A Blast from the Past

 

Apropos of a post on Facebook about resin buildings, I made a few buildings back in the day for running demo games. The owners of Fantasy Forge saw them at a convention and asked if I could make a few more for a range to use with BattleTech.

I said yes, of course I could, and I rumaged my spares box and made what you see here for them.

Above, the two smaller buildings, are the same model, just showing the back and front. Made from Eagle Transporter pods cut to fit, with Plasticard corrugated sheet for the roofs.

The center building is a repurposed air-freshner. My original master was taller, but Fantasy Forge couldn't get consistent casts from the moulds, which meant they cut it down in size you see here.

Below, the building on the left was built up using four Eagle Transporter modules, with some Airfix Panther tank wheels, a bottle cap and sundry spares. Finished off with corrugated plasticard, filler, and a dome from the Plastruct range.  

Above, the one on the right was a cap from something and a elliptical dish from the Plastruct range who are makers of components for architectural model makers.

Below, the building on the left is made from two Apollo Lunar Lander halves, two Enterprise hangar doors, and sundry Plasticard gribblies.

Above, the building on the right was made from two Panther tank turrets, and jet engine cowlings from whatever I had in my bits box. Plasticard gribblies, and another dome from the Plastruct range to finish.

I made these when I had a serious spares box collected from the days when I worked in a hobby store and could get my hands on spare sprues.

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving day. Catch you all later.

Warfare 2025

 

I almost didn't go to Farnborough for the show this year, because of side effects from my medication, what the British National Formulary call a skin reactions. Anyway, enough of the grumbling.

Above on my right is Jon from GZG, long time friend, and on my left is Tim from Gomi Designs who I hadn't seen for 20 years. So just going and meeting up with my two friends made my day.

Below is what I scored at the show.

Decals from Pendraken, Some Rosemary & Co drybrush brushes, a pack of small needle files, and a packet of leaf scatter to try out. Still have a bunch of trees to finish.

We got there and had a good mooch around and found Daleks! I was excited! They're 3D prints from The Madman's Workshop, and come in a range of sizes. I asked about 1/100th sized Daleks for 15mm, and plan on ordering some to try out.

 How can one resist the power of the Daleks!?

Lots of games to see, and a lot of the competition games had real nice tables set up, going beyond the usual green mat and some lonesome scatter terrain dotting the table.

And then there was this.

 

On its last outing, Joe Bilton's What a Tanker Operation Charnwood, Caen 1945 table.

That's it. That's all I've got. Catch you all on the bounce. 

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 3

More progress with refurbishing my buildings. Above is a repaired long building, which had suffered a break at one end. I rebuilt the missing wall with Milliput, and carved in the brick courses.

To repair t roof I added a plasticard base to reinforce  the damaged roof, then added filler. After this had set, I carved in the roof tiles.

The end result is a bit sloppy, but should suffice for a damaged building.

Below you can see where I've glued Mulberry rice paper to line the walls, because experience tells me the resin tends to break if knocked. And building are easily knocked.

And again below, you can just about tell that the far resin wall window post has broken. I shall rebuild it with Milliput, repeating what I did with the building at the top of this post..

 

Not shown are the reworked floors for both of the buildings above.

One of the floor's lacked any detail, and the others were a tad shallow, which is probably accurate, but these are building for wargames, so I scribed them all to make the planks stand out more when they're drybrushed.

That's all for now. Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 2

 

And the work continues. This refurbishment project has taken me longer to progress than my first estimate of a couple of weekends. Like real life building projects I'm overrunning my completion date, and estimated cost.

I took the four buildings above, and arranged them thus.

The four buildings now make two larger structures on plasticard bases sized to represent pavement.

I ended up having to scribe the floors to deepen the relief to make the grooves stand out. WHat can't be seen is all the fiddly filing to clear excess resin from windows, and fill in obvious seems where walls were butted up against each other.

I also added some Milliput on the oblong building to reinforce the floor between the two halves, as without it, the base flexed.

 So, that's three building down, and six to go.

Yep, I may be some time.

Russian Combat Group

Just a quick post of the Russian quad mechs I've been working on. You can see the old scheme here. I call these walkers Pokhodnaya Boyevaya Platforma, but I'm still noodling the nomenclature I'm going to assign them.

All for now, catch you later.

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 1

So, this weeks tales of adventure, its a story of two steps forward, one step back, as I began re-working this building.

My objective is to fettle what I saw as faults with the model. I didn't do any serious prep when I first painted it back circa 2016 'ish.'

The circa and 'ish' are doing a lot of work here, as the first boards were built in 2010. 

 

Yeah, I'm an inveterate fiddler who can't leave stuff well enough alone. This was the building I removed from the original town board to paint graffiti on the other buildings as seen here.

 

I started by cleaning up the resin building by removing blemished and defects that arose when poured into a mold. This included filling in gaps, and getting rid of seems in the original master, using plastic putty.

Then added a base with a pavement around the structure. After that I reworked the roof, which I managed to completely muck up big time, as can be seen below.

 

My first attempt ended up warping, from a combination of using a piece of 20 thou plasticard and 'No More Nails' glue to try and level the roof casting. The 'No More Nails' didn't harden properly, and as a consequence the resin roof warped.

So I snapped it apart, and rebuilt it on a thicker 40 thou piece of plasticard. Twenty thou is half a mil, and 40 thou is 1 mil thick. I also used super glue to make sure it stuck together, and then filled in all the cracks to restore the roof to a serviceable condition.

A serviceable condition meaning, bashed and battered, but still functionally a roof.

And this is as far as I got over the course of a weekend. All of the above is a lot of work for very little forward progress.

I'll catch you all on the bounce.

Bad Dog Marine Command Mech

And the final macro shots of my RAFM conversions. This is Tachikoma's CASE-2XC Mod 2 command Dog variant, loaded for Bear from Ghost Dog.

The Mod 1 variant only has one hard-point on the backpack. So, if I need to field that version I just swap the body from one of the standard CASE-2XC Dog's. 

Run Tachikoma, run, side view. 

 

 

And from the otherside, still running for her life.

 

And, the respective magnetized sub-assemblies, laid out to show how the model comes apart.

And as always, catch you on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Army Communications Mech

And continuing my promise to my friends here are another set of macro shots, showing off my RAFM conversions. 

Here's an Army CAS-3-Mod-2 Ape 4CISR mech: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

Front view.  

Three-quarter rear view.

 

And, again here's how all the parts are magnetized, allowing me to have different poses to use as a reference for a book cover artist.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Air Force Security Mech

And keeping my promise to my friends about posting macro shots of my RAFM conversions, here's the rebuilt Air Force CAS-4CP, meant to control a whole bunch of security androids as used by Ferretti in my story Ghost Dog.

Total bad ass side view. 

 

 

 And rear view.

 

And, here it is showing all the magnetized parts, which allow different poses for a book cover.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Army Combat Engineering Mech

 

I promised some friends I'd post some macro shots of my RAFM conversions. Here's an Army CAS-1-Mod-1EV Ape, engineering mecha.

Rear view. Towing cables to go.

Below side view.

And, here shows all the magnetized parts, which allow me to take pictures of different poses for reference for a book cover.

 Catch you all on the bounce.