You'll find a little of everything here. Genres covered in this blog include (so far) prehistorics, fantasy, old west, swashbucklers, pulp, Blood Bowl, Ghostbusters, gladiators, nautical, science fiction and samurai in 6mm, 15mm, 28mm, 40mm, 42mm and 54mm sizes. You'll also find terrain, scenery, basing, gaming, modeling, tutorials, repaints, conversions, art and thoughts in general about the hobby.


Saturday, October 6, 2012

Making my own weapons

The latest batch of 54mm figures from Bronze Age Miniatures has arrived, so I go right to doing one of my favorite things with these figures: Making nasty little weapons.

These weapons are an amalgam of brass rod, plastic card, thread and braided copper wire (thanks to Dad, who gave a trove of tiny copper wires), and green stuff. I always enjoy hammering blades out of brass, and I feel like I've improved a lot. I've moved the majority of a blade's creation after the actual hammering. Once the brass rod has been hammered flat, I clip off the end (for that Tanto blade look), then I take needle files with which I can more finely shape the blade I want.

I use the thread and copper wire to wrap the handles/hilts. I use copper wire when I want the look to be more cosmetic, and I use the thread when I'm trying to get a weapon handle to better fit into the hand of a figure.

For the shields, I stepped away from the road signs and tried the heavy, dented sheet metal look. I used a pair of pliers to hold each shield, and a lighter to slightly melt the plastic into that dented, roughly shaped look. The third shield is simply flat green stuff with added boss for a classic Norse viking look.

I went heavy on the pole arms this time because I've separated my Qwik teams out of my Apocalators, and that took away a lot of the original heavy weapons from the fighters. That, and it's also slightly easier to make pole arms (they're also easier to secure to figures).

Something I noticed after getting all my new figures armed is that I have enough for another Qwik team (three drivers, a chain and - well, almost enough- I'd need to make another qwik.)

4 comments:

  1. Very inspiring! Have you made a garbage can lid shield yet?

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    1. Thought about it- just not quite sure how to tackle it. (Specifically doing the turned-out lip of the lid; maybe I could build a form to sculpt over....)

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