Workshop Wednesday: Storm Strider Part 1 Unboxing and (Some) Assembly

It’s the school holidays for larval humans, which means I finally get a few days (a FEW days) of time to kick back by myself. And what better way to put this time to use than to start A WHOLE NEW FACTION? That’s right, a whole new faction! Khador and Trollbloods isn’t enough! Tbh, I’ve gotten most of the things that I want to paint in Khador, and Trollbloods has been having a pandemic of gigantolarge body parts, which is why I’m putting a slowdown on them (altho with the Hunters Grim and the Mountain King I might return to the faction, we’ll have to see). And I’ve always wanted to start Cygnar. While Khador is my faction love, Sebastian Nemo is the one warcaster I feel I have a karmic attatchment to, what with his love for all things tech, and when it comes to Haley and Caitlyn Finch, sparky energetic lasses. 😉

So… why not? Mind you, Cygnar will be totally small scale and back burner. Just a few models, 35 points, and the models that I really like and want to paint. Like the Stormwall.

And Storm Strider.

Now, I doubt I can do something as awesome as Ghool’s storm strider, but I can give him a run for his money, right? So here are my aims: Nicely painted stormstrider, preferably to a tabletop finish (or thereabouts), and scenice base. Most of my Nemo stuff are going to be fresh from the lab floor, so while they might have the odd nick or two, I don’t think they’ll be severely battle damaged. Exceptions being the possible older jacks, as well as the lab/factory floor. There’s a lot of building, so I bet the floor will be grunged up a bit.

But before all of that, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. As you can see from the top picture, my storm smith driver came without a lever to work the Stormstrider. I’ll have to brass wire a replacement. But that’s the least of my worries. While resin is a lot easier to sand than metal, it’s also a heckuva lot more dangerous, it’s a lot more fragile, and there’s a lot more of it for me to clean off.

The lines over the smooth areas are annoying, but not difficult to clean off. It’s the moldlines around the details that always have me coughing blood. The rivets and brass venting armor plates had a lot of mold lines…

But the worst was over the top storm tower thing. One of the coils had a seam line running across that brass vent thing, and when I tried to clean it, it snapped. Not right off, but it was hanging by a thin thread of resin. So I’ll have to live with that mold line, clue the brass piping thing back on and hope to clean it up with paint in the future.

And of course saw and cut off all the extra resin flash.

Make sure to do everything wet, to prevent yourself from breathing in resin dust. If PP keeps on making more resin pieces, I think I need to start investing in a respirator. Until then, I’ll just make sure I have a bucket of water that I can do most of the filing and cutting.

They have a bit of mold lines on the metal parts also, but those weren’t too hard to deal with. The Storm Strider platform did bite me in the ass though, but that was because it was warped, and not because of the moldlines. I thought I had it bent back, but it was still too warped to be able to support the railings properly after I started assembly.

One thing I did (which I think might be different than most people) was that I wanted the storm strider to be able to aim its lightning of death. Also for ease of packing. So I pinned but didn’t glue the ball and platform to the legs.

Then I drilled holes for magnets into the centre base, as well as pins to attach to the legs. All I did was add a metallic washer onto the metal platform with superglue. It’s a lot easier to drill into resin, so that was where I did all my hard work.

Later on, I just made sure the metal legs were pinned and that was enough assembly for me, because I want to do most of the storm strider via airbrush.

Next Week: the Base!