Round Three Report from Rob Jedi

Rob Jedi writes:

Hi, folks! Welcome to my write-up for the third Last Painter Standing miniature - this time, it's i-Kore's Celtos Vidar Wolf Helm from the Viking-inspired Dwarf line. First up, just want to say thanks again to Bill, the people at i-Kore, and the members of this site that didn't vote me off last round.

Now on to the mini. First thing you notice when you see this mini is the unusual pose, and the great big wolf pelt which really dominates this mini. I decided early up that I wanted to present the mini a little taller (it'd make taking photos easier anyway), so I took a flat Castle Molds (Hirst Arts) brick and - with a bit of sanding down to get it to a jaunty angle, and then a bit of crunching the ends with side cutters - I got it to fit the top of the base. Then I sculpted a Celtic knot design on the front face of it with some Quick Weld.

(From the makers of Green Stuff, Quick Weld is a 5-minute hardening putty that comes in a plastic tube. It dries very hard and can be carved. Very hard to get it to stick to things, though.)

I glued the brick to the top of the base with some Zap-a-Gap, then put on some PVA and covered the rest of the base with a mix of gravel and coral sand. OK, that's the basing prepared.

The mini I cleaned up in the usual way with needle files and a craft knife. I must point out this mini was incredibly cleanly cast, and it was a real bugger just to see most of the mold lines on the body part of the mini. The sword I started to clean the same way when inspiration took me - the sword was filing really smooth and had a real nice shine to it, such a nice shine in fact that I decided to go a bit further and polish the blade up to a mirror shine.

Basically I used a fairly fine needle file to give the blade a really smooth surface, then I used some paper towlets (Subway napkins, actually) and rubbed it and rubbed it and kept at it till it was a mirror shine. OK, now apart from the rune bit in the middle, the blade was finished. With a realistic polished finish that metallic paints could only dream of.

I should note that this trick does not often work. Some alloys won't polish no mater what you do to them, others will dull quickly, and others have blades too fine to even attempt the amount of rough handling and pressure you put on the part to polish it up like this. Also, unless it is separate from the mini or held straight out from the mini, it's really hard to get at it with a great big tissue.

Priming was done with matte black auto spray, and left to dry for a day. I put a piece of masking tape over the sword blade to avoid it getting sprayed.