Taurox Prime progress

GW has refined the detail on its minis. This is a good thing but with the Taurox Prime it it has been impossible to hinge any of the doors to allow viewing of the interior after the mini has been assembled. I tried drilling through the hinges on the rear doors with the finest hand drill drill bit but to no avail. It wouldn't have been possible to thread a wire through anyway. So here is the painted interior probably in its last glimpse of the world.

And here it is all put together for painting.

Have to say I wasn't entirely sure about the wheels but now I have to say it looks much better than I had thought. The wheel hubs indicate where the unit will be deployed - with the steel legion on Armageddon to fight Orks. Colour scheme will follow that of the other vehicles with the Steel Legion:-

Mititarum Tempestus not in 8th Ed Index?

First competed mini from the Militarum Tempestus boxed set. The Taurox Prime is still under construction so as to allow for the painting of the highly detailed interior. Once that is done construction should be fairly quick. On the GW website this morning a number of the starter boxed sets were up for preorders with the relevant 8th Ed Index for the faction in the boxed set. But the Militarum Tempestus was not amongst them. Does this mean that the Militarum Tempestus isn't in either of the Imperial faction Indices??

Victoria Minatures Taurox Prime Suspension conversion review

Victoria miniatures sell a suspension conversion pack that can be used with the Taurox and Taurox Prime vehicles to give them wheels instead of the tracked bogies they were designed with. Having acquired an Militarum Tempestus boxed set it seemed a good idea to try the conversion kit.

What you get for your money are 4 wishbone suspension arms for the front along with steering arms, and 2 suspension axles for the rear. These fit to 2 supplied transmission hubs and the 4 large wheels are attached. There are no instructions with the parts. The only info about how things go together must be gleaned from the Victoria Minatures website pictures. The supplied parts are in resin with quite a bit of flashing and mold lines. So before any assembly there is quite a bit of cleaning and tidying up of what are quite small and delicate components. Next comes assembly. This is quite tricky with the front wishbones as they do not sit firmly on to the transmission hubs. Essentially 4 small components have to be superglued correctly to each other and attached to the hub simultaneously, a job that required a few attempts to get right and superglue on the fingers.

At $18 US dollars the kit is not cheap and postage is an additional $10 dollars. It comes from Australia.

Below are the pictures of what has been achieved so far. As can be seen a bit of green stuff has been needed to cover gaps in the fit of the rear hub and one of its walls that had holes in it.

The weather here has been too windy for spray undercoating outside, so more pictures of the Taurox when this can be done.

Inquisitor Greyfax

Now finished.

Light Box

Having struggled to get decent photos of minis I decided to get a light box. A small DIY LED photo studio from Amazon cost just under £12. It seems to be worth the money although it is not bigh enough for some of the larger 40k minis. An Imperial Knight and a Leeman Russ fitted in just, anything bigger would be far too big. Here are some of my first efforts. Same compact cannon camera as ever. With the larger minis it was difficult to avoid some background shadow, perhaps more LED lights will be the solution.

Inquisitor Greyfax

Slow progress but things seem to be finally coming together with this mini despite the disaster of losing Greyfax's hat brim while spray undercoating outside. I searched and searched the area of garden used and also the bin where the newspaper she was stood on had been placed to no avail. So only one thing left to do - make another one. Green stuff to the rescue again.

The figure beside her may become one of her henchmen or may not. It is assembling from bits left over in the bits box. The start of Saint Celestine lies at its feet.

More progress soon hopefully as a trip to the local Wargames store has replenished the paint supplies.

Canoness Veridyan Completed

More light today so final pic to post of this mini.

She has a suitably skully base consistent with the original artwork for the mini.

Canoness Veridyan

She is finished but there is not enough light to photograph her properly. Here are 2 glimpses of her. More pics tomorrow if there is any daylight then.

Inquisitor Greyfax

Just finished assembling Inquisitor Greyfax. She comes as part of the Triumvirate of the Imperium set. The molding in plastic is superb. She comes in 13 parts which have been cunningly designed to hide mold lines. There is very little in the way of mold lines anyway on this mini. The pose of the mini itself on its own is quite contemplatively still. She is looking downwards and to the left with her weapon pointing to the ground and her left hand by her side. I thought this looked uninspiring on a plain base and looked a bit like a "Joey from Friends f..rt acting pose". This left the mini with the question of what she was looking at and why. So here she is posed on some planking over a pool into which effluent is discharging examining a snake like creature for evidence of abomination.
 
 

Canoness Veridyan Progress

This is a highly detailed mini with many fiddly and intricate bits to paint. When faced with this level of detail I find it is always easier to paint disassembled and then do some final touching up after assembly. One problem I find with finecast/resin minis is that it is so easy to accidentally remove some paint from bits where you need to hold them to paint other bits. At the moment it looks as if I will be varnishing each section as I go along to reduce wearing of the paint as the mini is handled.

 The base has been modded with skulls from the spares box as the original artwork shows her standing on a sea of skulls.