HOBBY TIP: Cleaning your files

Hi again ladies and gentlemen (is there any lady btw? xD)

Today, a quick hobby tip. How to clean your files (without screwing them up!).

I found this method in a blog wichs name I didn't save. Sorry!

Everyone knows that needle files don’t work very well when they are dirty and caked with debris. If you didn't know, you should! To clean your files, use a small clean jar of choice. All you need to do is fill the jar with lacquer thiner and put your needle files in there!

For the ones who don't know, the lacquer thiner is a mixture of solvents, used to dilute, dissolve and clean up of lacquer products. Typically too caustic for oil paints, lacquer thinner is often used additionally for removing inks on metal, and adhesive residue from a variety of surfaces. Lacquer thinner is very  strong and rapidly deteriorates many surfaces and fabrics

Just put your clogged needle filesinto the thinner and close the lid to avoid the fumes. Just be cautious not to submerge the rubber handles of the files. Wait for an hour, remove the file and clean it off with an old thooth brush. Then, your files will be as good as new!

The lacquer thinner can be found on most of your favourite art supplies stores, and also in any hardware store.Whoever sells paints could sell lacquer thinner, among other solvents and thinners!

Well, that's for now, I hope this little tip can help you a bit ;)
Now, back to Real Life -.-

See ya soon!


PS: I've said NEEDLE FILES! Not diamond files. Be aware, some chemicals can screw your diamond file, eating the glue that attachs the diamond particles to the file!

SHOWCASE: FW Open Day 2011 pics!

Well, these previews are definitely worth seeing.

Check out the incoming Chaos Dwarf Inmortal Guard, Great Taurus, chaotic stuff and even some more miniatures for the Empire!

Fullscreen, then play. Enjoy!

See ya!

TUTORIAL: Getting the Citadel colours

Hello! Long time without posting.
Last week I failed my goal of "at least one post per week". Yeah, Real Life messing it up again.
Well, now I'm gluing the sand to my Chaos Marauders and still waiting for some paints to arrive from the UK so I'll start primming the dwarves I'm going to paint for Tomas.

So, nothing new to show today. Another bunch of WIP and black coated models doesn't seem as a good idea, specially considering the amount of awesome entries in the blogosphere about Adepticon.

What can I offer you? A pretty old technique to achieve the entire Citadel Colour range, using only 5 colours.

This charts were posted in an old LOTR webpage. I don't even recall the name, but when the page went offline, I tried to save those pics, but couldn't. I used google cache to copy the e-mail from the web-admin and explained I wanted to save this wonderful receipes. He kindly sent them to me and granted permission to post them wherever I would like to. So, after having posted this tutorial 2 years ago in my local forum, I would like to share it with all of you!

All you need to do is having 5 brushes, hopefully, identical and a palette. If you have dropper bottles, even easier and much more precise. If wanted to do with only 1 brush, get "an" amount of the desired paint, clean your brush and get "another" with the same brush, as many times as you need. This is pretty useful when starting painting or when you don't have all the range of paints you would like to. I used this charts when I didn't own any purples, only 2 differents greens and no pink. And it worked wonderfully!

Well, that's for now. Hopefully next week I'll be able to show you something more interesting xD

Anyways, I encourage you to try these charts and achieve all those colours discontinued from the Citadel Colour Range. Specially if you don't have a stock of Golden Yellow, Scaly Green, Tentacle Pink, Terracota, etc! All those preciousssss, removed by the GW suits >.<

See ya next time!


PS: before being called mad by someone ofuscated with the receipe of Kommando Khaki, let me tell you can round up a bit the quantity of paint. This even work to achieve some shadow and highlight colour of the same colour! ;D