OTT - Close Combat Weapon

Doing a little woodworking on an old busted hatchet. Mostly I am working off of this video. My hatchet handle has an archaic teardrop shaped opening and my hardware store only has round short handles. So I am going to shoehorn a longer ax handle into the opening then cut it shorter. Or maybe I'll leave it long and have an ax that looks like zippy the pinhead. Who knows.

I used a saw blade on the dremel to rough shape the larger teardrop into a smaller teardrop hopefully without ruining the taper. I already need some sanding discs to do the more gentle shaping of the handle so I am at a stop. 

This is an ancient craft of joining wood to metal and it is an honor to learn it. I really hope that I don't mess it up. 

EDIT: And here is the finished product. I intentionally left the extra material at the top to give it that ancient look and also because I don't have a saw that can cut it flush (yet). I ended up having to scrap my plans to use a cut down ax handle because it took too much work to sand down. This was much easier and I agree with the tikki torch-owner in the video, it looks better. 

It was really a sinch with a pre-shaped handle. A little sanding and it slid down pretty easily. I put some nice dents in the deck pounding it in but that is my bad. I should have known better. After that, it was wedge and glue, bang bang. Two metal spikes, bang bang. And my baby shot me down. 

I sharpened the edge too with a sharpening disc so now this thing is lethal to fauna as well as flora. I really want to throw it at something but the partner forbids it. 

It was fun and grubby turning my hobby skills to something like this. I also had to replace a shovel handle but after seeing how much work it was and that the price difference was almost nothing, I just bought a nice shovel. 

Home-made Wine: Hobby Fuel

The COVID-19 pandemic has us all stuck inside. Some people have said this would be a good time to pick up some new skills (even if they did it in an unpleasant manner). To that end, I though I would learn how to make wine in my Instant Pot. I used this recipe to get me started.

First thing you need is yeast. I knew bread yeast was not going to cut it so I got this Red Star wine yeast. I did not realize that all wine yeast is not created equal and this appears to be white wine yeast. That would explain the sour and tart flavors I got at the end. In retrospect, a variety pack like this would have been a smarter purchace.

Before I get too ahead of myself like annoying food blogs do, here is the recipe as I did it with notes on how I would do it differently in the future:

On The Table - New Rollers

Got a little tired of paying $2-3 a piece for nice bases. I had seen Green Stuff World's rollers for making textured bases. They were a little pricey at $15 before shipping but if I can make 10 bases with one it has paid for itself.

So I bought two.

I got the Factory and the Diamond Plate ones. I really wanted the Dark Ruins ones for when I start on the CSM and Deathguard armies. I should have also gotten the smooth flat one too to roll out the bases.

In terms of using them, they are decent. So far my first 5 bases have turned out of but not stellar. It is hard to get the green stuff smooth and even across the base for starters. The instructions say to use a lubricant or powder or nothing to keep GS from sticking to the roller. Pro top: that last one is not very helpful. GS got all up in the diamond plate roller on the first try. Now they are soaking in WD40.

So far I like them. It is going to take some time to get good at it, but hopefully this will let me bast whole armies for little money. 

Painting The Roses Red

I had previously griped about how the GW Deathwatch dice had the sexy Chapter symbols on the "1" side. I have since played two games with them and it is unbearable. When you are taking Terminator armor saves and that Ultramarines symbol comes up, I get extra cranky. I felt it starting impact both my satisfaction with the dace and my fun with the game.

I had some inspiration at the last game. I knew that I could replaces the 6s with 1s and thus effectively change the symbol faces to 6s. It just needed to be done. We'll see how this changes my satisfaction. 

Back to Basics

I was very excited to spend the last of my dwindling X-mas money on these bases. A few years ago, I would have been pretty cranky to have spent almost $25 just on bases but now I gladly spend that amount on quality bases. I did custom bases for all my Dreadnoughts in the past and loves the different attitudes and feelings that the bases provide.

It is less so with the Deathwatch army. While it does not give individual models personality, it does give the army and overall feeling of cohesion for the army. My only regret is that I started the army on 25mm bases before the 30mm bases came out. I may go back and replace them but at this point I am too far in to change.

The two bases in the back are for the DW Dreadnought and Venerable Dreadnought. The pipe base on the right comes from Micro Art Studios and the one with the alien eggs on the left comes from Secret Weapon Minis. The difference in quality between the two is noticeable. MAS base was pre-sanded on the bottom where the SW was not and needed to be filed to even make it flat. The SW has a noticeable gap between the best and the slope of the side that needed to be filled and filed while the MAS had good detail and needed no touch ups.

The giant head is from Scibor and is a work of art. I plan to use it for the metal replacement for Be'lakor. I found a great deal on a complete metal Be'lakor and have traded my only model. I don't really miss him as his rules make him a friendship-ender. The model is awesome though and I think I can paint it even better now. 

Lights, Camera, Back To Work

The shelf is installed and the lights are hung. It's time to play the music; it's time time to paint the minis. I had to buy some extension cords and get creative with how I am supplying my computers, lights, Dremel, paint shaker and other accessories. It makes me nervous as I have power strips plugged into extension cords at this point but at least the computers are just plugged into a single power strips.the light is great though. 

I went to Lowe's the other day and one of my least favorite kinds of people were there. You all know this person. She is bossy and a know it all but most of all she is an idiot. Her confidence is wildly out of wack with her confidence. She is a genuine moron, but think she is next in line for the Nobel Prize. I was asking for natural light bulbs and she says that she knows where they were. She takes me to to the light bulb isle (where I just was) and shows me flood lights. No no no, crazy pants, I need normal-sized lights. I feel like that was implied. Rather than acknowledging that she had no idea what she was talking about, she conveniently wandered off to help someone else. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in practice.

/end rant about awful people

The Den Takes Shape

The move is complete and the unpacking begins. My new Den is also in the basement but this one is finished! I ha e the same desk and computer set up but now have this fucking post to work around. I decided to make the best of it and use fit to make a shelf over the desk to mount my lights. Since the shelf is so big, I can also store my bits on it. Due to a measuring error, I am unable to stack the smaller bins that store my paint. No big deal as I can replace them with larger bins later. The boxes in the background hold books, painted minis and a legion of bits. I don't know that I will have my workshop set up before the weekend is out but the goal is to get back to painting soon. 

I Have Way Too Much Stuff

We are packing and moving for what is the third time in 6 years and hopefully the last. The picture is just the hobby stuff and painted minis. It is unbelievable. I have spent about $1,000 a year since 2004 and have rarely sol or traded anything. I could probably paint every day for 8 hours like it was a job and have months of project ahead of me. I've shipped and moved this mess twice and hated every second of it. 

So much of the collection has no dedicated storage. I really need to get some foam to put them in. As much as I hate Battlefoam because of their atrocious customer service, their product is really great. I am going to get some for the new Deathwatch army as it rolls out. 

Goodbye old friend

I don't remember the year I bought my first Dremel but it was likely around 2006. I got the cheepo Dremel 7700 but I splurged on the kit with all the fancy attachments. I never used the sanding wheels, discs or really any of the other attachments. I did use the "high speed cutter" frequently. I used it to drill holes for magnets in metal minis before I learned the beauties of 1/8" pin vices. I used it to turn metal Grey Knight Terminator Storm bolter arms into bare arms for conversion into Storm Shield arms. I gracefully took off iconography of metal pauldrons. 

I loved this little thing but after almost a decade of service, I decided to retire his little tungsten-carbide self. 

Double Fail - Tomb Blades

The heat gun fix not only did not work great but it warped the plastic minis. I bought a fancy heat gun with digital adjustable heat and no help. I tried gently heating all surfaces and no joy. I think there is just too much variation in thickness of plastic for it to work. 

The worst part is that it bent and warped the plastic. I tried the heat gun on three minis, and all three are warped in some way. It is hard to tell from the pictures, the the one on the right is warped to the left. I doubt that anyone will be able to tell on the table top but it irks me. 

The new plan is to repaint them. The fogging ruins the mini by ruining the shading. I am going to reapply all the shading and then rehighlight the minis. This is not ideal and certainly not easy. 

Hobby - Electric Paint Pot Shaker

I have wanted an automatic paint shaker for a while now but they had bad reviews and were expensive. I found this post on CMON that led me to this video (embedded below).

I realized that I had a sander much like the one he was using that I had paid $20 for. I gave it a try and it works great. Mixes paints even better than shaking.

1. Get a handheld sander.

2. Apply a Crown Royal bag or piece of felt to the sanding end.

3. Place paint pot against the sanding end.

4. Run sander.

I love this method and this paint mixer/sander is going to be a staple of my hobby forever. My only regret is that I did not discover this sooner.