Predator Tank Restoration - Warhammer 40k Space Marines 90s 2nd edition

look at the state of this old Predator Tank snapped exhausts half a dozen layers of paint and to add insult to injury someone has burned it with fire for certain it seems like its best days are behind it or are they I'm up for the challenge of restoring this Predator to its deserved Glory will you join me on this journey when I was 11 all I wanted for Christmas was Warhammer 40K stuff thanks to my school friends I had caught the BG there was little else on my list of Father Christmas that year amongst other box sets I received I got the Predator kit which unbeknownst to me would soon fall out of production being replaced by two hybrid metal and plastic kits in 1996 the model that had entered my possession was in this box with the studio model bearing the blood Angel scheme and iconography though it hadn't always had that box some years earlier it was released with this box instead during 4k's first edition anyway I built the model and my dad helped me spray paint it with a rattle can of blood angels red all that was needed was to add some details with black yellow and silver and it was good to go it stayed in my collection for many years and I have this one photo left of it so fast forward to 2023 and I'm a sad adult wanting to ReDiscover what was lost from my childhood collection I've already managed a large chunk of ultramarines and scored a few tracked vehicles to accompany them but the Predator has always been high on my list of models to reclaim and so thanks to eBay I was able to acquire this model and man has it suffered let's start with the paint job or as I later discovered paint jobs plural but I'm getting ahead of myself the thickness of this paint obscures many details notably these textured surfaces someone clearly wanted it to be blood angels but either they emptied the entire pot of blood red on here or this is one of several chapters this tank has served what the paint doesn't cover is some of the battle damage this poor machine has received now I'm all for battle damage if it adds to the aesthetic of the model but some someone has crossed a red line here clearly it was the right sponson that took the brunt of the blowtorch treatment the Flames having penetrated the circular hatch there was a second last Cannon but this has been Twisted out of shape and I'm not sure if I can use it for anything else Flames also licked the front of the panel the rear access hatch which was warped slightly and the turret speaking of the turret I wasn't sure if it was the paint or the glue but it was stuck fast Ah that's another problem to solve at least the last cannon in the left sponson rotated but I reckon the mechanism wouldn't survive the stripping process I had had this model in my possession for a few weeks before I summoned up the courage to strip the paint I knew this was going to be a steep hill to climb but a necessary one if any progress was to be made several rounds of Bio strip was enough to cut through the thick layers of paint and I should add layers of varying color it seems this Predator has been ultramarines and imp iial fist at some point after a few strenuous stripping sessions I'm left with these parts though everything is left this sickly shade of red not that it matters since it's very thin and no details are obscured anymore it won't be visible after priming but it made me wonder about the Persistence of red post paint stripping maybe it's warp tainted or something or mixed with the blood of sacrificed virgins which reminds me I felt compelled to keep this squidgy paint residue and film it for you guys to enjoy thank me later I'm pleased to say that the turret was freed from its bondage easier than expected though the rod which allowed it to turn is snapped and I do want it to swivel so my solution was to drill the underside of the turret and into the top of the hall the replacement Rod was some steel wire held in place with superglue bikar and some Milli put to be on the safe side I also placed a wee bit Millie put in the new hole in the body of the Predator so the rod fit nice and snug there buttery smooth swiveling now onto replacing the melted components one option I considered was cutting some plastic C for the job but I raided my bits box first and found this replacement panel for the front I guess it pays to hoard bits as I do as for the sponson perhaps I need to do some remodeling with putty nope I've got a spare one for that too but for the track I suppose I would have to pull out something creative to patch the holes or I could just use this spare as well am I cheating maybe but I knew I had these parts before I bought the thing and why kill yourself with crafting pieces when you have perfectly usable spares that's my reasoning anyway now with the sponson mechanism broken I had to find a way for the last cannons to turn I settled on using magnets and got to work Drilling and filing these as necessary and as for the broken exhausts I replaced these with steel wire that was just about the same thickness I trim them with my wire cutters leaving a few millimet extra length so they could be inserted nicely into the hole I had drilled on top of the exhausts again superglue and B carb was the fixer for these two and with these fixed I glued them onto to the tracks try my damnedest to keep them in line with each other you'll notice the spare track is gray plastic but the original is cream colored it's interesting to see how GW has changed their colors of plastic over time if anyone knows when they moved from cream to gray then do let me know in the comments with the tracks done it was time to glue them to the body I used poyene cement to give me time to reposition them if needed then I rubber banded the whole thing until a strong bond had formed while this set I attached a new panel where the old one had been nice clean and free from the effect of melter weapons again using poly cement I fixed the Dozer blade save one missing Spike which I left as is as I said earlier some battle damage is allowed in this build I noticed both the original Builders of both the tracks has stuck the headlights on upside down this bothered me so I cut them off with my craft knife and reattached them this took a few goes since lining them up was tricky turning my attention to the turret once more I glued on the original Barrel I haven't shown this up to now since it had eluded me at the bottom of the bio strip tub actually I had to take this off and reattach it later since it did look a bit wonky the first time the turret has lost the original grab handle which is understandable given how frail they were though the plastic stumps were still there on this model rather than search for others in my bits box I took the advice of an Instagram buddy bending and trimming some paper clips until they were the right shape and length before I glued them in place I drilled some holes into the plastic stumps so they better held the new metal Parts superglue and bicarb did me another solid here and filled in the gaps to boot a few people who have been following this project on Instagram said I I should have had to go with the full-on handrails that Grace the sides of the old Rhino variant my lamenters Rhino has these if you're unsure what I mean but I declined the challenge this time I just didn't have it in me and I was itching to paint the thing but before we go on to the painting let me show you my existing Predators a few years ago I rescued this plastic Predator off eBay this is the most recent kit although I say recent it's been out for some years now many years in fact I think this model actually featured in the dawn of War video game and I was playing that a few years ago when I decided I really wanted one so I rescued this off eBay painted it up blood angels in the orange scheme that I've done for my most recent blood angels Army and then I added some Hazard Stripes magnetized the sponson although they're a bit wobbly still and then I painted this strange gray and blue Checker pattern on the back I don't know I saw a retro paint Scheme somewhere and I felt like I wanted to copy it in this way and the checks would be a really good idea for this project anyway I really love this tank it looks amazing the other Predator I've got well you'll have seen that if you've watched my video about my lamenta Army it's the 1996 metal plastic hybrid Predator the Predator Destructor actually the one with the auto Cannon and I think the kit came with heavy bolters uh or last cannons this one's got the last cannons and checks and hearts to boot now on to the painting if you've seen my land Raider and Whirlwind video a lot of the techniques that I used on there I'm going to be using again so the first step was to spray the whole thing Republic Blue by color Forge I have this on many vehicles and it's an excellent base color for my ultramarine the spray did not quite enter each Gap and crevice so I brushed some mcra blue into these parts a good start me thinks see the paint is thin enough so the turret can swivel still butter is smooth with the model all more or less the same shade of blue I began the process of lightening the overall blue color I did this by mixing mcra blue with cidor sky on my wet palette applying it to all the flat surfaces being careful to ignore the creases and recesses the point of this is to leave the darker color untouched to provide [Music] shading now you may have noticed the last cannons are missing I kept these separate and sprayed them sanguine Red by color Forge I felt part assembly was important here to not spoil the red with the blue and the blue with the red but just to demonst straight since I magnetized them early reattaching them is really quite easy back to painting the blue I used cidor Sky again and mixed it with Lo and blue on my wet palette then with the edge of my brush and using only a small volume of paint each time I Edge highlighted all the blue armor and there were many edges let me tell you highlighting the curve panels was a bit more challenging but I decided on a few small Strokes of the same highlighting mix where the light caught the apex of the curve and this was what the model looked like after the first pass of highlighting with the blue mixture still on my wet palette I added some white to create my second highlight color again this was applied carefully to edges of the models not covering necessarily as much as before in order to provide a slight gradient to that end these highlights are sharper than the first allowing the darker color to show through I wouldn't say I'm an expert at Edge highlighting but I have found that not over thinning the paint is as important as having the smallest amount of my brush with each pass there isn't really a quick win here though just patience and steady [Music] hands when it came to highlighting the curved Parts a second time I repeated the thin stroke pattern from before but covered less area with the lighter color and this is how it looks after the second highlight but we're not done just yet to maximize the popping potential I took some Pure White and dotted it on the sharpest points of the model it's a very satisfying step especially after the war of attrition that is to passes of edge highlighting for the headlights I first thinned down some white paint and a applied them to the recesses I had planned for the next coat to be yellow but I felt a white coat was needed first since yellow over blue take several coats to actually look yellow rather than green but with the main body of the model done it was time to turn my attention to the other colors I planned for the autoc cannon muzzle and smoke launchers to be red so I painted these white first in order to increase the vibrancy of that color however before I completed this stage I decided to go back to Lo and blue and paint on some Thin lines in various places on the body to simulate scratches to the paintwork this reminds me of my youth when my dad would get very upset over the slightest scratch on his car particularly his green Rover and here's me painting on scratches how the turns have table dad I mean tables have turned I forgot to mention before that I used some of that steel cable to replace a missing smoke launcher pipe you can tell up close that it's steel and not plastic but but I think from this distance and especially painted it looks pretty good the last cannons were already painted red but I wanted some shading so I painted reand flesh shade into the recesses having them magnetized means I could stick them to this hobby tool for the duration of the painting I've had this particular tool since about the year 2000 which a Savvy GW manager convinced me to buy when I was venturing into using green stuff while the white was still a bit damp I began painting the autoc Canon Barrel black and then giving this same treatment to the other parts that would later be metallic this includes these mesh panels at the front and back of each track and also the exhausts the grab handles and these storage boxes the gash of battle damage on the turret also was shaded with some thin black paint when the Shad on the last cannons was dry I added some black paint there as well and also to the lumpy Parts just behind in the barrel I can't call them lumpy Parts can I hang on go LZ Canon Anatomy LZ Cannon Anatomy H El isotronic Warfare on Deviant Art says it is a solid copper cooling jacket to prevent catastrophic Barrel failure during prolonged fire in lie of any Cannon info no pun intended I'm going with this anyway I couldn't paint everywhere black before so I returned to this color for the tracks I paid most attention to the side since these will actually be visible once the paint job is done now because I'm nothing if not inconsistent I decided to crack out the valo burnt cadmium red for the hatches behind the sponson mounts I'm honestly not sure why I didn't paint these white first but sometimes I'm just carried Along by the spirit you know I suppose I wanted a dark red before I went went in with the brighter Reds the Dozer blade also got the same cadmium red treatment I cracked out the ball red contrast paint for the smoke launches and the autoc Canon muzzle it had great vibrancy for a red paint just the thing for super saturated second edition onto the main color for the Dosa blade and the side hatches for which I used mist and red I tried bar red off camera but it didn't make a huge difference on top of the cadmium red so conventional acrylic it was and this is what it looked like after the red colors were blocked in time for the metallics I have been using this bottle of army painter gun metal for many years now and it seems to be never ending it shall be a day of much lamenting when it runs out since I'm convinced the newer Army painter recipe isn't as smooth as the old one anyway I began applying this and all the parts I painted black beforehand save the autoc cannon of course I left some part Parts with the black showing in lie of shading with washes I feel it gives a crisper finish of course it meant lining the rims of the wheels and dotting the rivets anyone else like dotting rivets here's the battle damage on the turret getting a line of gun metal showing the original metal color of the armor where a hit has been sustained and the copper cooling jacket to prevent catastrophic Barrel failure getting a coat of gunmal sorry d tart user I discovered today I don't want to paint it copper I decided to add some gray to the black barrel of the autoc cannon or Predator Cannon if this was Horus heresy a makeup brush was my dry brush of choice however I chose to paint over it later with a darker gray since this came out lighter than I wanted it the storage boxes also got a dry brush of this gray and then a bit of edge highlighting with fenrisian gray the next job was to highlight the Reds before I mention that let me focus in on this random chevron pattern at the rear of the tank I'm not sure why it's there to be honest but I painted it black than good metal nothing fancy the first round of highlighting on the red was done with troll Slayer orange the smoke launchers dozer blades and lass cannons were liberally highlighted with this orange color with relatively thick lines at this stage since my second and third edition days painting red for my blood angels I've questioned how to highlight red for Many Colors you can make a highlight shade by mixing the base color with white but for red this gives pink which isn't a problem but could be depending on what you're going for so does that make orange better the issue with orange is that it sometimes doesn't pop enough so the solution I arrived at was this one I mixed a little of the troll Slayer orange I was using with a lot of this flesh color which is nothing special just Barbarian flesh from army painter then I use this to Edge highlight all the extreme edges of the red parts of my model this includes the tips of the smoke launchers the edges of the autoc cannon muzzle the fins on the last cannons along with a load more edges I'm not going to attempt to name and finally the Dozer blade prongs I've read in places that mixing the orange with a bone color is the way to go for those extreme red highlights but I found it looked flushy colored anyway so I thought well why not just use my flesh color then and I believe it's now decal time Citadel art coat goes on for a smooth finish for the decal to adhere to when these are dry it's another coat of art coat followed by mat medium to tame the shine if the surface is not flat I use micro Sal to allow the decal to conform to the surface better time for some finishing touches yellow for the headlights and spots of black black for the ends of the smoke launchers and for the last cannons I could have drilled them but a we spot of black on the end will do here's the girl in all her glory getting there but one more Finishing Touch a bright silver on the uppermost metal areas a subtle color which doesn't show so well on camera but I can see it which is the most important thing now I could call this project done but having magnetized the Predator it would be a waste not to add in one last thing Predator tanks can also have heavy bolters as sponsor weapons and I like to have this option open there was no optional load out from the original box so I took these heavy bolters which I had spare from the Horus heresy contemp a dreadn kit and modified them such they would fit into the sponson then I added magnets sprayed them red and gave them a similar paint job to the last cannons I'm pleased with how they turned out and I particularly like the drum magazine of this sculpt Matthew what the hell is this e e well it's been a hell of a journey from this poor neglected soul to this glorious Beast with a whole new lease of life it's been a labor of love and a chance to practice some less comfortable modeling techniques sure there are some imperfections warping on the back panel for instance and one Dozer blade missing but aren't such blemishes like the scars we carry with us a reminder of the journey we have endured to come from there to here and it makes it a unique miniature my miniature and I wouldn't have it any other way so here's to the Predator the battle tank Predator 2 three 4 battle tank Predator armor of the Space Marines battle tank Predator blow you all to smithin the first known Predator was known as the destructor a turret Auto Canon and heavy Bolter sponson a rhino chassis variant with no transport complement battle tank Predator armor of the space Marines battle tank Predator blow you all to Smither the second kind of predator predator Annihilator twinning class Canon and two more in the sponsons an anti-tank solution is The Logical conclusion battle tank Predator I'm a busting laser beams battle tank predator in a pinch it intervenes oh battle tank Predator armor of the Space Marines battle tank Predator blow you all to Smither Smither Smither and with that I better go paint some more minis take care and thanks for watching

Channel: Miniscape

Views: 83,907

Keywords: warhammer 40k, warhammer, space marines, ultramarines, 2nd edition 40k, 40k 2nd edition, predator, predator tank

Id: 2eY0YxbZlwY

Length: 24min 5sec (1445 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023