Dwarfs of Karak-Mingol (Updated April 22nd; more scratchbuilt mortar WIP)

[Philotep]

Great update! I particularly like the Thane, the fur of his mantle is very well done. Makes me want to blow off the dust from my Dwarves army (but I must focus on the Orcs first  )

[Luigi]

Thank you  Philotep!

Very late update.

we're closing the month with an organ gun, its crew and a slayer who looks like he's had a stroke.



The guy whose hand snapped just got a random shield I already had painted, and as you can tell I really didn't spend too much time or put too much effort into them.



The slayer has been doing his squats



The plastic organ gun/cannon kit was never my favourite but it's serviceable enough. Noting fancy here, just a series of green and blue washes and drybrushing for the chassis, and a boltgun drybrush over the black primer.

Not my finest job; partially because I really don't like these models, but I think they look more than decent on the battlefield.
Most importantly, models look much better finished and in the glass case among its comrades than lingering collecting dust unpainted on my desk.

[Pattus Magnus]

I think they turned out quite well! It’s definitely better to have them completed and in the battle line, rather than collecting dust on the painting table. Will you paint some that you’re more enthusiastic about next?

[Luigi]

I think they turned out quite well! It’s definitely better to have them completed and in the battle line, rather than collecting dust on the painting table. Will you paint some that you’re more enthusiastic about next?

Thanks PM.

Actually, looking back at them a few hours later I find myself liking them better than I did right after finishing them.

as per the second part of the question: yes.

I have officially started the process to do en-masse stripping of all the miniatures I painted before starting this project (we're talking the bulk of my collection, with over 300 dwarfs). So far I have stripped all the remaining BfSP warriors and thunderers (and I'm really looking forward to those), a coupe of metal warmachines (which will require some pinning and minor conversions) and a about 35 or so of metal crew members ranging from 4th to 7th edition. There's also other random dwarfs that ended up in the stripping bucket that I cannot recall (I think another of the plastic organ gun, a handful of miners and warriors, a few characters?).
Going back to these old models, some of which were the very first models I ever put paint on, has truly made me appreciate how far I've come.

All in all I'm probably looking at at least 3-4 months of work, so I'd better get started. I'll try to take pictures of the progress as well.

[Basementboy]

Thanks PM.

Actually, looking back at them a few hours later I find myself liking them better than I did right after finishing them.

I generally feel the same way. If I can I try to get outside and take walk after a painting session, and then come back to look at them. Having some time to think about something else before you start judging them has really helped me to think clearer about what I like and what I should improve on

[Luigi]

I generally feel the same way. If I can I try to get outside and take walk after a painting session, and then come back to look at them. Having some time to think about something else before you start judging them has really helped me to think clearer about what I like and what I should improve on

Very true indeed. this afternoon they actually looked even better. Mostly because I spent hours scrubbing and stripping batches of old miniatures and had to go through years of very amateurish paintjobs, which really made me appreciate my current output.

Speaking of which, new update.

I finished stripping the first batch of old miniatures and ended up spilling them all over my desk



Out of the stripping bucket, I noticed that the plastic miniatures came out 1 of 4 ways.



Some were primed and the primer stuck (like the first guy on the left). These were bought already painted from a friend of mine in 2006/7, you can tell that the paint came off perfectly but the primer stuck.
Others, like the next 2, were painted by me and my brother. These were painted without a primer and also with a mixed of acrylic and enamel paints.

most of it came off, but some of it seems to have stained the plastic.
These were actually painted multiple times over the year with me simply painting over a different colour.
I will be priming these guys as well: despite being soaked for days and having been scrubbed multiple times, they're not getting any cleaner.

Other miniatures (painted around 2010/2011), like that armless miner were primed by brushing  black acrylic paint directly onto the miniature.
these came out the cleanest.

The last ones where bought a year or two ago already primed and painted. The paint came off and the primer mostly stuck, but it lost all of its glossy finish.

during the scrubbing process, some of the miniatures got damaged and their hands or weapons snapped. this happened to both plastic and metal miniatures.

Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a quick kitbash.





here you can also see that the metal miniatures came out extremely clean, regardless of the type of primer it all sloughed off cleanly.

I then started sticking the miniatures to be re-primed on a piece of cardboard with hot glue



Hopefully we'll be getting at least an hour of decent weather soon so I can get started.

Once all of them are primed I'm probably going to be very systematic in my approach; divvying them up into units and focusing on them in batches of 10-15.
I'm feeling fairly confident and rather optimistic, and hoping to have all of them finished by the end of march.

After that I have 4 more jars of miniatures bathing (mostly the rest of the metal crew members, a few warmachines, and a bunch of 7th edition warriors).
.

And that's all for this first day of February

[Elbows]

Love recovering old minis.  I find 99% isopropyl alcohol in an ultra-sonic cleaner does really well against painted plastic. 

[Luigi]

Love recovering old minis.  I find 99% isopropyl alcohol in an ultra-sonic cleaner does really well against painted plastic.

I'm yet to use an US cleaner.

Any one in particular you'd suggest?

[Elbows]

Nope.  I'd spring for one which you can run for a set time (some of the small, cheap ones for jewelry have an annoying 3-minute only cycle).  They're one of those products which is listed under 850 different Chinese brand names...while all being the same thing on Amazon. 

[Luigi]

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

And while I have not been online much this past month and a half I’ve been really busy with stripping my old dwarfs and painting them up to my current standard.
So much so, that I managed to tackle my backlog and complete a serious chunk of dwarfs.

I’m extremely pleased to announce that I finally completed ALL the thunderers and ALL the longbeards/warriors from the various “Battle for Skull Pass” sets I have accumulated throughout the years.

I also started adding an extra step or two of highlights to them, especially with the green and I’m fairly pleased with the results.

So let’s get started. Here we have 14 thunderers.



And their respective command groups



note on the left the two standard bearers I converted from the warrior ones. It’s a very straightforward kitbash using some of the many guns that came with the quarrelers kit and that I would generally have no use for.

This will make it easier to give full command to future thunderers units I have planned and that came without banners.

Here's 4 more crew for artillery, nothing fancy but gunners and machinists are always useful to have.


and here’s some longbeards.



You’ll notice that some of their weapons have been swapped and some of their horns have been snipped. They were damaged during stripping and quickly fixed with a simple hand swap. As per the horns… I don’t know I like to think of it as battle damage.

This particular batch of miniatures has been particularly frustrating;




 about 6 of them are not from the starter set but are instead those miniatures that came free with White Dwarf 219/220.
Now the sculpt is identical to the others but they’ve actually got much shallower and softer details making them very tedious to paint to the same standard as the others. I also have no clue how I got so many of them since I never bough a single issue of WD.

I’ve also started prepping 70 or so bases.


This is it for now, almost 50 dwarfs in almost 50 days. That’s some really good output if I say so myself.
I probably won’t be painting actual miniatures for the next couple of weeks since I was going insane towards the end but will be still doing some hobby stuff, probably movement trays (I now need more shieldwalls for the thunderers) and possibly some more freehand banners.

[Pattus Magnus]

Great job! That’s excellent productivity, in my opinion, and the results look very good. I feel for you regarding stripping old figures- I find it tedious to clean off the old gunk and it’s frustrating when some get damaged in the process. Your repairs worked well, though.

[Elbows]

Yeah, this is coming along a treat...and I say that as someone who generally dislikes bright blue and bright green!  (Must be something tainted in your blood, as my buddy also paints all of his armies in those two colours!)

[Duncan McDane]

Cool color scheme. Love em!

[Luigi]

Thank you guys.
The more I get done for this project, the better it all looks.

That last wave will probably be the last large addition to the project in a while. It left me a bit burned out in terms of painting.

here they are finally based and trying out the new trays I made.





Not wanting to be totally unproductive, I decided to do some more stripping and priming as well as building some movement trays.



Here's another batch of metal models stripped and ready to be primed. Mostly Artillery crew and a few 4th (5th?) ed. dwarf thunderers. Can't wait to get to this unit as they're definitely some of the favourite models in my collection.


While stripping a couple more figures got damaged and this time they were metal. rather frustrating, especially with tiny bits and details with miniscule contact points.



The miner's pickaxe on the right (FA0920b in this set lost its tip, which I turned into a hammer with a couple of leftover plastic cut-offs. It turned out pretty well and I'm certain it will look natural once painted.

the guy on the left (last miniature in this kit had already lost the tip of his botefeux (?) and I thought about turning it into a spear or large shovel, but the breaking point is on a slant following his fist so I ended up using the cannon shield. it kind of looks like one of those stop signs used by construction crews to direct traffic, but it works well enough. Hopefully the glue will hold te tiny connection points well enough.


I also finished a total of 10 movement trays, a couple of large ones (10x5 and 9x5 models respectively) I also finished a few more shieldwall trays.

I actually experimented with a fully enclosed style and am very pleased with it, going forward I might do all of them in this style.

I'm currently stripping the last of my plastics, which in itself feels like a huge accomplishment, and hope to be willingly painting by the end of the week. Maybe even have an handful of models finished and ready.

[Fitz]

I thought those enclosed ones were supposed to represent a shield-wall or something.