The mini rescue thread

Having just witnessed Obscure Creators work on his nurgle renegade champion, it occured to me that we could do with a thread showing how people have repaired/ transformed broken or damaged old school figures and hints and tips on how to go about making simple repairs. If you have any examples of broken figures that you've lovingly brought back to life then feel free to share them here so that other members of the community can be inspired to dig into their boxes of lead in order to turn that knackered old figure into the glorious unit leader that it deserves to be. Maybe you've got a figure that's missing a bit or a part has snapped off and you need advice on what to do. This is the place to ask the question (photos would be nice too!) and wait on the combined knowledge of hundreds of mini nerds to come to your rescue!

As promised, here is one of my recent miniature rescues. I don't have a 'before' photo, but this elf hero was in bad shape. I got him in a lot of elf parts, many of them snipped and mangled. His sword had been hacked off, the bird head on his helmet had been crudely sliced away, for some reason the shield arm had its elbow sliced off too! I replaced the bird head with a simple shape filed from plastic. The lance was a spare I had from a Dragon Prince cavalry set, the bow and arrow quiver was from my bits box, and I reshaped a cheap resin eagle I picked up from somewhere so he could sit astride it. The shield hides his shorn off elbow! I was very pleased with the end result! In his first battle he almost single-handedly killed a hydra and helped delay a disgustingly overpowered Witch Elf with cauldron unit from smashing my flank, so he's already repaid my kindness



Here is a work-in-progress rescue effort - I already built and painted this standard bearer once, but was in a rush and didn't do him proper justice, so i'm doing some fixing up. He started off as an old dragon prince, with a snipped-off lance head. The dragon wings on his helm were not cast evenly, so one was significantly smaller than the other. I filed them down to match, and attached the torso to a plastic set of legs from the bits box (i think they come from one of the plastic elf character boxes). I extended the butt of the lance, and have added milliput to smooth the join (yet to sand it flush). You can also see where i've puttied up a small gap between the torso and legs in the rear shot there. I've added another dragon standard top to the banner, which will eventually be painted red. The standard itself is made from several pieces from various plastic elf kits, I buy random piles of stuff off eBay every now and then for precisely this purpose!

Neither of these models required more than simple parts replacements, imagination and a little filler to bring them back to life!

Reposting here a bit from my blog, but here goes:

I had been chasing the 1987 dwarf gyro for some time and had discovered Batertown (1998), which seemed to have a fairly good community, and asked around.What I failed to do was mention the year of the model or provide a picture like the one above, (remember when phones didn't have cameras?) What I received was a bad lead recast of the 5th ed Perry model which was the one I already had with the pilot with the winged helm, not the flying goggles. It still had plaster from the mould stuck to it. The guy insisted that it wasn't a recast, but he was lying so bad.

After I went on a bit of a text yelling rant, I apologised, admitted I could have done more to explain what I was really after, then decided that I may as well do my best to convert the model into what I wanted. I was going to have my desired pilot, one way or another, dammit!

Careful filing, cutting, polishing and rearranging with additions of Sculpey and I was on track. I even found some small plastic electrical tubing that was perfect for his bomb-lighting cigar. Finally I had my mad bomber pilot - and better still, this one had a part of me that no other gyro would.

I got this chap in a lot


He was obviously missing his right arm from the elbow, and the sword or banner he should have been holding in the other hand (I forget which)...I had some Heroquest Gobbos given to me that were without legs so I pinched an arm off one and stuck it on this dude, along with a Space Marine's combat knife.

It looks a bit rough up close like this (and the HQ arm is a tad muscular in comparison) but I'm happy enough for him to join the ranks of the HQ Gobbos as a character.
I have another one that has all his appendages that will be the standard bearer for my Snakebite Ork army.

Captain - That's some pretty nice rescue work there, cap. Sweet heroes from fallen models.

Count - Is that a Steve Jackson/ Ian Livingstone Gonchong on his head?

If I knew what that was, I'd tell you

The Gonchong was from Steve Jackson/ Ian Livingstone Fighting fantasy books - particularly the Island of the Lizard king.

It's a weird parasite of some kind that jumps on your head and inserts a proboscis in your brain and then controls your body.

I felt like giving a second life to minis I had atrociously (is that even a word?) desecrated. Both are jes Goodwin sculpts and I used what I had in hand to make them paintable and playable again...





(sorry for the Chico pic on the second one)

Cheers for that Bluey

Asslessman, atrociously is indeed a word, and that guy with the saw arm is one hell of a salvage job!
He reminds me of "Master Blaster" from Mad Max III, Beyond Thunderdome

Absolutely - so Master Blaster. Except.. didn't Mad Max have the chainsaw?

"Not sh*t, energy"

Sorry, yeah Max had the saw, fat lot of good it did him

What do you do of an assless chaos champion ?



Just give him a whip and green stuff all the missing parts back, et voilà !

That champion looks very familiar

Nice conversion - looks great!

axiom":qtjmmabk said:

That champion looks very familiar

Nice conversion - looks great!

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Doesn't he ?

I've just realised than I totally forgot to fix his left arm where the shiled beg has been removed. I had spare putty and it would have taken less than a minute but I had to take that pic before finishing him !

I think his pose is perfect to make a beastmaster, his goat pelt and his pose make him ideal to hold a whip and train for dog agility competitions.
Now people, if you have broken/damaged miniatures of the sort, I'm all for trading/buying !

Nice greenstuff butt work there JB



This is less a mini-rescue job and more a 'classic car restoration' project, but these two tanks arrived in the mail this morning and I'm going to fix them up for my squat army project. My friend found them in an op-shop in South Australia, in a tub with the old AMT-ERTL Millennium Falcon... the price for the lot was AU $10

Are you throwing them in a huge pool of Dettol or are you just removing the mouldlines and repairing bits with a new PJ on top ? I have an old predator too and I feel like I need to give him a dettol bath...

Asslessman":233o8knx said:

Are you throwing them in a huge pool of Dettol or are you just removing the mouldlines and repairing bits with a new PJ on top ? I have an old predator too and I feel like I need to give him a dettol bath...

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I dettol bathed a bunch of tanks once, it was one of the worst experiences in my modelling career... the dettol destroyed one Rhino, turned it into a chalky mess, and the Chimera transport filled up inside the track housings, and in certain circumstances, that stuff WILL NOT DRY. It was still sloshing and leaking for months, and one of my miniature cases still reeks of dettol to this day :S so considering the original paintwork on these is a single, regular layer and not the hideous mess some tanks end up in, i'll probably do some sanding and filing where necessary, then reprime in my new favourite dark dreen spray and paint them up for my Squats I only have twin laser sponson from the Land Raider, so i might make an all-new, old-school inspired set of weapons for it. I'm a bit excited to be honest, I always thought it would be cool to have an old Land Raider, and now, here it is

Captain Crooks":3rrc5tm1 said:

I'm a bit excited to be honest, I always thought it would be cool to have an old Land Raider, and now, here it is

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It is cool indeed...

What is cooler is to make it piloted by an exo-armoured squat holding a big chain in his hand and a great spined dragon at the end of the said chain. Think about it, you may think it's bollocks for now but let that idea make it's way to your inner 8yo self...

Asslessman":3bgx9x7h said:

Captain Crooks":3bgx9x7h said:

I'm a bit excited to be honest, I always thought it would be cool to have an old Land Raider, and now, here it is

Click to expand...

It is cool indeed...

What is cooler is to make it piloted by an exo-armoured squat holding a big chain in his hand and a great spined dragon at the end of the said chain. Think about it, you may think it's bollocks for now but let that idea make it's way to your inner 8yo self...

Click to expand...

He's hearing you loud and clear

Less of a rescue given the acute case of lead rot with this mini, but it works wonderfully re-purposed as a statue. Planning to incorporate this old C 06 guy into a larger base at some point.


Pretty amazing how bad the rot rips up a mini.