The Master's Brush Cleaner Review

Good evening and thank you for joining us once again in our dark corner of paradise. This week my offering to our Lord Nurgle is a review on the brush soap that was recommended to me after I reviewed my Winsor & Newton brushes.

I picked up a pot but until now I hadn't felt my brushes has seen enough action to deserve some special attention so this post has been a long time coming.

Recently I have been working on an Aegis Defence line I picked up in anticipation of sixth edition and the changes to the FOC, it also worked out well as a test for my airbrush. The terrain is coming along nicely and should hopefully have it done over the weekend ready to share with all you followers of Nurgle.

As I have been adding the reinforced areas by hand I noticed my brush was starting to lose the shape of its tip so I broke out the cleaner from my trusty paint chest and decided to have a cheeky read of the instructions to prevent me damaging my brush.

The instructions were pretty straight forward and consisted of rinsing your brush, working the block of soap into a lather and then repeating the process until clean. My only concern with this is the brush recommends to only clean with cold water so I used more of a tepid water to be on the safe side. I am not sure if it was due to this or if it was the because this was the first time I had used the soap but the lather just did not seem to form for a good minute or two.

After it being slow to form I wasn't expecting much from it however it quickly started to strip the red hue my brush that had acquired over time from my over use of Burnt Cadre Red. Once I repeated this a few times and gave it a proper rinse I was pleased with how much it had removed, most of which I hadn't even noticed had built up. The tip is also back with a strong tip and ready to be put back into the fray.

Overall I am happy with the results the soap gave and will be using it again, though I don't think it will be needed after every session it should prolong the life of my brushes. If you have treat yourself to a decent set of brushes I would recommend picking up this up to keep your brush in tiptop condition.

As for using it with cheaper brushes, such as my dry brushes I don't think any amount of soap can save them from the horrors they endure but that shouldn't deter you from trying.

Until next time spread his blessings to everyone you meet and all shall you know shall fall under his domain.

O'Shashar

Crashed Aquilla Lander WIP

Hello and good day to you all. Welcome back to Nurgle's favoured cupboard. I apologise for the lack of posts by myself I have not been captured by the Inquisition I been lurking in the shadows. All my spare time is currently being pumped into my new home. I am on my way over later for round two of wall paper stripping. I can tell you for those that have never done this that it is one of the most pain the ass things you can do. Maybe I have upset Papa Nurgle and it is punishment. If it is I hope this offering to him will reduce my suffering.

In the time I have had for my beloved hobby I decided instead of painting something small I would go for a larger piece. This is because I am unsure when I will be moving stuff over to my new domain and I wanted some easy to pick up as I often find that if I take large breaks in painting models I either misplace them or I forget what I was doing last or what colour I was highlighting.

The piece I am currently working on is Crashed Aquilla Lander from the Battle For Macragge. I picked this beauty up from eBay for about £7 a long time ago already sprayed and with a basecoat of Machrite Red. I have just finished going over the Machrite Red with Orkhide Shade as I wanted the Aquilla Lander to look like it was used for military purposes in an Imperial Guard regiment for a high commander or something.

So it's not much this week but I will give you another work in progress when I get some more done on it. Until next time I hope Father Nurgle is kinder with his blessings to you all.

O'Shashar's Misadventures With His Airbrush - Starting Out

Good evening and thank you for joining me once again in the Cupboard of Nurgle. Today I would like to talk to you about starting out with airbrushing and depending how much I learn as I go along this may become a regular series of tips. Now I am new to airbrushing so my tips will really only be good for people who have just started or are thinking about starting out.

Firstly I would recommend you ask yourself why you want an airbrush, it seems to be a bit of a stupid question but by asking myself this I had put this purchase off for a long time based on the knowledge that most of the painting I would do could be achieved with a paint brush. Personally I got an airbrush as I wanted to paint a large amount of terrain and vehicles as well as apply base coats in batches.

Once you have decided this is something you want to invest in it is time to either ask someone who knows about airbrushing miniatures at your local game club or search the internet for information. I went the internet route as I know a lot of people interested in airbrushing but like me have held off. The internet is full of useful information and differing points of view so try to read as much as you can to get an overall view of what's out there.

After my research I decided I would need the following:

• Airbrush ( To start I got a cheap double action one to test with before I get the higher quality one I have my eye on purely so if this went badly I wouldn't have sunk too much money into it)
• Compressor with an air tank ( to prevent pulsation in the air pressure and over heating )
• Airbrush Holder ( I got a combined Airbrush holder & cleaning jar and has served me well )
• Cleaning Tools
• Cleaning Fluid
• Moisture Trap
• Respirator ( Acrylics are not toxic by nature and without the chemicals of propellant they are not as bad for you but I don't think breathing in something that is a nightmare to get off your hands is a good idea )

This is by no means a comprehensiveness list and if you find anything you feel will make your experience better go for it. You will also need to think of where you plan to spray as it will need to be well ventilated and spray booths to buy or build can be found online. A lot of people recommend buying a second needle for the brush as they are quite delicate and even a small bend can render them useless, I would like to add to this they are sharp enough so you won't feel them go stick in until you hit something solid.

So now you have your set up and are eager to get started you should stop and read the instructions for all the equipment you bought, now I know this goes against everyone's favourite method of trial and error but keep in mind that you have just spent a fair amount of money on equipment you haven't used before and there is a good chance something is going to go wrong.

Once you are familiar with the instructions you want to disassemble and reassemble your airbrush a few times to make yourself comfortable with doing this for cleaning. I did not do this and while using my airbrush I took the needle out to clean it causing me to flood it all with paint. Due to this I had to disassemble it, coated in paint and with no idea how it went back together I do not recommend that to anyone.

Next time I will be talking about using your Airbrush for the first time, paint choices and all the fun and failures I have experienced so far.

Until then keep spreading his gifts to all you encounter in your travels through the warp.

O'Shashar

Painting Resolutions For Sixth Edition

Good evening travellers of the warp and thank you for joining me once again in our dark corner of the infinite abyss. I apologise that I have not posted recently and would like to thank Mighty Simo for picking up the slack for me. My offering today is more of a catchup and my plans for sixth edition and my war gaming in general so will be a wall of text ( yes more than usual ) so if this doesn't sound like your cup of tea I won't be offended if you catch the next portal out of here.

As sixth edition was approaching I found myself at a bit of a lull in motivation so decided to look through my rather sizeable collection of unfinished projects and decided that I wanted to get back to where I was when I started with war gaming in fifth.

My original Necron force, with the awakening of the Tomb Worlds this has more than doubled in size

As unbelievable as this is with my track record of slacking off when I first started I picked up my Necrons and before I had my first game with them they were fully painted as well as being based. I am not going to try and convince you all this was the greatest painting ever but compared to the the grey Tyranids I was facing it made them look more like an army.

However the group I learnt with didn't play the missions and was literally we played until someone was wiped out so this lead to a lot of tailored lists and different units on a per game basis. As you can imagine this pattern lead me to doing the same. Unfortunately this lead to no units being used often enough to justify painting.


In this time I also obtained two AOBR marine forces, a large Space Wolf army and a mid sized T'au army to help a friend who decided 40k wasn't for him and would rather play Flames of War get out of it. The Space Wolves were stripped back to the metal / plastic and anything with Space Wolf feel to it was redistributed to our resident Space Wolves player and anything else was inducted into my Templar army ( This was at the time of the new codex and despite their amazing power Black Templars just resonate with me so won out ). The T'au along with two further small T'au forces and purchases by myself became my current T'au army.

1750 points worth of my T'au after they trekked to Maelstrom for the first Blogwars

In the end has left me in the situation I am now with a large T'au, Black Templar and Necron forces as well as a couple of battle forces for Imperial Guard. As you can imagine this isn't where my addiction ends and I also have random kits for different armies, two fantasy armies and an assortment of stand alone figures.

Now I can quickly admit this is not a good place to be and have drastically cut my spending in this area but I know this isn't going to be enough as I have said this before and  I love the new stuff that is release from different companies and eventually I will break and start buying again.

My solution to this is hopefully the drive to play more games with painted models and with that in mind I plan to keep focus on my Necrons as they are the newest of my armies with the recent refresh and I enjoy using them. Along with them I may try to paint some Imperial Guard up for games with allies.

Now I am a slow painter so have picked up an airbrush and is what I have been doing since my last post. I have mainly been practicing on boxes and old models so nothing exciting I can post currently though I have started an Aegis Defence line and while I am not 100% happy with it so far I can see the potential for this tool if I can get good with it.

As this is probably going to take up what little free time I seem to have these days my posts will probably reflect this so am going to chronicle my experiences to try and help anyone else who is on the fence as so far it has been frustrating as I have learnt a lot by trial and error though despite this I am confident this will help me reach my goal.

For added motivation Mighty Simo never fails to roll out fully painted and awesome looking armies when I face him and Dalinair is making good strides on his Blood Angels so it is time for me to get back in the Earth Castes machine shops.

If you're still with me after this wall of text I salute you as the truly devoted followers of Nurgle and offer you a fist bump from this internet cat.

For those of you wanting an abridged version it is basically I bought too much to keep competitive with my gaming group which used heavy model repping and now am snowed under so have bought an airbrush to try and help me out as I am annoyed at myself for getting like this.

Until next time take head and learn from my mistakes or join me in an unassembled & unpainted hell from which there is little chance of escape.

O'Shashar