"I want a HORROR chainsaw!"

My wife is currently a member of the Aurora 88s Roller Derby team. Every year, they have a "FunD Skate" in which they do raffles, a silent auction, and other activities in order to generate some funds for the coming year. The silent auction is usually a series of themed gift baskets. This year the auction included a "Horror Basket". She hands me a plastic chainsaw Christmas ornament she picked up sometime during the holidays and says, "Could you paint this like a horror chainsaw?"

This is what she handed me:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/282731062165

As I'm writing this, you can still get them on eBay from this seller.

"Sure! I'll knock that out in no time."

I scraped off the silver glitter, masked it off leaving just the blade, hit it with a couple of passes of silver Krylon spray paint, and painted some blood effects on it with some red ink mixed with gloss medium. Done! Easy-peasy!

Done! Easy-peasy!

I hand it back to her, and she says, "That's nice... but I was hoping for more guts hanging off the blade and stuff. I want a horror chainsaw."

"Sure, I can use some glue to build it up some..."

"I know what you're capable of! I want a HORROR chainsaw!"

I don't watch a lot of horror flicks, so I'm missing something. "Um..."

"Like the chainsaw from 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'..."

Those were the magic words I needed to hear. A quick Google search produces THIS IMAGE.

Now I know what I'm aiming for!

I head back to my cave and get back to work:

• Scraped off the remaining glitter. (This should have been a clue...)
• Found an old can of gunmetal colored spray paint and painted the whole thing, wiping off some of the fresh paint to reveal the orange plastic below.
• Painted the handles with flat black enamel paint.
• Tore thin strips of duct tape and wrapped parts of the handles.
• Weathered the whole thing with diluted black enamel and acrylic paints.
• Made the gore texture with 5-minute epoxy, very thin strips of plastic bag from a dry cleaner (for translucent stringy stuff), and a tiny bit of Secret Weapon Rust Red pigment.

That got me to here:

A couple more rounds of "gore mix" and a couple of passes of the red ink and gloss medium, and voila!

This made her much happier!

And we'd like to think the winning bidder is happy with the result as well!

Modding and Painting Secret Weapon Miniatures' Traffic Pylons

I believe it was Adepticon where I first saw and picked up Secret Weapon Miniatures' Traffic Pylons. They come 10 to a pack and are beautifully cast out of resin. The master appears to have been a 3-D printed model as there is some minimal texture to the casts. The only bit of flash appeared to be at the top of the pylon. And so, I dutifully started cutting and filing them off. I had gotten through eight of them before I realized, "Hey, waitaminute! Aren't there supposed to be handles on these things?!?" So off to google image search to see what they look like in real life...

Side note: if you do a Google Image Search yourself, use 'traffic barrel' or 'construction barrel', otherwise, you'll end up with a ton of pictures of traffic CONES.

Well, look at that! Those little ridges are supposed to represent the handles. Well, since I shaved most of them off, and I wanted better looking handles anyway, I had to remake them myself.

I had some 1mm X 2mm styrene strips on hand that would fit the bill. In order to make a solid connection joint, I would have to cut slots in the tops of the pylons for the styrene to fit in. I had already done the cleanup work, I just had to cut the slot with a razor saw and square file like so:

Once all the slots were cut, I:

1. Glued in the styrene strip with Sinbad Glue
2. Chamfered the corners with some diagonal cutters
3. Drilled three pilot holes with a pin vise drill
4. Enlarged the holes with a larger bit
5. Cleaned them up with a hobby knife
6. Rounded the corners with a sanding block

You can see the progression here:

I did not drill holes that would be used to bolt a barricade light on as I felt it would weaken the styrene too much.

For the basecoat, I wanted to see if I could skip priming and go straight to a good 'construction barrel orange'. Fortunately, I found a can Rustoleum Fire Orange Satin Spray Paint that was perfect. I applied several coats to smooth over any remaining seams in the handles and to minimize the surface texture you get from casting a 3-D printed model.

Since the cones might get or be placed tipped over, I hit the bottom of them with a quick coat of black primer.

Then, since, in the real world, the stripes are actually stickers, I wanted some of the stripes to look like they were scratched and peeled off. So I separated the pylons into three groups – "new", "used", and "old and busted". I applied some Vallejo Liquid Mask to the last two groups to an appropriate degree:

You'll see that I was test-fitting screwing a computer motherboard standoff into the bottom of the pylons. Since I was going to be painting 40 stripes, I figured I would screw the standoff into the exact center of the pylons and use a cordless drill to slowly spin them so I could just hold a loaded brush in place and let the drill do the work.

I got it to work with quite a bit of trial and error, but I wouldn't recommend it. You have to get the pilot hole centered correctly and the standoff screwed in as straight as possible.

For the orange stripes, I used Reaper HD Fireball Orange (29806). For the white stripes, I used Reaper Pure White (09039). To simulate making it look like it was a reflective material, I liberally added Vallejo Metal Medium – probably 2:1 metal medium to base color. I also tweaked the orange stripe color with yellow and orange inks.

Here's the result with the mask peeled off:

Since the Rustoleum basecoat was slightly glossy, I couldn't use acrylic on the bases as it kept chipping off. I ended up busting out my trusty Testors Flat Black Enamel for the bases.

I saved my work with a quick coat of Testors Dullcote.

Now on to weathering.

If you do the Google Image Search, you will see that several of the recycled tire bases have faded over time. I simulated this by applying glazes of Reaper Splintered Bone (09273) in varying numbers of applications.

To dirty up the pylons themselves, I applied washes of Vallejo Black Wash and Secret Weapon Miniatures Armor Wash in varying degrees.

I then used a black china marker to simulate tire and asphalt scuffs, like so:

The next step was to splatter on small amounts of black paint with a toothbrush, to simulate splashes of tar.

That's probably where I should have stopped.

However, I decided I wanted to give them a filter of Testors Concrete Flat to make it look like they were coated in a film of concrete dust. Unfortunately, I think I went overboard with the airbrush:

Oh well, they look okay and will work perfectly well as tabletop terrain.