My Teammate's kart and the rest of the fleet...

My teammate is also my old man, founder of Deathwish Longbows, Deathwish Motorcycles, and now Deathwish Racing Karts.   He started racing kart back in 1958 and '59, was the Illinois State champion in 1962, and raced karts for a long time until the sport took a real nose dive during the Carter days.  He's calling our 2nd generation karts the Vendetta.  The kart below is his ride.

As you can see he's done, pays to be retired sometimes.  Super clean looking.

 From the rear, you have to be pretty flexible to squeeze into these things.

 Note the crotch protector on the steering column up right, that will bust your nads if you get into a bit of a fracas.

Well maybe his isn't quite done, still has to put the number on the back and the wrong exhaust pipe is on the engine.  He is also running the same engine as me, a Briggs & Stratton Animal Lo206.

So he is basically ready to go, I'm not, but getting closer.

More preparations the season is almost upon us....

Well March in Wisconsin has been more summer like than usual.  Which just further signifies that I'm way behind with my preparations for both Adepticon and kart racing.  Last weekend I worked on the Crusaders, more on them this week.  This weekend I put in some long hours on getting ready for racing.

So there is the new kart.  The new Lo206 Animal engine runs, exhaust pipe is off to powdercoating, but mechanically everything works.  Took the belt sander to the tires, and cleaned off the old rubber.  Durometer shows them being a bit too hard.  Here you can see the new speedway seat. that is a big change from the previous kart.  So far, so good.

Below you can see the previous scavenged kart, I stole most of the parts off it.  About $400 and it will be ready for use again if I so desire.   I'm considering do some dirt oval racing and this frame will probably be much more suited for that.  Needs a speedway seat and different steering wheel, as you can see this seat is more upright.

So, back to the new kart.  I had hoped to have this all done on Saturday, well you know how hope goes.  Mocked up the body on the new kart, let the problems begin.  Please ignore the battle/racing scars and donuts those are the least of the problems at the moment.  And yes not only is my screen name on line Psychosis, but its also on my kart.

Fit is a huge problem, no clearance with the new frame and the nose is way too low.

Pics of the scarred up nose, I'll be repainting the black, and saving the blue, but the fiberglass is busted right where the 05 is so repair work is in order also.

And yep sun is setting and still struggling, time to cut things and do fiberglass work.  I was also in the lowest setting in the rear and that is too low as the engine butterflys will probably drag and spark on the track at 3/8 inch clearance.  So I had to adjust the ride height of the rear axle.

So tear of the nose, and extend the side panels.

And above we are adjusting the body work a bit, doing some fiberglassing, that took all day today.  My oldman is done with his kart, I'll show that later, and between the two of us scratching our heads, we did manage to get everything mocked back up and it fits and better yet it should work.  When we built the new frames we were trying to get the nose of the kart lower, but turns out we lowered it a bit too much.  So next time you see this kart it should be sporting some new paint and hopefully be finally ready for the track.   

FireForge Games - Teutonic Knights Kit Review

I had the extreme pleasure of unpacking a package from Fireforge Miniatures the other day, their first release to the miniatures world. The package was their new Teutonic Knights in 28 mm scale. Much like the Gripping Beast Plastics and Conquest Games plastics that I have reviewed previously, the sprues from Fireforge come out of the molding from Renedra. Renedra’s quality is extremely high.   In this kit are 12 multi-piece mounted knights, I simply love the fact that they are multi-piece and allow me to mix and match and change things as I see fit. They come with an assortment of 12 heads mostly Teutonic styled helms, 5 different hand weapon arms, 4 different lances, 6 different shields, 4 different torso poses for the riders, 4 separate capes/cloaks per sprue.   They also include a command sprue with many options on it in the kit. Excellent piece in itself, having flags, a musician's horn, and a cross.    A good look at the sprues and box contents can be found at the WAB Corner, where Dean broke open a box of them, if interested follow this link: http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/2012/03/fire-forge-teutonic-knights.html The horse sprue, has two different horse poses that can be mixed and matched, and three different heads, so fairly nice variety. When assembling the horses, the two halves join up nicely, and don’t have a real big seam in the rump. I had small issue with that in the Conquest Games miniatures horses, that was easily correctable. On these though the rump is good, the saddles can be a bit of issue, but like the Conquest Games miniatures, easily curable. By the way the Conquest Games horse just comes with a blanket and strap, because the actual saddle is molded on the rider. This saddle is on the horse the rider is added, much like GW’s Bretonian Knights. I assembled 5-different models to get the hang of them and to let them fester in my mind to figure out the look I want for a future army. I must say, I have been doing this a long time and I’m seriously impressed by these models. They are not only the best I have ever seen for a first release from an upstart company , they might just have become my favorite kit of all time. There was very little flash to remove, like with so many of the plastics coming through Renedra. Games Workshop could really take a lesson from this. Very crisp detail on the sprues, excellent undercut. Great looking mail armor, kudos to their sculptor, just when I thought I was getting really good at sculpting mail armor, this kit comes along and changes my thoughts. They do have the rectangular plate shoulder pauldrons as a separate option for those that wish to use it. Everything fits very well and is easy to manipulate at the joins.  I’m not much into the Teutonic’s, so I have removed the head dresses from the helms on mine. This should not be a problem in the near future as they are getting ready to release their 2012 follow-up kits of mounted sergeants and Templar knights at or around the end of April is what I heard. Fully assembled, I absolutely love the looks of them. I have been waiting for a very nice looking plastic knight kit for this era, and they have really fit that bill. Unfortunately for Conquest Games, I do not see myself buying and converting any more of their miniatures. As good as they are, they have not been able to follow up their first release. Quality level is high on them, but not as high as what Fireforge’s first release is, and that is unfortunate as I did and still do have hopes that Conquest will find the capital to release some more plastics. Period wise Fireforge is in what I see as an untapped niche, with older metal miniatures from Gripping Beast, that are kind of chunky looking, and less popular miniatures from Curtsey as their main competition, a much easier road to follow than what Conquest Games has took in competing with numerous manufacturers in a saturated Norman era. Now the size comparisons. Pictured below from left to right, a Conquest Games Norman, Fireforge Teutonic, Perry Norman/Crusader, HYW mounted Sergeant, Fireforge Teutonic, Warlord Games Roman Auxiliary Below, Conquest vs. FireForge Below, Perry vs FireForge  Below, Perry vs FireForge  Below, Warlord Games Pony vs FireForge   Next Pictured from left to right, Warlord Games Barbarian, Perry HYW Spearman, Fireforge Mounted Knight, Perry Norman Spearman, FireForge Mounted Knight, Warlord Games EIR, Warlord Games Giant Auxiliary, Gripping Beast Viking with a GW Flaggellant head. And not to forget my Fantasy audience out there that are looking at this kit for use with Bretonian armies, a Fireforge knight on the left and a Games Workshop Bretonian Knight on the right. For you WAB guys that’s the difference in historical 28mm and heroic 28 mm scale.   Bottom line, a great looking kit, well worth my pennies, I’m extremely impressed and I am very much looking forward to more from Fireforge in the near future. Now I need to figure out which WAB army I want to build using these. Capetian France, Later Crusades, Early Medieval English, Holy Roman Empire????

Old Stuff Wednesday - March ... Wargor ...Let there be War 2

Last month I showed the my wargor/beastlord from my 2003 Beastmen Army, this month I have his buddy. This one is only slightly converted not as converted as the previous one was, but based on the same model, basically the regular model with paint. 

Below you can see the differences between the two models, even though they are based on the same model.

I was happy with the paint schemes that I used for this army, and again this was back when you could actually play the beastmen with chaos marks. So, due to my dislike of magic, I went with an all Khorne marked army and no magic.  

I painted the Khorne marking on the axes. The paint scheme is, in that so-called NMM painting style (only miniature painters could come up with such ridiculous painting terms like ‘non-metallic-metal’, whatever, I feel a rant coming on that I would like to avoid at this time, it’s almost like miniature painters have an inferiority complex, so they have to make up these terms to feel more important or something).

So that is two of the 4 wargors from that army. I still love the looks of that army, I felt everything I did with it really clicked well with the exception of my Chaos Ogre unit and the Chaos Trolls. Back then I spent a lot of extra time painting the characters, more-so that the foot soldiers. Nowadays, it’s about equal as my painting speed has picked up tremendously.

Blog Update

Announcement.  Listen up or I'll summon demons from the pits of the abyss.

I'm continuing to update my blog adding some additional features.  Not only do I now have the 'Pages' across the top of the blog for links to such things as Tutorials and Tips, but now on the right hand side I have added the "Popular Posts".  Right now the Popular Posts are set at a period over the last 30 days, I may change that, we'll see how that goes. 

Also at the very bottom of the page, I have added my Video Channel, so you do not have to leave the blog to watch my videos.  Which for racing fans, will have various kart racing videos, mostly of me attempting to race, and or of my old man who has 35+ years of kart racing experience.  Sometimes rather funny.  And a somepoint I may add some other video stuff, but for now it will mostly be of racing.

Fire Forge .... Deus Vult...

Shipped with love from Italia, my first two boxes of Fireforge miniatures arrived in good condition.  At a quick glance, I like the scale of the riders and they appear to be close to the scale of the Conquest Games Miniatures and Gripping Beasts Plastic Hirdmen.  Detail is superb, Renedra did nice work.  I'm very much looking forward to their next releases.  And Horses with caparisons, hurray.  I'm probably just about doing barding out of greenstuff.

I will do a full on review, and a Figure comparison against other miniatures, for all of you collector-a-holics. 

Conquest Games Knights in color WIP

Wow, actually have something in color for a change that does not have wheels.  These are a couple of the Conquest Games Knights that I converted up.

I basically have basing to do and final clean-up.  Spent part of Sunday painting heraldry on all of the knights and the additional Perry infantry.

I do like how the yellows turned out.  The caparisons on the horses will utilize cloth barding when an option in the WAB lists.

 This is my first oportunity to paint the Conquest Games Normans.  They are very good miniatures, very easy to paint, of course mine have a lot of conversion to them also.  The horses are some of the best plastics I have worked with.

The larger pictures definitely show where I need to touch things up.

Note to self, watch out for seams on the rump of the horse.   At some point I will probably do another box of these to further expand this army.

These two I also painted over white Primer.  About 90% of the stuff I paint is over black primer, but I knew I wanted ligher colored horses and to use yellow on these two, so I switched it up.  Hopefully next time you see these they will be completely done.