Spring Cleaning Dwarfs
Recommendations: 150
About the Project
Jumping into the spring cleaning madness with my old Dwarf army.
Related Game: Warlords Of Erehwon
Related Genre: Fantasy
Related Contest: Spring Clean Hobby Challenge (Old)
This Project is Active
Finished Warriors
Finished “spring cleaned” Dwarf Warriors. The new bases, touched up metals and proper matt varnish gave these a completely new live. 
Rear view. 
For reference, here’s how they looked before spring cleaning.Basing artillery
Cutting bases from foamed PVC with circular cutter. It takes many passes to cut through, but you get perfect circles and in any size.
Cut same size magnetic sheets for storage and glued to the bottom
Dry fitting the flame cannon and crew on the base
Adding barrels, cork and sand.
Base for cannon. Touching up metals
The metals were rather basic.
I first applied a wash with Nuln Oil
I used Army Painter silvery metals for highlights
Highlighted axe blade
The gold was even more plain, with only a rough drybrush over black
First, a wash of Agrax Earthshade was applied, followed by Army Painter and Mig Gold paints for highlights.
Highlighted golden standardPainting and flocking the bases
Starting off from black primer
Grey pre-shade
Army Painter Strong Tone wash
Deck Tan and offwhite drybrush
Gluing the minies on the bases
Flock mix: Antenociti’s Camouflage Mix and Javis Fine Dark Green
Finalise the edges with gobbo green... just kidding ?Building a test batch of bases
Using a heavy duty hobby knife to cut off the old bases. 
New bases will be 25mm washers
The base building materials: cork granules, mix of modelling sand and acrylic sand paste
Testing out the layout with cork granules. 
The acrylic paste. 
Applying with spatula, blending in the cork rocks
First batch of 10 doneThe Plan
Step 1 Re-basing
I’m firmly in the round bases camp. I plan to mainly play Warlords of Erehwon with these. It doesn’t care about the base sizes and shapes, but since they don’t need to rank I might as well go with round. Aesthetically I prefer the low profile round bases, I use washers for practically all my minies. The added weight and possibility to store them on magnetic sheets is a nice bonus.
Step 2 quick touch ups
Some parts, such as metals, would benefit greatly from a nice dark wash and added highlights.
Step 3 Matt varnish
The finish on the current models is sort of semi-matt or satin. I much prefer properly matt finish. This will help improving the looks, dull down the extra shine from the washes and seal the new basing.
Step 4 finish the unpainted models
The most laborious step, and perhaps out of scope of Spring Cleaning is digging out all the unpainted models and adding them to the army.
Before pics
The before pics. Here they are, in all their goblin green base glory.
Plastic Dwarf Warriors. One un-based to wind up @warzan 
Box full of Hammerers and Iron Breakers
Some favourites from the collection
Guns. The metals could use a nice wash and highlights
More artillery. That base has got to go!
Plenty more where they came from.Spring Cleaning Madness
Back in March, I raised a forum thread here on OTT asking the community feedback on what to do with my old Warhammer Undead Army from 20 years ago. Warlords of Erehwon was just out and I was eager to get to the fantasy battlefields again, so I dug out my most complete fantasy army back from the dead (pun intended). Inspecting, I started debating myself should I spend some time tuning it up, or leave it as it is to preserve my hobby history. Since the army is no means horrible, even the base edges aren’t green I chose to keep it as it is, fix the broken models and complete few unpainted characters.
And then the OTT crew brought out the topic of spring cleaning. As I had settled to keep the Undead as is, my gaze turned into an even older army of mine, the Dwarfs. The Dwarf army is in fact the first even wargames army I had, albeit the very first minies I paint stripped years ago and they’re lying in a box somewhere. These minies DO have green base edging and would benefit from few touches with a paint brush and a nice matt varnish coat more than the Undead. The army is also not as ready, as I mentioned, I paint stripped big bulk of it, so I’d be also painting much of models from primer up. Kind of a no-braining, the fully armed and filthy Dwarfs are due for some Spring Cleaning ? !
