With a project now complete, I do the usual tidy up and clean out of my workbench. I got the mini vacuum even though I knew it was designed for pencil shavings, eraser crumbs and other small objects. I've not used this for long and decided to open it up to empty what I had collected. I've used this to suck up the mess after sanding some plastic, so knew that the two side filters were not fine enough. The fine plastic dust just blows right out. Unfortunately it doesn't save more time than manually wiping away the mess :( I'd probably keep it if it was half the size, but currently it just takes up more room than I hoped.

Although I did purchase these myself... after Christmas! The main reason was for the mini vacuum cleaner, as I've been sanding and panel lining a lot of plastic. Hence, sweeping the plastic into the desk bin still meant a lot floating about in the air and breathing it in. It works, although I'm not sure how bad it looks inside yet, as I haven't used it much to warrant an empty. Along with this hoard is a Dremel attachment, which I gambled without checking the dimensions. It doesn't fit my Black & Decker Dremel. Which also means the Bits are useless. Others I haven't tried yet, an angle block, a 5 cm length steel ruler for panel lining those tight spaces (in my recent Tau barriers) and a Protractor to hopefully make it easier to draw/cut those Hexagons. Finally some transparent rods for the floating islands I've been planning to make for a decade!

I got lucky. The local Hobbycraft store, 5 minutes away so happens to have a small stock of Gamesworkshop products, including a small collection of paint. There were probably ~10 different paints. One of them was the Kislev Flesh that I needed. That saved me from having to plan a 20-minute trip into town plus the cost of parking. Unfortunately, when I went to the Garage to spray paint them, the Desert Yellow that I was planning to use had rusted a little, and all the air pressure had escaped. Not wanting to wait to order a new can, I decided to just base coat it white... not that it seemed much point, but hopefully it would mean coating them with the Kislev Flesh would be easier.

I was wary of doing this last gimmick without a tool to keep my Dremel bit level, but at least I had an attachment that meant not having to hold the large, bulkier tool. However, I still had issues trying to carve out a thin layer off the bases, as occasionally I would slip past the edge and put a dent into the side. At least it worked to a degree, and I now had a piece to slot and hold the bases together. One more for the other side, and I can finally give everything a spray of paint.

I found myself needing an even smaller steel ruler! Luckily, I was able to use this small steel stencil due to my poor planning, and the two buttresses got in the way. I also had two other panel lining tools that I can't even remember why I purchased. The white one had a much thinner nib, so it went in between the stencils I had previously purchased. Although the nib was sharper, it was directional. Hence, if you didn't hold it at the correct angle, it would veer off in the wrong direction. The golden one was a solid tip, so much bulkier and wouldn't fit through the small gaps in the stencils. However, this proved easier to use and was perfect for the panel lines on my Tau walls.

There must be some hobby tool to help glue two pieces of plastic into a neat right angle! This is the rig I had to set up, as I didn't want to hold the two pieces together until I got a solid bond. The Lego brick and the mat made the right angle for the two pieces of plastic. The small ruler is used to hold the horizontal piece of plastic against the Lego brick. The angled ruler is used to keep the vertical piece of plastic from leaning away from the Lego brick. And finally, the glue bottle to stop the angled ruler from toppling over. There must be a market for something like this!

To add some detail to my stage, I wanted to line the front with something similar to the Tau Tidewall Shieldline, but abandoned that idea quite quickly. Anything curved or round was out of the question. I opted for an angled wall I've seen in some images and even wanted to engineer a lip or a slot to fit to the existing base. Instead of cardboard, I decided to use some scrap plastic to mock things up. However, these actually went back into my bits tray afterwards! After racking my brain for various ideas, including the use of magnetic tape (which had its own problems), I opted for something much simpler. So the final wall design (one on the right) was a simple, thick rear wall with a thinner piece parked up against it. Luckily, a previous cheap purchase that I thought was useless due to it being so thin with edges that can easily cut your fingers, it had some nice triangle templates to cut some at 30 degrees. These triangles would support the slanted wall. So with only six pieces to make one wall, I was ready to mass-produce these!

Ten seems to be a nice number of troops to paint. This seemed to go much more smoothly than when I was trying to paint eighteen of them. It was also easier to flock using my old A4-sized bag rather than the smaller bag, and there was less of a mess left on my workspace. With the last two Dire Avenger stands completed for a full troupe, I was now free to move on to something different. I was running out of space and needed those floating islands for my Eldar... potentially an option for the next project.

I flocked the bases the same way as I did with my old Fire Dragons to keep the same aesthetics, including how awful the static grass looks and how badly it was applied. It got everywhere. Rather than scoop up the small amount on the table back into the bag, I just brushed them into the bin instead. I had a small bag worth, and that was only a small portion extracted from the original large bag I had from a decade ago. I believed I was done, only to realise that I was missing two stands that I thought were completed back with the Fire Dragons. *sigh*