Project Thunderbolt Part 1: Building My First Flyer

Finally, I'm gonna try to get something on the blog about this project.  My cousin, who posts here as reklawsj, is the only 40k gamer I know besides me in my county.  He bought me this Forgeworld Thunderbolt because I wouldn't stop talking about how awesome it was, and I got him a summer job at where I work, so he says, I think he just wanted me to get this thing on the table so he could shoot it out of the sky first turn played and dash my dreams.  

So, as usual this thing sat in a bag for a year before I decided to tackle it.  I started building this last June, so yeah it's taken a while, work, new house, wife, 2 year old and baby, you know the usual suspects.  At this point I have finished painting this thing, except for some weathering powder experiments I am going to do on it.  I ordered a few powders from Secret Weapon Miniatures and expect them in the mail this week.  I'll let you know how this experiment turns out.

On with the build.  First I laid out all the parts to make sure everything was included and got to work with flash removal(shown below).  This was extremely messy and I did it when my family was gone so I could get everything cleaned up safely.  Resin dust is bad for you.  A couple of the pieces needed a little heating and straightening in some hot water, but nothing major.

Then it was onto the soap bath.  I usually soak my parts overnight and scrub several times.  These ended up being in the bath for many days, because I couldn't get time to get back to them.  None of this matters, just be sure they are nice and clean if you intend on keeping the paint on the model.

After cleaning, it was time to assemble.  And yes, what you see below are all the instructions given.  The back of one of those pages shows the parts laying out and the other is blank.  Pretty much they show you a picture of the fuselage without engines, with engines and then plane done.  Even with the lack of instruction, it is a pretty self-explanatory model and with some test fitting and additional sanding it was finally assembled.  In a few of the main joints I put some pins and some balls of Green Stuff to strengthen the model.

Below are a couple of pics in its "ready for primer" stage.  

I wish I had taken a few more pics of the build-up of this thing so it would be a little more informative for people trying to build one themselves.  Sorry.  Next installment in this series of posts will be the base I built that holds the flyer about a foot and a half out of the center.

I'm trying to get back on the hobby wagon now.  I organized my paint area last night and hope to paint up my Hordes army next before getting back on the 40k stuff.  I can't decide which army I want to paint that is built. I have went to my local game store and played Hordes for the first time now, so I'm pretty excited to get the Trolls done and on the table more.