Hero Quest: Barbarian Repair and Restoration (Part 1)

Once upon a time, I painted up the four heroes from Hero Quest. You can guess the era from the colour of their bases! I feel the time has come to give these guys a proper restoration and bring them up to the quality they deserve (I'm not particularly attached to my old paint jobs, though I'll probably keep the colours reminiscent of their existing schemes).

As you can see, the Barbarian has a broken sword, so first-thing-first, time for a repair. My friend Rob Jedi suggested I use a plastic cocktail skewer - these turned out pretty close in width and let me choose the length I wanted. Pulling out a spare Barbarian from another set of Hero Quest as reference, I went to work.

I used a brass-etched saw blade to remove the remains of the original blade, and then cleaned up the hilt with a triangular file so I could get right into the corners. I then measured up the sword and did a cut with the saw again to get a clean edge.

Next, I used a 1mm drill bit to drill out a hole, going about 10mm deep into the blade. I drilled out the corresponding hole in the hilt.

Comparison photo with to make sure things were looking right. A minor amount of filing to fit it into the hilt. My new sword is slightly longer than the original, but that's ok. Better than the blunt rounded end!

And now time for a bath in Simple Green (without the new blade).

Stay tuned for part 2 once the old paint is removed!