Customizing 40k Space Marine Terminators

Claws?  Coool!!  Sword? Not so cool!  Lets fix it. 

So!  I'm new to Warhammer 40k, and I'm also new to customizing stuff.  But I found a great project that hit on both.

In the box set that Games Workshop makes to act as a starter set for Warhammer 40k, Assault On Black Reach, 5 Space Marine Terminators models are included.  The models are armed not with hammers or claws, their awesome melee weapons, but with a big pistol and a big gauntlet which are ok, or basic sword that looks cool, but in game terms, is actually a pretty basic and unimpressive weapon.  I don't want to spend points on Terminators if they aren't going to be tearing stuff up.  Seriously, they are called Terminators.  They SHOULD be tearing stuff up.

On the other hand, if you buy the Terminators Close Combat Squad box set, you get pieces to make 5 terminator models but enough weapons to arm 10.  You get 5 of their hammers and 5 sets of claws.  I grabbed a box, and thought, hmm...  I wonder if I could get these claws to work on my Assault On Black Reach terminators?  The trick is, the Close Combat Terminators weapons do not come on fully built arms- you need to either use Green Stuff or some other sculpting medium to build shoulders on those arms, or cut the claws off of the half made arms to go on the arms of the AoBR Terminators.  And you'll need to cut the the gauntlet/pistol/sword hands off of the AoBR Terminators to create a space to place the gloves.

Time to get that aggression out!

So How Did It Go?

Not badly, as a matter of fact.  Even with my lack of experience, I didn't screw it up.  I used the Games Workshop hobby saw (I nicknamed it "Sharp Tooth") to chop up the Close Combat Terminator claw arms right where the claw gauntlet connects to the arm.  There is a little  hose that also connects to the gauntlet, and I cut that where the hose connects to the back of the arm.  The lines are pretty straight, so it wasn't too difficult to cut anything with the Sharp Tooth, which was nice, since the thing is not a scalpel.  Fine incisions is not what this thing does.

I repeated the process with the AoBR arm pieces.  I cut just where the arm fit into the gauntlets, but this time, I tossed the gauntlets (tossed them into my scrap pieces bucket, not the trash.  They could still come in handy) and kept the shoulders and arm.  For about half of the pieces, I ended up doing a little sanding with a hobby file to make sure the angle of the arm connected with the angle of the clawed gauntlet, but the good news is, a little hobby glue and the two pieces stuck together like they had been built that way.  Check it out!

Worked out just fine!  Only 18 arms left to go. 

It took abut a minute or two of careful sawing per arm.  I was glad to have Sharp Tooth- my xacto knife would not have done very well at this task.  Before going to the store to buy the saw, I tried with the xacto just to see if it would work, and yeah no.  The plastic used by Games Workshop would take forever and a day for an xacto knife to saw through. Maybe with a smaller, finer, blade the line would have looked nicer, but it looked plenty nice with Sharp Tooth.

I had some Green Stuff on hand and did use it in three cases.  In the first case I used it to connect an arm to a claw glove where the angles just did not work and I needed to fill in a gap.  In the other two cases, the hose from the glove did not connect with the shoulder of the new arm, so I created little green stuff hose extensions that did connect from the end of the hose to the top of the arm.  I haven't painted it yet, so I don't know how it'll look when its done.

Yeah.... we look a lot meaner with these claws
than we did with pistols.  ::snicker::  Pistols...

All in all, this project turned out pretty well.  Everything looks great at this point and is structurally  sound.  My biggest question now is how the painting is going to look, since I primed the terminator models in black before I started this project and primed the arms from the Close Combat Terminator kit white.  I'm not sure if it'll make too much of a difference since its going to be ultramarine blue in general, and UMB is pretty opaque, especially after a few coats, but I'll have to see.  I'll tell you how tings turned out in a later post.

Until next time,

David D.

First Custom Action Figure Complete

New Year is a time for many things.  Resolutions.  Hangovers.  Actually getting some snow in Minnesota for the first time this winter.  And new beginnings.  Which means its time to be done with the First Custom Action Figure Project.

Applying the clear coat.

As I write this paragraph, I am waiting for the sealant to dry on the figure so I can reassemble it.  While I wait, I'll reflect on what I did well and what I didn't do so well in this project.

What I did well.

1. Got a clue.  I wanted to do some custom painting, but I didn't know jack about how to actually paint.  I read some forums, watched some youtube videos, and found several great tutorials, but the problem with that was that most of them assumed the reader/viewer had at least some background with painting.  I didn't, so I bought some books aimed at beginners.  This was a good move.

2. Fully disassembled the figure before I began painting it.  Yes, it took time and was irritating, but it made painting everything much, much, easier.

3. Rotary Tool down the rub zones.  Again, this took time, but I think it was the right way to go, if all of the folks on the internet who know what they are doing are to be trusted.

4. Priming the figure.  Some people do not prime their work pieces before they paint.  Those people are taking the quick and easy way.  That is the path to the Dark Side.  If want are taking the time to actually customize a toy, take the time to do it right.  Primer makes the paint adhere to the object being painted.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I expect my customs to be family heirlooms that David Draper XXXVCII  hands down to his children.  That means I want them to last.  That means I prime my damn figures.

5. Come up with a color scheme before hand.  This was a very good idea.  I knew what I wanted.  That made it possible for me to not second guess myself when I was painting, which was good, because at my beginner level of painting I need to be able to concentrate completely on the actual painting, not on doubts I have about the choice of paint.

What I didn't do well.

1. I didn't know my paints.  Just because something looks one way in the bottle does not mean its going that way when it is applied to a surface.  That's a grade school mistake.  I ended up making swatches of all my paints, but I should have done this before I started.  It won't happen again.

2. I painted myself into a corner.  By painting details like eyes and ammo onto my figure, I made it impossible to paint a wash onto the figure without screwing that stuff up.  Washes are watered down mixtures of dark paint that fall into the recesses of a model and give the illusion of shadows and depth.  I could repaint, but eh.  Now I know the correct order to paint a model (once it is primed) is:

1. Apply the base coats.
2. Apply wash.
3. Apply details. 

I won't screw that one up next time.

3. I didn't layer my paint.  When I started the project, I incorrectly thought the idea was to paint dark colors onto the object first, then lighter colors because the darker colors would show throw the lighter ones.  Yeah.  Not so much.  Lighter colors are painted on top of darker ones so the lower, more recessed areas of a model look darker, which, like the washes, helps give a sense of depth and and shadow.  I get that now.  I didn't when I started this project.

Ok- I think the clear coat should be dry now.  I'm going to go get everything from the porch and try to reassemble the figure.  Through the magic of blogging, you won't even notice the gap of time between when you read this paragraph and the next, even though the next will will be written minutes to half an hour after this one!

...

PEG!  GET INTO THAT SOCKET!!!!

Ok.  This is the project that will not die.

All I had to do was reassemble the figure, right?  How hard could that be?

Ha ha ha!  Funny!  Ha ha ha!

These are the joys of doing something for the first time.  Surprisingly long and rather frustrating story short: the little pegs that go in the joints did not want to go back into the joints.  At all.  No matter how hard I pushed, they only went in about half way.  So I had to come up with a plan.  Here is what I did.

Fire it up! Fire it up! Fire it up!

1. Use a hair dryer to heat up the joints and make the plastic nice and flexible.
2. Insert peg.
3. Use my little desk vice with rubber grabbers to CRUSH THE *&^% JOINTS back together.

And this worked great, except for one thing.

THE *&^%^$^%#$ &$^%$#%^_)(*(*$&# vice rubbed the paint right off the pegs!!!!!

So some touch up work was needed.

I THOUGHT I WAS DONE WITH THE PAINTING PHASE!

Talhk, you Svine!  Vee haav your friends in Astreeah!!

Yeah. 

Not so much.

In any case, things are back on track now.  As I type this, the second coat of paint is drying on the ends of the pegs viable from within each joint.  I am very happy that I had my little desk vice here- without it, I would have never been able to get those pegs back into their sockets. If and when this phase of the project is complete, my little desk vice is getting the MVP for this inning of play.

I really was not ready for the pegs to not pretty much slide right back into the joints. Sure, I figured I would need to heat the joints up again, but I thought that they would be soft enough for the peg to fit back in, but it became pretty clear pretty fast that this method was not going to work.  Thank goodness for the vice.  Too bad the paint came off.

Enough stalling... I think the paint should be dry at this point (my paint dries in about 20 minutes, and I only needed a bit, so it should be good now.)  Be right back.

...

Ladies and gentlemen.  It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you, the NEW and IMPROVED Kinji "Rain" Shinto, of The Corps.  First a quick run back down memory lane- here is what he looked like fresh out of the package:

From the front.

From the back.

And here is what he looks like now!

Woo hoo!

Yee ha!!

Alright!!!

WE DONE!

I'm really happy with how this turned out.  I learned a lot of stuff from this project that I will be able to apply to future work.  And it ended up looking pretty good.  I'm pretty stoked right now.

Yeah baby!

This is a good time to mention I could have never finished this project without the support of many people, including most of all my wife, who was nothing but supportive of me spending so much of my free time here in my workshop putting this together.  I would also like to thank Mystic, Numbers, and all the rest of the folks who had supportive comments and advice here on the blog and in the threads on HissTank.com.

I had a great time with this project, but I am also glad to move on to the next one.  It is going to be a vehicle.  Alpha class.  I think you know what project I am talking about.  If not, tune in next week at the latest to see.

Until next time,

David D.

We done, baby. We done.

Well, its official.  The Build-A-HQ project has been built. This morning, I cemented the last video panel in, just above its one inch styrene conduit, waited 30 minutes, and called it complete.   Here are the photos.

Busy night in the TOC.

First a shot of the Tactical Operations Center itself.   I played around with a few different figures, but Cover Girl, Pit Commando, (aka Red Shirt), Helix, and Mainframe just looked the best staffing the workstations themselves.  I put Mainframe's computer next to him on the back wall desk, and General Hawk's briefcase computer next to Cover Girl. They are nice accessories and fit in well here.  I've got Sargent Stone briefing General Hawk in the front.  The graphics Vexar Designs made to go with their Build a HQ design are fantastic. I purchased both clear and white project paper to print the graphics on, and my advice for anyone else trying this is to print your decals out on the white paper, and trim the white edges off.  The clear paper, especially when it is being placed on dark styrene, ends up looking too dark and the stickers become hard to see.  The white paper keeps the ink fresh and bright regardless of what color styrene you put the decal on.  If you have to use clear sticker project paper, use it for graphics that are going to go on white styrene surfaces.

Snake Eyes is glad to be home.

Next up we have the lobby; Scarlet and Snake Eyes are back from who knows where.  Ripcord is clearly happy to see Scarlet back, and Duke keeps an eye on the feeds from the security cameras around the base.  Oh yeah- one thing I still may do is build a little Cisco IP phone for Duke to have at the reception/security desk so he can keep in touch with the rest of the base.  Back before I started grad school, I worked at an IT company and we all had IP phones on our desks. They looked pretty cool.  They were also completely redundant, because when you have IP phone systems, you can actually answer your phone using your computer itself.  We all had wireless headsets anyway, so we didn't need a phone handset or a deskset.  There was a little app we had installed on our laptops to place calls choice voice mail, etc, and any calls themselves placed using this app would be routed via Bluetooth to our headsets, which we were always suppose to have in our ears.  But people are just used to having phones on their desks.  I think having an IP phone at the security/reception desk would just be a nice touch, and as soon as I can find an image I can turn into a decal, I am making Duke his own little deskset phone, which is technically unnecessary, but something I think will look cool and useful on his desk.

Stg. Stone updates General Hawk on global ops status

Ok, here are Stone and Hawk.  Check out the beauty and detail in Vexar's decal images. In this picture you have a world map with different hotspots in red, a satellite image at the Pit Commando's left workstation (lower right side of the image), a sound wave analysis of Destro's voice and a work screen at Helix's workstation (lower left side of the image) and a keypad just to the right of Hawk on the right middle section of the image.  Vexar spent some time putting these things together.  I printed them up at highest quality on my HP deskjet printer, and they look crisp and near lifelike, as if they could plausibly be the kinds of screens one would see on computers performing the various tasks in a tactical operations center.

Scarlet checks in.

At my old job, the company I worked for was global and dealt with some security related services.  In one of our buildings, we had a TOC with a window between it and the lobby so potential clients could walk past and be impressed with our sophistication.  I never worked in that room, but I knew people who did.  They said it was actually a pain in the ass to work in there because while they always had the newest hardware, that also meant they were also always fixing bugs in the new machines and that everything in there felt like it was for show instead of actually being useful for the business.  Which I'm guessing was probably close to the truth.  

In the next image I've got going here (just above this paragraph) is the lobby from the right side.  You can't see Duke's keyboard or mouse (yeah, I cemented the mouse to the desk- it isn't going anywhere, and I decided it was a wireless mouse, so I didn't have to make any kind of cord between it and some part of the desk.) You can see the Exit, keypad and security screens decals here.  I think we kind of have a love triangle going on here between Scarlet, Ripcord and Snake Eyes.  Sorry Rip, I've got my money on SE.  He's got the strong silent type thing *down*.  Nothing personal, but that is what Scarlet is into and I don't think anyone can compete in that arena with Snake Eyes.

Helix, Mainframe, Cover girl and Red Shirt process their feeds.

Ok- Next image is of the TOC from the left side  Yes, the first thing I will always see here is the fact that the right most screen of Cover Girl's workstation is about 1/16th of an inch lower than her other computers.  I could try to pull the screen off and re-cement it, but the desk itself is *extremely* fragile, and comes disconnected from the rest of the dio if you look at it too hard, much less try to pull a piece of cemented styrene off of it.  I have thought about redoing that screen many times, but the fear of having to fix who knows what else keeps me from doing it.  I'll just have to live with the results, even if it gives me the heebie jeebies. I think Mainframe and Helix would make a good team together.  Helix strikes me as a kind of computer wizkid, and Mainframe looks ever the tech guru, like the kind of guy who writes COBOL code in his sleep, whereas she is more a Ruby on Rails kind of girl.  Yes, I don't think you'd ever seen developers or engineers working a TOC in real life, but its a flavor thing.  More than techie, I am going for a non-combat look in the TOC, and there aren't many non-combat looking figures in the GI JOE universe.  Beggars can't be choosers.

Never a dull moment.

Here it is- the entire thing on one overhead shot.  I don't know if I mentioned it before, but all the chairs swivel. None of them can turn a full 360 because the back of the chair bumps up against the desk, but none of the chair backs will hit each other in this dio, so I can have my TOC staffers turn to each other for a conversation or have Cover Girl or Mainframe twist to check out the computers next to them on the desk.  Everyone could turn toward the back of the room if they needed to give General Hawk their full attention.  Duke, in his security desk seat, can spin there too.  It gives a little action feature capacity to what is otherwise a cool but utterly frozen in time diorama.

Well, that is it for this project.  I'm thrilled with how it went, and I hope you like the results.  I do have some plans for a next project- Dr. Mindbender is going to get a robotics lab from Cobra Commander and work on the next generation of cobra food soldier there.  Before I work on that project, I may work on the long neglected Clipper custom.  I should give that one some time.  It has been sitting on the edge of my workstation for a long time now.  ::sigh:: that means I'm going to have to brush paint again.  We'll see how that goes.

Until next time,

David D.

Chairs made and stickers up!

Peg warmer Duke is now warming the security
desk chair in my soon to be completed GI Joe
Lobby and Tactical Operations Center model.

Well, its been a busy past few days in Lake Woebegone.  Got the chairs made and am starting to work on the computers.  I got some sticker project paper from Office Max nearby, both the clear sticker paper and the white stuff for the decals, and have started putting it all together.  So far, so good.  Its a slow slog, especially with the computers.  Each computer screen is three pieces, and there are going to be a total of 12 computers and four keyboards.  It'll take some time to get all that cut and ready, but its looking good in the mean time.

The chairs were super easy.  I was not sure if I'd be able to bend the styrene well, but all it took was a little exposure to a small flame, as discussed in the project instructions. I used a candle lighter we had in our junk drawer, and I did it outside and with a mask on, because I figure styrene fumes are probably not the best for my health.  Turns out that a few  seconds of flame exposure makes styrene super flexible.  Just to be safe, I marked the parts of the plastic where I wanted things to bend, and put the flame on each face in the zone where I wanted it to bend- front, back, and both sides.  I was not sure if the heat would be conducted through the plastic, and I'd rather not snap good material.  I probably held the plastic just above the tip of the flame for about seven or eight seconds per side for a single round- I didn't need to heat sides again after I cooked them the first time.  It worked so well on the back of the first chair that I kept doing it for the remaining four, and had no problems with any of them.

Chair in place, stickers coming along, and all I really have
left are the computer screens.  I hope to have this thing done
in the next few days.

I printed the decals from page three of the decals website at Vexar Designs (again, thanks very much Vexar).  They printed out a little small. It seems to me that they should be between 50%-100% bigger to be the same size as they look at on the Vexar Designs site pictures, but I'll manage.  If I do this again, I'd try using an image editing program to increase the size of the stickers by 50% and see how that works, but the moment is passed.  Nothing looks really bad, and actually, the stickers make things look much, much cooler, as they always do when it comes to GI Joe related stuff.

I also noticed (learning tip!) that any stickers that are going to end up on black styrene really need to be printed on white paper, because if it is on clear, it vanishes when it is put over the black background.  Made that mistake with the world map on the back war of the Tac Ops center, but it isn't too bad.  There are plenty of decals that will be stuck on white styrene that clear stickers will find a home someplace.

Other big learning point: I was hoping this item would be strong enough to actually handle play like a playset would.  Well, not so much.  The desks themselves are very fragile.  Not the entire structures, but if you put more than a little pressure on the desk surfaces, they pop right off whatever they are glued to.  This styrene set is going to be more of a diorama than a playset, but that's cool. It looks pretty sweet.

I need to get back to cutting black styrene for the computer screens, so I'll end this update here.

Until next time,

David D.

First Custom Figs!

As easy as this was to do, they look pretty sweet.

Well, I did it.  I made my first custom figures (using processes that involved altering figures in ways that do not include repainting the figures) today.

Yeah baby.  I'm in it thick now.

Ok ok, its nothing too exciting- one of them was just a head switch, and the other is a head switch with some dremel work.  But I think they turned out pretty well.

I ran over to TRU today while doing some errands to see if the Renegades wave was in yet- I haven't had any luck all week finding the new figures, even though it sounds like there are out in a lot of other parts of the country.  The TRU I visited did not have them, but they did have almost the entire first wave of the 30th anniversary Joe figure line except for Hazard Viper, but that was cool because I already have that wave.  But I got to thinking... man... that Iron Granadier is one cool looking figure.  His head is cool, his armor is cool, his weapons are cool... wouldn't it be awesome to see if I could hollow out his helmet and put a Joe head under there so they could run around in an Iron Granadier disguise?

Sgt. Stalker was there too, and I gotta say, this guy has one of the best head sculpts going.  He just looks badass.  I knew that something would have to happen with his hair to get the idea to work- I'd probably have to use my xacto knife to remove it, but what they hey.  So I picked up two Iron Granadiers and one Stalker.  I had a Rise of Cobra Duke sitting in a box of figures I had picked up at TJ Maxx not long ago to be used for parts.  And say what you want about the movie, I really like the head sculpt of that Duke figure too.  I figured I'd try making a Duke in IG costume and a Sgt. Stalker in IG costume, both with removable helmets, and see how it went.  Ideally, both would work out, and if I screwed up with one helmet, I'd still have the one more to work with.

Here they are: after the win but before the fall.

Ok- I got home and got the packages open.  Bad news. There is no way I was going to be able to get the IG helmet over the Duke or Stalker's melon. I had noticed that it would be tough to get Stalker's beret in there back at the store, but once I had the figures out and the heads popped off, it was pretty clear that even though the helmet looks huge on the figure, it is almost exactly the same size as the heads for Stalker or Duke.  Just hollowing the helmet out was not going to work. Time for a new plan.

Yo Joe!

And one came.  When I popped Duke's head on the IG figure, it looked pretty sweet.  Really.  The details in the armor and the details in the head worked well together.  The color pallets were completely compatible.  Even without a removable helmet, this was a pretty cool looking figure.  It would look even cooler with the helmet, but that would take some work. I'd need to make the helmet longer- perhaps that would mean hollowing the thing out, then cutting it into a front and back half and adding some apoxy or whatever to lengthen the thing.  And that would take a bit of work, not to mention supplies and expertise that I didn't have at the moment.  I was looking for a simple win with this project.  My first first custom figure was a situation where I bit off a bit more than I could chew, and I didn't want to repeat that adventure.  I'll be honest- this was a confidence building exercise.  I wanted it to work out, I wanted something that looked cool, but I also wanted to do something that was within my competency level.

I may be an E5 and Duke
an O4, but he WISHES
he looked this good.

When I put Sgt. Stalker's head on the peg to get an idea of how it would look, I was impressed.  Again, the detail of the head worked well with the detail of the rest of the figure, and again, the color pallets were complimentary.  Sgt. Stalker has a much more hardcore look than ROC Duke, and if I could get this to work, I thought this would look like the much nicer figure.  I could not put the head all the way down on the peg however, because the back of the collar of the Iron Granadier was in the way of Stalker's dreadlocks. It would have to go, and perhaps, the handle on the back of the armor would need to go as well, since Stalker's dreads fall down along his back.

Mini Sanding Tool is a go!

I purchased a Black & Decker Dremel from Target a few weeks ago knowing that if I kept things up with this little hobby of mine, I was going to need one sooner or later.  I also grabbed some additional dremel bits because the actual kit came with very few on its own.  I threw the 'light' sanding tool into the dremel and figured there was a first time for everything. I really hoped I wouldn't destroy the figure.   But I had a plan- I would start using the tool on the "low" setting and go as slow as possible.  Kind of like starting a drilling project with the smallest bit; you can't blow it too bad if your bit is smaller than the screw you want to put in the wall (or whatever.) Same deal here.  If I needed more umph, I could always dial it up. 

If you don't like it put a black dot on it.

I also checked out the part of the collar where it seemed to intersect with Sgt. Stalker's hair and marked it with a black felt tip art marker. I figured I could use that to tell where I should be focusing my sanding work and give me a visual.  Being the safe guy that I am, I also threw on some plastic goggles.  It would turn out I didn't really need them, but this was my first run and I wasn't about to risk my eyes on a project.   I also took the armor off the figure itself, as I figured I could damage the body in some way if I kept it on there, and didn't want to risk that.

Dremel work in progress.

 And then I just jumped in with that dremel.   The goings were slow.  The kind of plastic the armor is made out of just did not give much on the low setting.  So I pulled the tool away from the figure and decided, 'here goes nothing', and set the speed adjustment to 'middle'.  And then it was a whole new ballgame.

The dremel tore threw the plastic like a smart phone enabled scalper threw a fully stocked toy store. I used short, brief motions to dremel small portions of the plastic away because I figured that if I held the dremel on the plastic for more than a few fractions of a second, it would slash right threw it.  After some progress, I would put the armor back on the figure, and then try Sgt. Stalker's head on the thing, to see how it lined up and where I needed to do additional work.

All in all, it worked out really well.  I got the collar chiseled out just right so the hair passed through it where the hair is bound up, and even better, the way the dreadlocks spread out covered the gap int he collar.  I also did some dremel work on the handle-looking section of armor that stands out from the back of the figure below the collar line so the hear could rest closer to the back of the figure. Again, I would dremel a bit, then test with the Stalker's head to see where more dremeling was needed, and after a few iterations had a nice set up.  Stalker can't really turn his head too successfully in this set up, but he looks pretty cool standing and looking straight ahead.

And that's it!  Both Stalker and Duke look great in their new Iron Granadier customs.  It didn't take much work to do, but I'm calling this a win on account of the fact it was an original idea that I came up with and it ended up looking sweet, and because I was able to accomplish what I set out to do, and because I got some experience with the dremel and didn't destroy any action figures to the point that I couldn't create what I set out to create with the items I had when I started the project.  So- success!  Woo!

Until next time.

David D.

Spray Nozzle Surprise!

Yes!

I have to say this for fail:  its good that we have it.  If it wasn't for fail, we'd never try new things.  We'd do everything the same we we did it the first time, because why change what works?  Without fail, there would be no pride in achievement. .  There would be no savoring of accomplishment.  If we didn't have fail, how would we laugh at ourselves?

Because if you can't laugh at yourself, you are missing out on one of life's best comedies.  Today's fail tale: David's spray nozzle fiasco.

When I first worked on the Coyote a few months back, I used Krylon spray paint.  When the paint came out of the can, it really splattered all over the place.  I didn't know if it was the temperature, (it had been in the 90's,) or my technique, or maybe that's just how spray paint worked, and in the few cases where I had used spray paint in the past, I hadn't really noticed.  Maybe I was just anxious because I wanted the project to turn out well, and really, it was was fine and that's the way its suppose to be.

Uh-huh.

No!

Well, I was at Walmart today to pick up some spray on primer.  I was in the paint aisle, and I was looking at the different colors of primer- I found some white and gray and black and red brown ("burnt sienna") and I was reading the cans to see how long it took to try and how long it took before the objects I was painting were safe to handle.  And I noticed a little diagram on one of the containers.

According to the diagram, on the nozzle of this particular spray paint can is a removeable, little plastic plug.  It is set into the opening where the paint rushes out of the spray can.  It is actually suppose to be there, and in the diagram, I was shown how it is suppose to be used to control the flow of the paint.  You can twist it up and down to get a more vertical spray, twist it to the side to get a more horizontal spray, or diagonal to get a horiz-tical spray.   

In my first project, I assumed that the little plug was a cap meant to make sure the paint doesn't get out of the can during transit, or something, and pulled the thing out.

SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX.

The hero of the hour!

Way to check those directions.  (To be fair, not all of the cans of paint have the diagram showing how to twist the nozzle on them).  When I got home and tried the spray primer without pulling the little tip off, check it out, the spray was very easy to control and not spotty or splattery AT ALL.

So I figured something out!  Don't pull out that little cap from the spray paint, because it is suppose to be there, and because it makes your paint application work much better!

So from the initial fail came renewed interest in how to do things right, which led to me investigate painting further, which led to me figuring out NOT to take out the plug, which lead to

LEARNING

and now, satisfaction that I got the thing right.

Because in the end, what we are really about in our hobbies is satisfaction, right?  Well, if it wasn't for fail, if it wasn't for the fact I was not satisfied with how the spray job went before, I would not feel the satisfaction I feel right now.  So, thanks Fail.  I think.

Next time: David discovers amazing cheap action figures to use for practicing his painting and modding techniques!   I need more time for that post, but it'll be good.  I promise.


Until then,


David D.