of investing a lot of time into the sculpting of huge amounts of rock.

Addendum: need to replace the acrylic rod as I have managed to misplace it. Thankfully I know a FLGS that can special order from Plastruct for me.

So the dry run of fitting things went well enough. Pinning the pieces has required some heavy duty work. Digging into the material I was preparing with for busts I cut down 1/8″ brass rod (just a bit over 3mm) to set in and hold these things fast. After drilling I did some fill work with 5 min epoxy and let that cure so I won’t need to worry about playing with delicate pieces. This is not delicate. This is the Tonka truck of resin that you put on the table and wonder if the weight can be supported under it. (That gives me an idea as to where I can go with large figures. Damn you Rafael Robledo Jr. and your awesome YouTube channel)

Anywho, the issues with the balloon’s rudder was that it was split as two pieces. Not overtly a difficult thing but the tricky part is that it needed to sit with the seam perpendicular to the seam bisecting the balloon. Victory Is Mine! The pins were set with a smaller diameter of wire I normally use for putting into monsters. I will spend part of my hard earned overtime money on a true hard wire cutter for the difficulty I’ve had with a pair of needlenose pliers.

The hull and balloon are chunks of resin that can easily be palmed but just don’t quite fit right from the cast. It is indeed high quality material that effort has been put into. The problems I found were the fitting to align the strips of board running from bow to stern (historicals/naval enthusiast/devoted SAGA players don’t kill me for not knowing this) and ballon rigging(?) at the mold seams. In comparing the model from the Norba Miniatures website for the Zeppelin Karak Thel as a 3D render to the resin its really good. The physical model just has issue from the tolerance of the angles ground down after the mold was released. This was most apparent with the aft quarter section of the hull and the decoration of the balloon. I’ll be playing around with things to try and even those seams out.

With everything else that I’ve been showing I’m one for making the base as impressive as the figure itself in order to have the whole be of note. Seeing that the 50x100mm plastic base is underwhelming I decided to go looking for something to mount the dwarven dirigible upon that would be worthy of such a piece.

I managed to dig up a couple of bits from smaller companies that are newly known to me:

Base of War

Tiny Worlds Wargaming

So I just received my Kickstarter material from Norba Miniatures earlier when I arrived home after work. I had no idea that it was going to be here as there was no tracking from the initial project. I have found that each half of the dirigible’s balloon is the size of my mouse. The platform is about the same all by itself from an initial dry fit of parts. Looking over the resin it has little flash but there are a few spots here and there that the keying isn’t totally flush. Realistically I am quite pleased because of the size of pieces and the problem of trying to fit them together with minimal tolerances. I’ve cleared a little bit of the flash on the aft of the dragonboat and I’ve been blown away by the resilience of the resin. I went from using a file to 60 grit sandpaper in order to work down some sizable stubborn flash that had barely been missed. There’s more cleaning to be done on the model. I’ll wait until later as my work schedule is pouinding me with 12 hr shifts. The joy of holiday skeleton crews.