Tenderiser

After working out how to convert Bull Centaurs for my Chaos Dwarf army I've been thinking of building some of the old chaos dwarf war machines like the tenderiser and whirlwind. if you are not familiar with the tenderiser here it is from  Stuff of Legends

I'm lucky enough to still have a paper copy of the '91 red and blue catalogue so I was able to trace the dimensions and cut a frame to match with Plasticard girders. a lot of poking around got me to this stage.

That worked but didn't look quite right. there didn't seem to be enough space to fit enemy troops under the mallets and blades.

Out came the Greenstuff and I straightened out the centaurs arms added a Pavaise Shield and I did some fiddling with the cams. which leads me to where I am now with this

I've mounted it on its base so the wheels can still be turned and the mechanism works. I'll make a video of it working if I can work out how to make my camera take video and then post it here.

 

Finecast Hellcannon WIP

I've just started work on a hellcannon, A model I have been wanting to get since I started collecting warriors of chaos. It is a great kit that has loads of interesting details. My limited hobby budget has meant that it has been a bit too pricey for me before now and I hate waiting for mail order to arrive. Fortunately My FLGS had them in for £30.60 so I treated myself to one. 

This is how it looks so far. I'm quite pleased with how its going. It went together well and hasn't suffered too badly with the problems finecast can have. There are some miscasts on the wheels and bubbles in the fingers of the crew but apparently this kit was prone to problems with casting when it was metal. 

This fits in with the Chaos Dwarf army I am working on at the moment. I plan to replace some of the cast chains with fine brass chain I found on my work bench. I'll post more pictures when I've got it finished.

Games workshop's new paint

Looks like I've been phased out. Today GW have released a new line of paints and Devlan Mud has been taken off the list along with other favorites like Boltgun Metal. more details about them can be found here. I'm going to have to pop down to my FLGS to make sure I've got enough of the old colours to keep going with.

I've already started making the shift to Vallejo Game colour. They go through the airbrush better but do require the use of a palette for painting, rather than just dipping your brush in the pot.

the First Surrey Steampunk Convivial

Just been playing around with Photoshop and some photos taken at the Surrey Steampunk Convivial. This photo was taken just down the road from the house of HG Wells.

 H.G. Wells house just before it was pulled down

This is the site where his house stood

View Larger Map

Some shots of the Guided walk

The website for the whole thing

It was a fantastic morning with a guided walk to take in the former residences of virtually every author of note including Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw...

It is amazing how many famous people lived down The Avenue.

A fun little trip to school tomorrow.

My wife and I are going into school tomorrow to talk to our son's head teacher.
When he came out of school today he told us that he had been told off for not singing hymns in assembly.
I asked him if he had been messing about and causing a disturbance, he said that he had just been sitting in silence.
During long conversations we have had with him about his ideas on religion we've told him that he is under no obligation to sing hymns or join in prayers at school if he doesn't want to. I know schools have, by law; got to have collective worship in the UK but parents have the right to remove their children from them and any religious education.

So, we are going to school tomorrow morning and we are going to fight his corner. I would rather not remove him from RE and Assemblies and I hope the head teacher will be understanding about our objections to forcing our son to praise a god he says "I think he doesn't exist."
There is no pressure at home to not believe and he is completely free to pick any faith or non at all. So far he has said he feels Agnostic.

This is not the first time we've had to think about what we want him to be presented with by people in authority. He used to go to boys brigade at the local baptist church, which he really enjoyed. I attended church parade services with him but found the services grated against my own ideas of god while I still believed. This went further when he brought home Young Earth Creationist literature one evening with a time line stating the world was only 6,000 years old. We took the opportunity to ask him whether he thought this was accurate. He said no and when asked for a reason he said that he knew dinosaurs were on earth over 65 million years ago because of the fossils so it couldn't be only 6,000. He kept going there for a while but changed to going to the Woodcraft Folk after we found a local group.