All posts tagged: tools

Cool Tools Bits Box for Organizing Spart Bits

Cool Tool: Bits Box

After building a brand new kit, many new hobbyists wonder why there are so many ‘extra’ pieces left on the sprue. As you make more and more kits, these extras start to pile up. At some point, you need to start the almighty bits box. What might start out as a plastic bag of the remainders can quick add up over the years. In today’s post, I’m going discuss a few ways to organize all those parts, and how doing so can help with your conversion skills. Options for Bits Boxes The term bits box can mean anywhere you store all the extra weapon options, helmets, and even unbuilt kits. Cardboard Box Often, the very first bits box is the same box the kit came in. The full sprues can be slid right back into the box for later use. A nice advantage of using the original box is that you know exactly what kit the part came from. Or if you are in need of the head from a particular set, you can quickly grab …

Good Reads 48 of Broken Paintbrush

Good Reads 48

Skip scrolling through the blog feed for a minute and check out this week’s list of Good Reads. I’ve collect some of the posts that have caught my eye over the last two weeks and gather them here for you to check out, catch up on if you fell behind, or maybe find someone new to follow. With that, here is Good Reads 48. Seeking Guidance Alex has joined in with The Chapel project to create a unique mix of backwoods clans in the 40k world.  This is his second Ostium Guild for the event and not only did he make these two incredible miniatures, but a great short story to go with them as well. Necron Destroyers Siph has just completed his third unit of Necron Destroyers with a nice looking half-field of blue. Combined with his Destroyer Lord he now has a Destroyer Cult formation to wipe out his enemies. AoS28 and Warhammer Quest AoS28 is picking up momentum and Crimson Oracle has combined it with his interest in expanding Warhammer Quest with …

How to improve your hobby build skills

How to Improve Your Hobby Building Skills

In a rush of excitement, you rip open your brand new model kit. While thrown back at first by the sheer number of tiny pieces, you smash it all together with glue, slap paint everywhere you can, and plunk it on the table top. But at some point, you realize that you are unhappy with how it looks, especially compared to your buddies models. If you are new getting into the hobby, or a long timer gamer wanting to improve the look of your army, then you understand the frustration of trying to figure out what to work on. Or comprehend all these terms thrown about by veteran hobbyists. This is why I put together this list of ways to improve your hobby skills. I’ve created the series From Beginner to Happy to get you to the point of being happy with your hobby skills. While this won’t be an exhaustive guide to all the hobby basics, I made an overview of topics you can work on to bring your models from 3-color minimum, so something you are happy to …

Using X-Acto Hobby Knife for miniatures and craft projects

Cool Tools: X-Acto Hobby Knife Blades

Today’s Cool Tool is going to feature the mighty X-Acto hobby knife and the ubiquitous #11 blade. While most hobbyists have a set of X-Acto blades in their hobby supplies, did you know there are a bunch of other blades to use? Right tool, right job. For our hobby, having a sharp blade helps with all sorts of things. Removing parts from sprues, scraping mold lines, cutting off unwanted bits, creating battle damage, and cutting plastic card for kitbashing. Affiliate disclaimer: links to amazon are affiliate links, meaning that if you buy them through my link, I get a tiny cut from Amazon (at no change of price to you). Other than the scalpels that I mention below, everything else is products I use and recommend. So if you need new blades and want to help pay for my server bills, consider the links below. The General #11 Blade That is where the mighty #11 X-Acto blade comes in. This is the ‘standard’ blade that comes with most knife kits and the one you see in the …

Acrylic Flow Aid

Cool Tools: Flow Aid Medium for Custom Washes

I love using washes. Nearly every army I paint involves a black or brown wash. In the interest of saving a truckload of cash on these bottles of wash, I tried making my own using varnishes, soaps, and acrylic medium but they all acted a bit funny – and nothing like the GW washes. In the end, I bought a couple of bottles of Vallejo washes($8 on Amazon), but I was still trying to experiment, so I also grabbed a bottle of flow aid.  Flow Aid medium This is a transparent medium similar to GW’s Lahmian Medium except it has some extra magic that breaks the surface tension and allows the paint to flow much easier. Surface tension [Wikipedia] is the physical attribute of liquids to cling to things rather than flowing freely. When using a wash, the surface tension of the acrylic paint – along with its thickness – keeps it in a little droplet of pooled paint. Releasing the surface tension will allow it to release and flow about – what you are usually looking for in …

Using Trello For Hobby Progress

Using Trello to Organize my Painting Hobby

The Problem So I have noticed over the years that I am a hobby butterfly – much like many of you out there – especially the great Mordian7th :-) But as my life is getting busier between work, my son, grad school, and other projects I have been trying to get some organization to my progress. So I want to share how I am using Trello to organize my painting hobby and make sure I keep posts ready for this blog. I’ve tried the excellent painting charts made famous by Mordian and Admiral Drax using Excel and color charts, but it ended up being more work for me to know when something was ‘almost done,’ ‘done,’ and posted to the blog. It apparently works for them, but I needed something a bit simpler and general – as I have multiple projects going at once (as you can see in the picture above!). Using Trello to Organize my Painting Hobby For some of my other projects, I started using a tool called Trello that organizes your tasks into cards that you …