The Unforgiven Veterans, part 2

Yesterday I got some good advise on my army; the latest Dark Angels Codex is 4th edition, while the current Space Marines codex is 5th edition. While it is still possible to use a 4th edition army list there are many improvements in the 5th edition - even if I just use the standard marine rules. At some point the Dark Angels codex should be updated to 5th edition, but all we know for sure is that Blood Angels will be the next one.

For my planned army it didn't change a lot, the biggest change was to the veteran squads I am currently assembling. I decided to convert the two veteran squads into one sternguard and one vanguard squad.

The sternguard squad is completely assembled, however it still needs a sergeant - hopefully he should be arriving tomorrow, along with the Dark Angels upgrade kits. I've left out some of the shoulder pads for now, perhaps I will be using a few from the upgrade kits - I'm not really sure yet.

I decided to pin every joint on the models, joins between metal and plastic are usually quite fragile and pinning is very easy since you can clearly see where the center of the arm is on both parts and drill there.

Remember that plastic is very soft while the metal takes a little longer to drill, a good tip when drilling space marine plastic arms is to leave the shoulder pad off until you're finished - otherwise you may end up with a hole in the shoulder pad :).

Once the holes are drilled in both pieces I super-glue a paper clip into the model, when its dry I cut it off with about 4 mm pin for a plastic arm or about 2 mm for a metal arm. This is also a good time to drill out the gun barrel, the gun looks much more realistic if it got a barrel hole. for bolters and bolt pistol you can also carefully drill out the two side holes on the barrel. The arms are then fitted along with the gun, unless the arms fit perfectly I put a small ball of green stuff on the pin first. Once the arms and gun sits perfectly you can scape off the excess green stuff and do a little sculpting.

I tend to glue the left arm right away but keeping the right arm and gun unglued, this allows me to remove the arm and gun when priming and painting. The green stuff should be completely dry (24-48 hours) before attempting to remove the arm. Once the inaccessible parts are painted I carefully glue the arm and gun in place.
The method of pinning and using green stuff for covering gaps are mostly used on larger models where a simple glue connection would not be able to carry the weight, however I find it very useful for smaller metal models too. Plastic models are different, since the plastic glue melds the plastic pieces together the joint is much stronger than super glue on metal thus pinning is rarely necessary.

For my sternguard veterans heavy weapons I choose a lascannon and a multi-melta, since I had the bits and troops they would fit onto without much conversion. I'd like to do larger conversions but I'll save that for the plastic troopers.

To fit the weapons I used the method described above but adding a pin in the joins between backpack and tubes from the gun. I also glued the backpack on the model right away to make sure it would line up correctly with the gun

Well, that's it for assembling, now the tedious job of removing mould lines before priming remains. I've put the vanguard squad on the shelf for now, most of it is assembled but I need weapons for four of them, I'm sure there'll be some leftovers from my tactical squad.

I was in Århus this morning and stopped by Dragons Lair to see if they had some good deals, unfortunately the "cheap box" with older models only had some Ork and fantasy stuff so instead I got a new primer spray from army painter - I've seen their products before but this is the first one I'm trying out, from what I hear its just as good as GW's, if not better. A GW purity seal spray and a space marine commander had to come too.
The purity seal has a bad reputation, but from what I could gather from various forums the problems related to the matt variant in a blue can, I got a satin one in a tan can, a quick test on an old figure seemed to work fine.
When using any sort of spray varnish you should shake the can a lot and do the spraying at room temperature, the can should also be warm but i wouldn't recommending heating it like some people do.