I did because I am an idiot.
Today is a sad day, for it marks the end of the life of a classic miniature.
Cast in the early eighties in nottingham, this figure spent its life waiting for a paint job that would never come. It flew to australia, where it met its fate near bondi beach.
This miniature, dear readers, is dead.
Sadly, I pronounced this necromancer dead today at 21:10. After years of adventuring (or sitting in a shoebox somewhere) he finally succumbed to the perils of leadrot.
He arrived from ebay a little tarnished, but just in need of a scrub.
Masked and in a very well ventilated space, I scrubbed him with a wire brush to lift the grime, only to notice that dreaded yellow-grey puff of dust.
Leadrot!
There was hope- some dental tools and a bit of digging back to bare metal might just save him, but after the most masterful cleaning I could muster and a deep removal of his base,I proceeded to chase the rot out by gouging out one side of his body. Completely shiney, i figured some putty and all would be fine.
I was happy that his fate had been averted, til I pulled out the pin vice from the hole I drilled to pin him to a base only to discover the bit full of toxic dust.
It was deep inside him. A microscopic vein of oxidization had crept inside his torso and spread.
He cannot be around my collection in case he infects them.
He has to be destroyed.
Since he never got his moment of glory, I thought I would blog him like some unknown soldier to the cause. Pay your respects to the never painted necromancer in the comments below.
Do not chase leadrot. If in doubt, bin it. Like the taint of chaos, you just cannot tell how deep it goes.
A sad day indeed... Goodbye unfortunate Necromancer...
ReplyDeleteA friend had to safely dispose of a full box of citadel adventurers recently after I got him to research the dangers of lead-rot...
Amen, its not worth the risk! A lesson to us all to paint our mini's!
ReplyDeleteI was at a seminar on the history of GW given by Jackson and Livingstone a couple of years back at UK Games Expo and they admitted that the early Citadel miniatures were all cast from discarded wheel-and-tyre balancing weights because their sculptor and caster was the only sculptor and caster they knew so they were stuck with him and he got his raw material from a mate who was a tyre fitter.
ReplyDeleteHe was also a S&M enthusiast which is why things like "naked girl roasting on spit" ended up in the catalogue.
Anyway it's a good job that Citadel are using far better casting material these days so we don't get crumbly castings that are full of holes and detail that fell off and deteriates in storage and... oh. Right.
ReplyDeleteI toot a virtual bugle in memory of the rotten necromancer.
ReplyDeleteLest We Forget
ReplyDeleteThat's what most of my Star Frontiers figures had turned to.
ReplyDelete