ReviewAnother paint storage alternative

So I've tried the Paintier carousel-thingie. After the rave-reviews it's gotten on some places on the internetz. I guess people do more drugs than I thought they do, because that thing sucks a bag of weiners (Not Safe For Work). Spin it around and paint bottles fly everywhere. The 80-paints (holds about 120-ish dropper bottles) is also so high that it wobbles a fair amount. So if the bottles don't fall off by spinning, they will fall off if you happen to nudge the table it stands on.

So I sent mine to the garbage can and stored my paints in the Vallejo suitcases you get when you buy complete sets. Still not an optimal solution. It's hard to see the colour of your paints. Since Vallejo also tends to separate fairly quick that sand brown looks like lime green if you look at it from the top.

While looking around for terrain, don't ask me why, I seldom play at home. I stumbled upon Eslo Terrain and their accessories section. And lo and behold, they have a tiered paint storage thingie! Much like the ones you can buy from that laz0r-cutting company I've forgotten the name of. But actually (and to me, this is a good thing) made for dropper bottles and dropper-bottles only!

Now, they clearly state on the site that the kit version (you can buy them pre-assembled too) is not the easiest thing to build. I kinda scoffed at that. I mean... I build 500-part german tanks. I should be able to put together a shelf-system?

It was most likely the most frustrating build -ever-! If you work with wood-working or have tools made for stuff like this. Sure, it might be super easy. For me, not so much.

The shelves slot in to the sides, and in order to get the next level of shelves in their slots, you have to move the sides a little. Making the ones you just put in fall down. So you have to align them to their slots, caaaaarefully put the next level in their slots. And then you have two more sections to do... rinse & repeat.

I ended up using two boxes of cat litter to make sure the sides would't fall off / away and took my time. And still there was a couple of moments when everything fell like a house made of cards and I wanted to burn it all in a fire while laughing like a mad man.

Anyhow, as you can see from the above picture. I got them assembled finally. And my workspace is suddenly less cluttered and I can see the colours of my paints! (Assembly-line painting some Ultrasmurfs as well...)

Now, I would advice against buying them in kit form, if it wasn't for the fact that you can actually buy sections for Citadel style bottles and mix-n-match as much as you like. There is of course pre-assembled ones to buy too... but if you're like me with just a handful of Citadel bottles you might want to go with the kit.

Overall, I'm really pleased. Once the glue had set they're really sturdy, and I can move them away from the table without having stuff fall off (forget doing that with the carousel) if I would need to.

The verdict is... Five angry squigs out of five! Do buy! Great stuff!

Review: Metallics shootout

Top: Vallejo Liquid Gold Gold(!), Old gold, Rich gold, White gold, Silver & Copper
Middle: Citadel Tin Bitz, Boltgun Metal, Chainmail, Mithril Silver, Dwarven Bronze, Shining Gold & Burnished Gold
Bottom: Vallejo Model Color Old Gold, Brass, Bronze, Gunmetal Grey & Silver.

While assembling and painting the Warhound I noticed that my assortment of metallics was pretty small and dried out so I had to order some. And while browsing around Maelstrom I noticed that they had the alchohol-based Vallejo metallics. Paints I've always been interested in but I haven't found a proper review on them so I've always been kinda hesitant.

Now it might've been the beer, the pills or both. No matter what I ended up with six alcohol-based paint pots in my parcel two weeks later…

Intrigued I opened them up and decided that even if they contain alcohol, there will be no brush-sucking when painting with these colors… for sure! They smell bad and I figure they taste just as bad if not worse.

The quality of the paint is far better than the smell. Being alcohol based the paint goes on really smooth and shiny compared to the acrylic metals I'm used to. And even though they dry quick thanks to the alcohol I had a hard time trying to get some visible brush-strokes. 

One of the downsides is that you cannot be as fast as you are with acrylics. If the alcohol doesn't evaporate before you put on the next layer you will rub off the layer of paint underneath.  A small price to pay for some really shiny metallics in my opinion. 

As you can see from the, far from scientific, comparison the liquid gold is way shinier and less bold than the Citadel equivalents. Even the Vallejo Model Color feels cartoony in comparison. The mica-flakes (the stuff that makes it sparkle like Edward) is actually some kind of metal in the Liquid Gold range which I suppose helps. It also makes for a smoother appearance and somewhat easier handling. Although you cannot introduce any moisture to the paint or it will rust! Pretty cool if you ask me! ;)

It's not a paint range you'd use daily. Or at least I won't since I'm a brush-sucker and most likely will mix up the brushes and get sick. The smell of alcohol is also somewhat disturbing, even though you get pretty funny after a while. But the upside is that on larger projects, like the Warhound, you can get that real smooth eye-popping metallic color without messing around with acrylics that needs thinning and a really careful hand not to look messy. 

So all in all, if it wasn't for the need of alcohol to clean the brush, and proper ventilation I would give the range four grots out of five possible. The final verdict is:


Three grots and a snotling! 

The woe of limited edition stuff / Malifaux Rising Powers

I haven't really been able to do much hobby stuff lately. It's one of those periods in life as a freelance designer where you have to work constantly, or think about work constantly. So getting some peace of mind until yesterday which was delivery-day was just not possible.

To my great surprise the stuff I ordered from Wyrd arrived. The limited GenCon version of Lord Chompy Bits and that new supplement Rising Powers.

I have to say I'm a bit torn regarding limited edition stuff. I'm not that "buy and put in safe"-type of guy. But I do know that some stuff will be worth a lot more if you really can say "un-opened box" and put it up on eBay for a stupid amount of money.

More on that later. This is going to be a rant, so I'll put in a page jump here for those of you completely uninterested in Malifaux. Hit that "more" link to read it all.

Review: Thousand Sons

"The book lay there thunderous in it's embodiment of the tragedy that is the Thousand Sons"

So, yeah, as you can imagine from the caption I don't really like Graham McNeill. Sure, he writes good stuff (more about that later) but he always has to use "thunderous" as an adjective. Even in the most weird places. I can still vividly remember reading one of the Ultramarines novels and stopping at the words "[…]his thunderous brow[…]" and thinking "WTF? Is he stoned when writing?". This book however, only contained thunderous in four places. Evenly dispersed through the book. I hope his editor finally caught up with the thunderous plague and put a stop to it. ;)

Spoilers might lie ahead, so I'll do this fancy page break here. Click on "read more" if you want to know more about the book, and my thoughts of it.

Review: Vallejo Black Lava

Together with the Malifaux stuff I recieved earlier I also got this jar of "Black Lava" from Vallejo.

After reading about basing with this stuff on The Pit of Oni I got kinda intrigued. Basing minis is kinda messy and you always end up with a ton of sand everywhere. Something I'm not too fond of since the cats already make my apartment feel like a gravel pitch.

The jar of lava!

It's made up of some sort of PVA based paint (that's essentially what manufacturers call "acrylics") & small beads / sand. Vallejo says:

Gritty black paste of natural stone and pigment, can be textured and built up and mixed with other mediums.

So I opened it up, picked a 25mm base from GW and slathered on some of the paste with a large brush. I also added two of the "stones" from Games Workshops 40K basing kit (Medium basing slate) and one small slate from the Gale Force 9 range directly onto the paste to see if it would stick. After about 30 minutes under the lamp it was dry to the touch and the stones felt like they were glued on. So it was just a matter of adding paint to it and it was done!

Colors used. Finished base on top of the protective lid from the jar.

As you can see from the picture. The lava dries glossy. Nothing to worry about since the paint dries kinda matte and you'd put on some varnish to protect your minis anyways.

There was no problem with the stones coming off, even though I was pretty aggressive with the drybrushing. So unless you're doing something really scenic with your bases you can skip the glue. Another bonus is that there were no sand coming off, something that usually happens even though you add another layer of watered down PVA to seal the sand.

It's black, which means you can drybrush on top of it. No more need for priming, putting on a basecoat, washing it and then drybrush. And the granules are small enough to feel realistic with 28 – 32 mm "heroic" figures. And you could add some rougher grit if you like to break it up a little.

I'd totally rate this product a 2+ with re-roll. There are more uses for it than just bases. You could use it for a first layer of "mud" or represent rusty parts on vehicles. Paint it on scenery, like walls and buildings, to give it a bit of a rough surface since GW discontinued the Rough Coat spray. Or you could build it up in layers for more scenic bases. The possibilities are endless!!! (Almost ;))

Model Expo Online portable spray booth review.

The spray booth. Unfolded with a Deff Dread on it. To the left is an Evolution 2in1 airbrush and a bunch of Vallejo Model Air.

So I've been doing a lot of airbrushing lately and a week ago I kinda got fed up with inhaling paint dust and solvents from the window cleaning fluid I use to dilute paints. (And I felt kinda bad for the cats). Now I work in a pretty well ventilated area. There's an A/C unit right above the painting area, but I guess it just moves the particles around. Not trapping them. Which lead me to look for a spray booth of some sort.

In Sweden, most of the paint booths are made for ad-agencies using spray glue (anyone still use that stuff? Post-It makes excellent glue sticks) and are priced accordingly. The best price I found for an Artograph booth was at around €500. Which is way too expensive. In the USA though, Model Expo Online introduced a "portable" spray booth that folds into itself to make a pretty compact unit. Perfect for my needs.

After shopping around a little, I found a german retailer (important since I want a 240VAC unit) that sold it for slightly less than €100. The shopping process was nice and smooth and 3 days later the big brown van was here with the booth.

I'll skip boring you trusty reader(s) with the tech specs. The only important thing to note is that it only moves 3 m3 of air, which translates to about 100 cubic feet per minute. This is said – on the internetz – to be enough for most hobby related airbrushing. And is the absolute minimum the OSHA recommends for a spray booth. So if you're spraying enamels or solvent based stuff. Please don't go cheap. Buy proper stuff.

And... there's no duct for venting fumes out a window. Which isn't a problem with the Vallejo stuff since it really doesn't smell much at all. Some users have apparently attached a duct to it without any problems. There are four mounting screws on the back (for the fan grille) and I guess it conforms to some sort of standard.

So far I've primed a bunch of models in it, and used it for some general basecoating and it seems to work well. I can clearly see the bigger particles blowing into the booth, and I hope the smaller ones does as well.

All in all, a pretty good booth for your money. Especially if you – like me – have limited space.

You can watch a pretty cheesy video here, with handling instructions and stuff. Enjoy.

The other hobby related thing I've recieved the last week was this seam scraper from Micro Mark. This thing is amazing!

I've usually used a scalpel blade to scrape mold seams on my minis. Quickly dulling the blade and sometimes creating really ugly scrape marks on the figure.

This thing is made of hardened tool steel (whatever that means) and is shaped like a triangle. I can use it to scrape mold lines and remove bits of sprue that's still attached. Without any ugly marks. It actually is hard to make scrape marks with this tool. Well worth the $10 and the $10 in shipping.