archers – lighteffect.net

January 10, 2016January 11, 2016

Wood Elf Glade Guard (Archers)

These are twelve of the twenty four archers you get in a wood elf battalion box. They’re from a second hand battalion box that was purchased so long ago I’ve forgotten. The box was pretty much as new except that all the sprues had been spray painted matt black. I prefer to clean and assemble the minatures before spraying them and this was a good reminder as to why. The mould lines were sprayed over making them difficult to see. The parts of the model that needed to be glued were covered in paint making them poor surfaces to fix and thus needed to be scraped. The minatures still needed to be clipped from the sprues and then cleaned up. All of which meant that most of the paint needed to be scraped off.

Anyway painted the cavalry and the dryads a long time ago (see previous blog posts). I was going to do all twenty four but just couldn’t bring myself to bite off so many and ended up doing only half of them. My own colour scheme, not totally convinced by it which is why I almost always follow Games Workshop colour scheme. They do rank up a little better than they are in the picture although I’ve had to number them because they do rank up only one way.

April 20, 2012April 22, 2012

LOTR SBG Converting Minis Tirith to Citadel Gaurd

These are archers of Minis Tirith on their way to being Citadel Gaurd.

citadel-gaurd-conversion-archer-1
First up this guy isn’t exactly finished.
The cape needs to come around his neck more and across his chest.
The eye openings a re wrong shape but I am not changing these as i will no doubt damage the eyes.
there is a pattern to be added to the nose protector.
The tab-bard is extended but quite roughly.. the paint job will hide a billion sculpting sins here.
The cape is very thin and has been bulked out in the small of the back. This is visible from the sides.. but I don’t care.
Ultimately these Citadel Guard give me the 3+ archery skill needed with long bows as opposed to just a bow. These boys are sharp shooters and aren’t needed for volley fire.. which hits on 6’s instead of 3’s

April 20, 2012April 22, 2012

LOTR-SBG Repairing broken archers

Repairing broken archers

I have repaired some broken archers. They are men of Minis Tirith Archers.
Not wanting to just throw these away because they are missing half a bow I decided to make them go another volley.

I have received many 2nd hand figs and there are always plenty of broken bows.
Here is how to fix them properly.
You can, solvent cement the plastic part back on, if you have it.. but it is hard if you don’t.

I’ll run you through, it.

Here are the three archers I have… they suffer from the problem of the thin weak bow being vulnerable to being broken and worse the broken piece has been lost.

This one looks as if it was broken prior to a previous paint job. The primer hasn’t helped any glue repair. So I clean this surface off.

As part of the clean I make a central starter hole for later pin vice drilling into the hand. This is very important to do.

Drilling.. with my smallest drill..1.0 or 1.5mm drill.

This the wire I am going to use. It is florist iron wire. It is soft and takes a bend easily. This helps when getting the right curve on the bow.
Also the green paper twist absorbs cyrilinte (super glue) very well which becomes a brittle sheath on the wire that is roughly surfaced. This later takes putty very well.

Apply glue. And fit to pin hole. allow to dry/set.

The wire is set and is longer than needed.

Use set of draughtsmans dividers to measure the remaining bow length. Mark this on the long wire and cut with wire cutters so cut faces are forward and back facing this helps achieve a thin end later. Reduces need to file tip too much thus bending bow.

Here are three archers with new bow half wire.

Time to use Milliput putty. Reasons:
Water soluble so you can smooth it without having to apply too much pressure to bow wire.
Easily pressed between finger and thumb.
Sets hard but can most importantly be filed and sanded.. GS can’t.

Applied in a fairly rough shape and pressed.

Here are the archers with putty applied bows. later step is to file the bows to a thin uniform shape to match the lower section.

At this stage I have used excess putty to apply some pavers to the base and my signature .. which is my name in LOTR runes.
I have added a bush knife pouch and a food bag for when this guy is on the march and have to scavenge food etc… this gives him some individual character to what are all uniform models.

I will post pictures later of the finished bow close up.. it does look good.