2023 – Quarter 1, Week 2

First completed mini of 2023! Let’s take a look at the Ambot.

Last week was my first attempt at edge highlighting in the ‘Eavy Metal style. Even though it didn’t turn out especially neat and clean, it does have a very striking effect. From arm’s length the unsteady lines do not stand out nearly so much. I’ll highlight the second Ambot in the same way for additional practice. The sharp edges and long curved shoulder panels provide great surfaces for trying to learn these classic techniques.

This week, I attempted hazard stripes for the first time. Nothing screams “Necromunda” like hazard stripes. I identified the saw blade protectors and back panel as most appropriate for the striping.

The blade protectors were done freehand – based yellow and then the black lines drawn in. It’s easy to see that the lines are not all identical. they are all different widths and many aren’t even very straight. For the back panel, I used 6mm Tamiya tape to achieve better uniformity. This was more successful than the freehand, but still needs work. The curve of the panel plus the studs made it difficult to seal the edges and resulted in some spillover as I was striping. The panel’s hazard stripes are also a bit wider than I wanted. 3mm tape is probably ideal for this, but the next size down that I have is 1mm. Ultimately, though, I’m happy with the effect.

Now for the bad news.

Missed Time

It’s only the second week of this challenge and I’m already falling behind. As you can see from this scorecard, I’ve missed the targets for this week pretty badly:

• I managed only five of my targeted ten hours of hobby time
• I made no social media posts
• This blog update is going up a day late

What happened? Well, I waited until the weekend to put any significant time in. Intending to sit down and get some hours in Saturday morning, I instead decided to put those hours into God of War: Ragnarok. Great game, very fun! But not helping me meet my hobby goals for this quarter.

Thankfully, I was able to finish my first Ambot with the time that I did spend hobbying. Completing the second this week will keep me on track for Quarter 1.