GrahamGilchrist's Tau Farsight Cadre and scratchbuilt Orca Log

[Lord Macharius]

Loving these! Especially the creeping stealth suit!

[GrahamGilchrist]

Update time again:
Unfortunately no painted pics for today. I am working on some gun drones and broadsides at the moment but they are not finished yet.

Instead, i am going to show you some WIPs of my secret weapon for this army...

I paid a visit to the hobby store today, and bought the biggest piece of balsa wood they sold for the most reasonable sum of 11 english pounds (thats $22 for you american folks).

A little cutting later...



and a little glueing (can you guess what it is yet?)...



and we have the beginnings of my scratch built Orca dropship, designed to carry all those lovely death-dealing crisis suits into battle.



The final Orca will be built from balsa wood and plasticard. I have only templated the vertical axis so far, but it will look much better when I do the side profile.

[omricon]

sweeet! sweeeeeeeeet!

[Pravis]

Awsome, i love the steathsuits. Also really interested in how the orca turns out.

[Luke]

wicked. as soon as i saw the block i thought "orca"

can't wait to see this!

[GrahamGilchrist]

Minor updates on the Orca progress. Done all the cutting and shaping of the main body now, just need to seal the balsa with PVA and do some filling of the gaps/holes I have bashed in it/errors in sanding etc. . Was thinking of using milliput for this.

The hobby shop did have some actual 'Model filler', although I have not used this before and am not sure if its any good? Anyone have any recommendations?

Anyway, onto the pic:

[verydarkshadow]

Looking foreward to seeing that finished. Will you be adding in the details with plasticard?

[Pravis]

Looking very nice, alot of work must have gone into just curring and sanding some of those areas.... unless you have power tools that is

[GrahamGilchrist]

@verydarkshadow: Yes indeed, the details will be added with a combination of card, plasticard and greenstuff

@Pravis: No power tools used I'm afraid. I was worried about making to big a mistake with them! Just an afternoons worth of good old fashioned elbow grease . Balsa is actually pretty easy to work with if you have some rough grade sandpaper and a junior hacksaw

[Darakesh]

Sweet, like the colour scheme alot, I'm gonna try black and green myself but the orange is looking awesome. Did you decide on the rest of the stealthsuits? Ithink the spots painting might look awkward, but from the top down could work quite well.

Subscribed!!

[kiwichild]

Where are the resin bases from? They look sweet! With the fire-warriors....wow the black and leather scheme is awesome, for the bare-headed Tau I would love a watered down blue ink to give the flesh abit more depth. That aside WOW keep up the great work.

p.s. The ocra looks pimp/great! Any plans for mass production?

[GrahamGilchrist]

@Kiwichild: The resin bases are from foundations of war (www.foundationsofwar.co.uk)

I agree the tau skin should look a deeper blue. Unfortunately that is a side effect of the photography, in RL the blue is much richer and deeper. Will try to get some better photos at some point

[kiwichild]

Quick question: Do the foundations of war bases match with GW bases, do they have the same angle from the top to the base/floor..... for example this would be the cross section view /_____\. I`m thinking of getting some but want to mix them with plain GW bases too. I still like the black and leather colourscheme though, understand about the whole photography side of it though.
Cheers mate
James

[ikim]

The Orca is amazing.
I will try to scratch built one myself, as soon as I finish my Eldar superheavies; though I was thinking of a different approach on the project.
Anyhow, like Luke said, as soon as I saw the balsa my mind went "ORCA!".

keep it up, 'cause this is a great army and and great blog.

cheers

[GrahamGilchrist]

Cheers for all the comments guys.

@kiwichild: The foundations of war bases do have an angled edge like GW bases. Being resin, they are not always exactly the same due to miscasts etc but all my foundations of war ones have been quite good.

Actually the base the painted stealth suit is on was from black cat bases since I wanted some variation, but that batch I got had a lot of miscasts, so I went mostly with Foundations of war bases instead.

[Lucifer216]

My only comment is that the Orca seems to be suffering from "Rhino-Tardis" syndrome. It looks a trifle small, given that it is supposed to be capable of transporting most of your army. Or is this just my inability to grasp a sense of scale from the photo?

[GrahamGilchrist]

@Lucifer216: Well I was slightly worried about this myself, but I have scaled everything according to the plans. I could have made it bigger so I shall be annoyed if it ends up too small. Problem is, without a real one to measure against, I can never be sure.

Also, if you look at the pictures in imperial armour, all the units are pretty much crammed in there with the crisis suits hunched up and fire warriors sitting along the walls and stuff.

If anyone has access to an Orca, it would be useful to get a measurement from nose to tail to check

[kiwichild]

Cheers for all the comments guys.

@kiwichild: The foundations of war bases do have an angled edge like GW bases. Being resin, they are not always exactly the same due to miscasts etc but all my foundations of war ones have been quite good.

Actually the base the painted stealth suit is on was from black cat bases since I wanted some variation, but that batch I got had a lot of miscasts, so I went mostly with Foundations of war bases instead.

Cheers mate, I`m considering a basing-splurge on FoW bases so thanks for the heads up. Don`t want to do my whole Squat army with them (kinda expensive) so your advise is very welcome. Sorry for the thread high-jack.

[johno]

Graham: you may find Milliput is a bit hard to use as a filler on Balsa - you get problems when trying to sand it smooth, because the balsa around your filler "plug" sands away quicker than the filler itself, so it gradually ends up standing prouder than it started out...

The old Humbrol Model Filler used to work better with balsa than it did on plastic kits, but I'm not sure that they still make it - indeed they may be completely defunct now.

Get your local model shop to recommend you something that is still available!

As to sealing the balsa: two thinnish coats of Sanding Sealer, with a light sand after each coat used to be the method.

Sanding Sealer is basically cellulose dope with a filler powder in it, and will fill the grain (and whatever filler you end up using) very nicely, giving a really fine finish after the last rub down with fine sandpaper. Being cellulose based, I would recommend leaving it a good 48 hours before putting any acrylic based paint on it though, or you might find your paint flakes off again! Once it's fully dry, it will take the usual primers etc very nicely.

johno
(who worked in a model shop for twenty years before switching to IT...)

[projectkmo]

Subscribed if only to see how that Orca comes out!

The stealth suits are amazing too!