Oh Bother

As I mentioned earlier in the week, my services painting a single squad of models went for a substantial amount in the Battle for the Cure auction.  So, I’m on deck to paint a squad of Salamander Sternguard Veterans (plus an Apothecary because, why not?).

Monday, I sat down to take a look at what I was working with: metal models, primed black.  Not a problem.  Except there was kind of a lot of flash and some mold lines.  I might have let the mold lines slide (they can be easy to miss pre-paint, so I certainly have some on some of my models), but the flash was really bad.  Plus, given how much this job went for, I really need to kick ass with the final product.

So I had to get it.

That left me with the  models ~75% primed.  Priming over the primer’s ghetto, so that’s not an option.  I maybe could have touched it up with some gesso, but that seemed lazy (and I always end up wiping gesso off), so I decided to just strip them all and re-prime them.

I always manage to forget that I hate stripping minis.  The mess, the sore back from hunching over the sink, the numb fingertips from pinching pointy models and brushing away.

More significantly, I lost an arm down the sink drain.  So, this feels a bit like a complete disaster.  (Fortunately, GW sells the model individually, so I’ve ordered it.  But, still.)

These guys have also been harder to strip that models I’ve done in the past.  The primer comes up super-easy, sure (it’s the Chaos Black spray paint), but these guys have a lot more nooks and crannies that don’t want to give up their primer without having a toothpick scratch it out than giant rats or clanrat slaves do.

I did have the possibly brilliant idea to order an ultrasonic cleaner to deal with this.  I’ve seen that Les Bursley uses one to clean his airbrushes and they get used to clean jewelry, which also has lots of nooks and crannies to trap gunk… so it could work.  I found a cheap one on Amazon that I’ve got on order.  I’ll give it a spin the moment it shows up.  I’ll let you know how it works.