Painting before you assemble

I promised you more on how I paint and I aims to please.

I'm a little unusual in terms of miniature wargamers and perhaps a bit of an abomination. See, I prime before I assemble. I know, I know. Freakish. I prime my sprues after a light washing. I then paint each piece (head, body, legs, arms, weapons, should pads, backpack, accessory, etc) separately. After each piece if fully painted, it is then assembled.

This bites me in the butt at times. I lack the ability to pre-pose the models before the final assembly. Also, the super glue I use can sometime fog the models and mess up the paint. I work around this by using very little glue and always setting the modle in a well-ventelated area. Speaking of super glue, when painting before assembling, you have to scrape off the paint of each surface before you glue.

Despite all this, ALL THIS, I still choose to paint then assemble. Why, you might ask? Because it lets me paint every surface as easily as the front of the model. That might seem like a small thing, but it is important to me. I've had people tell me that they do not care if the inside of a bolter is unpainted but that aint my bag. It drives me nuts to try to paint under something or around corners. Having any primer showing in out of the way areas makes me feel like I'm phoning it in.

Another minor advantage (that some might not see as an advantage) is that I can assembly line and stockpile certain bits like shoulder pads, heads and arms. At any moment, I can assemble 2-5 models of almost any army with very little effort.

I'm on pins and needles

Here you can see some of the 1k Sons I mentioned in the previous post. This photo is pre-studio. I only used a bent piece of paper and the normal lights/flash to take this picture.

The legs, torso, arms and weapons are all finished and assembled after painting. I am working on the heads now and you can see my technique. I use my pin vice to drill a small hole in the bit. Then I use lineman's pliers to insert a sewing needs into the hole after applying a little super glue. I have to be careful at how hard I push as, the needle can sometimes come out the other side if I drilled too deep or press to hard.

If I have to do something that leaves the paint wet like washing or working with slow-drying metallic paints, I stick the needle in yellow tac to keep it from falling down.

Yellow tac is also useful for attaching shoulder pads to tiny sticks (de-fuzzed q-tips work well) for easy painting.

The first TMM post

Welcome!

This is the first in what I hope is a long series of posts all about your friends and mine, the Tiny Metal Men. In these first few posts, I hope to give a brief history of The Hobby, a summary of what I am working on right now and my plans for the future. As things go on, I plan for this blog to be both an account of my Hobby and a learning resource for others.

There is no real good way to start this so my plan is to start from the present and work my way backwards and forwards. There is 6+ years worth  of history to catch up on and it is growing all the time.

I've been involved in the Hobby since 2004 or so. Briefly, I collect Tau, Blood Angles, CSM, Grey Knights, Tyranids, and Orks. I have also started a Cygnar army. My largest army by far is Blood Angles at roughly 6k points.

My current project is a CSM army with lots of cult troops. I've recently finished standard bearers for each type.

Hail, hail, the gang is all here.

The current project is 6 1k sons that will finish that particular cult troop (or at least the bit I have for them).  Over the weekend, I managed to get the legs, arms and torsos done. I tend to paint (more on How I Paint later). Left to do are the shoulder pads, heads and backpacks. I plan to add some muzzle flashes to some of the guys for variety but that can be done at any time.

In the interest of getting better pictures for this blog (specifically not taken with the phone), tonight I bought a portable TMM photography studio on Amazon.