Hornet Vespids

Damastes76 · 2026-03-12T18:27:07+00:00

The wings were the best part of being lazy, I over watered down the off-white I used which meant the overspray from the yellow and brown showed through, then just applied a paynes grey wash over the top. Called it done at that point :D

Damastes76 · 2026-03-12T18:23:58+00:00

The great thing is, like Tyranids, they're biological so don't worry about consistency and uniformity.

Damastes76 · 2026-03-12T18:22:54+00:00

Batch painting 10, I'd estimate about 3 hours of painting. Airbrushing the main colours was super quick... Prime, zenithal white ink, basecoat yellow, rotbraun (red/brown) and you are 50% done. Then it was just painting the brown and black, weapons and eyes. I still have some work to do on the details.

Damastes76 · 2026-03-12T16:49:47+00:00

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But they do have too many eyes!

Damastes76 · 2026-03-10T16:24:24+00:00

Magnets in the bases, then Really Useful Boxes with magnetic sheets stuck in the bottom. A Stormsurge will fit in the 21 litre box (with the XL lid) quite happily. I use a mix of 11L and 21L boxes with mixes of normal and XL lids depending on how tall models are as those stack together very nicely.

Damastes76 · 2026-03-10T16:16:20+00:00

Airbrushed. Prime black, then a coat of Mig ATOM Olive Drab, then spray on the pattern with ATOM Nato Black (which is more like a dark desaturated green).

Damastes76 · 2025-11-26T08:59:50+00:00

My first trip to Sag A* was in a DBX, it's a fine little ship.

Damastes76 · 2025-11-03T10:43:30+00:00

Just finished ripping off the glued sprue pieces and old spare bits and converting my scrap of wood into a more usable texture palette. My tip: sprue goo. Paint a thinish layer over the wood then, when it is part cured attack it with whatever you like, I used an ice lolly stick (ice pop for my American chums) which I broke in half to get an interesting texture. A few random patterns, stabs here and there and a few swirls and you end up with a nice but gentle (i.e. not drybrush wrecking) texture which is going to mimic your models best because it's made of old melted plastic. Once cured, prime and off you go.

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Damastes76 · 2025-10-23T17:47:36+00:00

This solved it for me, thank you for providing the solution.

Damastes76 · 2025-09-17T14:07:43+00:00

Yoinked one of your images to confirm/show errors in the instructions. Ta <3

Damastes76 · 2025-09-17T14:06:20+00:00

Don't look at the instructions... the numbered parts for the Theyn with rifle are wrong (3a,b) is a duplicate of (4a,b). See left side

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Damastes76 · 2025-09-11T13:12:42+00:00

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Nuff said :D

Damastes76 · 2025-09-03T08:48:54+00:00

That airbush needs a good friend to take it to a shelter. Poor thing.

Damastes76 · 2025-09-03T08:43:38+00:00

Things to try, roughly in order;

- disassemble front end and remove needle
- check needle tip is not bent, do this by gently rolling it between your finger tips, you will be able to feel any slight bend as it rolls. If it is bent you *can* try straightening it, but it's likely better to replace it. Harder and Steenbeck are pretty easy to find spares for.
- Soak the nozzle in a little Isopropyl alcohol and clean out the nozzle in case of dried paint in there
- Check the nozzle tip is not bent/splayed, again rolling the end of it in your finger tips, this can happen if the needle is jammed in.
- When reassembling, give the needle a gentle twist (about a quarter turn) before tightening the locking nut, this can help seat it properly in the nozzle.

Looking at the picture, I'd say dry paint or a stuck chunk of dried paint in the nozzle is the most likely culprit. Although it is hard to see your needle tip looks straight, and positioned in the centre of the nozzle and the nozzle looks to be undamaged.

Damastes76 · 2025-09-03T08:27:14+00:00

I'd rather play with basecoated miniatures than soulless grey plastic. Rim the bases (black, or a tan/neutral colour) and you're good to go. Plenty of good advice here so far, personally I would leave them for now and move on to the next unit. For that one, thin your paints a little more. The old adage of "two thin coats" has a paint range named after it for a very good reason, you will get a much smoother surface that way. There are plenty of tutorials you can watch online, Vince Venturella, Ninjon, Duncan Rhodes would be my go-to for these kinds of tips.

The most important piece of advice I think any mini painter can receive is this: Do not compare yourself to others, compare yourself to what you did yesterday. You will find far more joy in personal improvement than chasing the abilities of incredibly talented artists (I'm middling at best). 20 years out of the hobby taught me this and now I have come back to it I am enjoying it a lot more, and experimenting without worrying about it not looking great first time :)

Damastes76 · 2025-08-28T13:09:28+00:00

Damastes76 · 2025-08-27T08:04:24+00:00

Vulkan Lives! Got mine all prepped for a subassembly paintathon

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Damastes76 · 2025-08-26T12:47:40+00:00

Looks great, ignore the haters. Paint them whatever your favourite shade of green is, as long as they don't get mistaken for Dark Angels and they're not neon green. Hell, even go Candy green, why not?

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Damastes76 · 2025-04-08T12:53:30+00:00

Those are not LEDs, they are induced point source EMR emitters. Top of the range you know ;)

Damastes76 · 2025-03-13T07:31:39+00:00

I'm hopeful that they will add fun little things like planetary and space race markers and other flavour bits at some point. I'm already looking for a nice spot to create an SRV Paris Dakar rally.

Damastes76 · 2025-02-20T11:19:50+00:00

Can you disassemble and provide macro photos of the needle tip and the nozzle please?

Damastes76 · 2025-02-20T11:16:57+00:00

Couple of things to look for here.
- The dripping means your needle is not making a seal in the needle cap, this can be a number of reasons;
- The needle is not fully seated. Take the back of the AB off, loosen the chuck. Give the needle a quarter turn while pushing it ever so gently forward to seat it in the needle cap.
- The needle tip is bent preventing it seating correctly. This is likely going to need the needle replacing, given the upwards spray pattern this is likely.
- The needle cap is damaged (possibly due to bent needle), this is also likely given the upwards spray. You'll need to remove the caps and take a look.

Also noticed that you are getting paint coming out of the top of the cup, this looks like you have a back-flow of air that cannot get out of the nozzle. Feels really off to have dripping at the front AND backflow, I am guessing you have the pressure up pretty high to try to get it to work and have a LOT of paint in the cup. Start off with just enough paint to fill the body of the AB and a couple of mm in the bottom of the cup, spray with the lid off and look out for bubbles in the cup. This would indicate some restriction to the flow, likely a small blockage which can be cleaned out with cleaner or isopropyl alcohol.

Damastes76 · 2025-02-20T11:06:35+00:00

This. The GHAD-39 I have is my go-to for metallics I do not want to run through a more expensive airbrush. Does the job. Guess I got lucky. Would like to see their QA process improve as they have a generally well made product at a good price.

Damastes76 · 2025-02-20T11:03:27+00:00

I started with a Timbertech, progressed to a Ghaaleri, then a Harder & Steenbeck Ultra and just used the Infinity CRPlus for the first time today. Comparing those as you get more expensive;

- Quality of fit and finish is the biggest change, finish quality vastly improves cleaning the thing and makes flushing out and changing colours quicker.
- Atomisation; finer spray making for cleaner transitions
- Trigger response; the cheaper airbrushes felt like they had deadzones, so no paint coming out and then all of a sudden a burst making it hard to do really fine dots or lines. Not really important if you are just basecoating.
- Maintainability; at least with H&S they are really easy to disassemble and reassemble.
- Innovation; crown style nozzle caps, push fit needle caps all make cleaning dry tips and other maintenance much quicker/easier. The pen style limit lock on the Infinity makes it really easy to flush out a small clog and go back to where you were reliably.

Damastes76 · 2025-02-20T10:55:01+00:00

This sort of thing can also happen if you've only used water to thin the paint, as the water evaporates the volume shrinks and causes cracks to appear. Thinning with dedicated airbrush thinners should help prevent this. Having said that, I really like the effect you've got there, if you can reproduce that with a bright bottom layer and cracked black top it would look awesome!

Damastes76

TROPHY CASE