Bexley

Andy Chambers?

Well, to be fair, if your models painted with Testors paints are shiny, it's probably because you didn't read the label and used a gloss color instead of a matte color.

Enamel paints were the standard for many years (until the early/mid 1980s) and many people still use them (or other enamels, such as Humbrol) and produce fine work- primarily, larger scale historical figure painters. In fact, early on, one of the 'Eavy Metal painters (Fraser Gray) did all of his models with enamels. (I'm pretty sure GW would never allow that these days, and if they did, they'd certainly never let him say so on the pages of White Dwarf.) There's a Dust Tactics player on the FFG forums right now who lives in Argentina and can only get Humbrol enamels locally, and he's doing some outstanding work with them.

That being said, though, enamels require a very different painting technique than acrylics. They require solvent based thinners (such as mineral spirits or turpentine) for thinning and clean-up. Also, 99% of the information you'll find in the web concerning painting miniatures will only apply to acrylic techniques. One of the trickiest things with enamels is that unless they've dried for many days, solvents in fresh paint can re-wet previously applied paint, making layering very difficult. You can get some very nice blends, though, with practice, by applying two colors next to each other, and using a brush dipped in solvent to re-dissolve the area where the two colors meet and blend them together. But in the end, you are probably better off sticking to acrylics.

I have it on good authority that they hire local actors to come to their offices and read customer service emails aloud in funny voices, so they can all laugh at the misfortunes of others as a bonding experience. True story!

ABS degrades in sunlight. It is unlikely to be used in cars. (In fact, after looking this up to make sure I wasn't sticking my foot further into my mouth, it's use in cars has led to several vehicle recalls due to faulty parts because of photolytic degradation.)

Um... I'm pretty sure the ABS in car descriptions is "Antilock Braking System." ABS would be too brittle to have a lot of use in cars. (It's what Legos are made from.)

I would print a million more 3D printers.

1. Always dip your brushes as far into the paint pot as they will go. It's actually not a bad idea to mash the bristles around on the bottom of the pot as well.

2. Clean your brushes with 600-800 grit sandpaper. This will clean much more paint from the bristles. Scrub vigorously.

3. After cleaning, use the brush soak up a thin mix of paint and water, and let this dry in the bristles. It will condition the bristles to accept paint more readily later. Also, set them point-down in a jar to dry.

4. Never listen to Bexley.

Iron Painter.

Blood Bowl - Nurgle, Skaven, Wood Elves, Khemri, Dark Elves, Norse, Chaos, Human, High Elves, Orcs

WFB - Skaven

Dust Warfare - Allies

Car Wars (played in HO scale)

Some paints will tend to suck extra water through the paper, though, and get more dilute the longer you paint. I used a wet palette a lot when I'd first heard of them, but nowadays I rarely bother, since I seem to spend about as much time adding more paint to thicken it up to the right consistency as I do adding water to a normal palette to keep the paint properly thinned. Pick your poison, I guess.

For those that still use a "traditional" palette, I'd highly recommend investing in ceramic one. When you're done painting, put it in a bucket of hot water with a small amount of cleaner (Simple Green or glass cleaner work well) and let it soak a while. The paint will come right off when you rinse it. (Some paints, especially metallics, will need a little scrubbing, but if you've left the palette to soak overnight, those should come right off too.)

Better yet: buy more than one. Then if you need to stop painting to clean the palette, you can let it soak while you use the fresh palette, and when that one needs cleaning, rinse off the one that's been soaking and toss the dirty one into the bucket. I actually use three, so that one can air dry while one soaks, as I find that drying off a palette with a towel invariably leaves lint on the palette, which then gets into your paint. With three, I can keep swapping for a clean, dry palette without having to stop painting.

Blick Art carries nice small 7-well "flower" style ones for about ten bucks. You can get watercolorist's palettes with upwards of thirty wells, but they don't tend to be cheap.

(Except in the UK, where O scale is 1:43.)

Er.... okay?

Procrastination. I go at a pretty good clip once I start (or when a deadline leaves me little alternative) but getting myself to start is always a pain.

Wait, you can play a game with these things too?

Do individual modular room sections, and go all crazy like Sarah Winchester.

Then why not try a flat (or a filbert, which is my preference) for base coating?

2" China bristle. If you can't paint a GD-winning figure with one, then hang up your brushes, you talentless hack.

Fantastic!

I refuse to see any film in which Thor appears and is not played by Vincent D'Onofrio.

I am fairly certain that is untrue.

You will note that Talisman, Chaos in the Old World, and Horus Heresy have Fully Detailed Plastic Playing Pieces, in an incompatible scale with other GW games, and not miniatures.

I am wondering what will happen with Necromunda now that Fantasy Flight apparently has the license for all of the Specialist games.

FFG does not have the license for Specialist Games. FFG has a license to produce boardgames, card games, and RPGs set in the 40k/WFB universe. They are also prohibited from doing any miniatures games in those universes, nor are they allowed to re-make out of print GW boardgames that relied on miniatures.

I am patiently awaiting Mass Effect 3 . I will give NV a shot when it drops down to the bargain bin price. I am currently wasting to much free time playing Blood Bowl:Legendary Edition on my PC.

Heh. I am alternating between BB and New Vegas. BB has the upper hand right now, though.

Also, it may be blue or gray in your area. Owens Corning is pink, Dow is usually blue. I forget who makes gray, but I haven't seen it in MN (and even then, it was at a specialty lumberyard) in years.

Regardless, here: http://insulation.owenscorning.com/homeowners/get-insulation/

Then you can at least see if anyone aside from home improvement stores carries it.

But insulation works both ways- it also keeps the house from warming up as quickly when the A/C is on. I would say maybe it was some dumb EPA thing like in California, but... well, it's freakin' Texas. If they go all green and socialist, it's over for the US.