BigGrim Does Boarding Actions!
Sanding. So much sanding!
With everything organised, I started sanding. In GWs wisdom, they made the male connectors too thick for the female ports. The tops of the pillars are also too thick for the caps. So! Sanding.
First thing to bear in mind, you are gonna do a LOT of sanding. Do NOT use your good modelling files. I buy cheap nail files from amazon. Decent grit and completely disposable.
For the male connectors I sand both sides and the inside of the upper “tooth”. This allows the walls and pillars to slide together easier and the filing of the tooth allows the cap to slip on the top without getting stuck. Additionally, I filed on every side of the pillars plug. It’s a lot of work but it’s worth it to make the set easier to use.
This also generates a lot of plastic dust. The wee black thing in the second pic below is a little hand vacuum. Bought off amazon and rather useful for keeping yer work place clean. Indeed, when I was done, I emptied the waste area and pulled out the filter frame, which I washed out. Left it to air dry overnight.
Here’s a link if you want one for your own desk.
Next, I’ll be looking at masking the exposed plugs and male connectors and mounting lengths of wall on strips of foam core.
A ridiculous amount of sanding! I found these were so tedious to build. So … so… TEDIOUS.
Mine I used a lot of airbrush on, which made it faster to paint than build, weirdly.
Yeah, it was pretty tough on the ol’ fingers and whatnot, doing this sanding. Looking into new possible options for my next set I do.
I ended up breaking coarse woodworking files for mine, to get the thicker lines off, and then cleaning up the coarse file marks! It was truly brutal how much the mould lines had to be sanded.
Like you, I did washes, but I used a lot of contrast paints from GW (first time I had used them!). I liked the end result.
I’ve seen a wee reciprocating sander on the market that I may well pick up. If only to save my fingers and some time. I have two sets of my own to work on and a friends. He commissioned a set and the fellow who did the work did no prep like this and indeed primed the teeth sections. His set is a pain in the arse to set up and an actual pain (it actively tries to hurt you) to take apart. If this sander works out, I’ll be attempting to make his set more useable too. Why GW… Read more »