Fixing Blog and Mechs

I started these RAFM Heavy Gear conversions 10 months ago, back when the after effects from getting shingles was still bothering me. But, as life would have it, I forgot about them. After, I started painting the Mk4 Ogre I decided to slap some paint on these too. 

Then, after reaching this point, I realized I'd not actually finished adding all the details to them, which meant stopping working on them to fix the omissions.

Doh! Don't you hate it when that happens? 

And, to add insult to injury, I discovered that blogger no longer seems to support hashtags. So, I had to go through all my tags and remove them, so as to allow my blog to sort posts again, which still seems buggy.

In this case, no longer sorting by date.

And yes, I've logged out. Logged back in again, with a verification code, and my directory of posts is still not sorting by date.

It is what it is.

OMWB: Newten Town New District WIP 4

Progress with refurbishing my buildings. Above a cleaned up building where the corner had been broken and part lost. Rebuilt using a mix of Kneadite and Milliput.

Below is another broken resin building showing how I used some Mulberry rice paper to strengthen the brittle wall.

I then put spread some lines of super glue on the paper, drawing connections between the fragmented pillars, and the remaining wall. I made this solid by sprinkling baking soda on top of the super glue to make a rigid connection for sculpting a new wall on top of the paper. 

I forgot to take a picture of the unpainted wall, but it looked a lot like what is in the top picture. After priming the model, I noticed a part of the wall needed to be made thicker.

 

Hence the unpainted Kneadite and Milliput you can see above. 

Over the hols I shall be flocking the bases, adding rubble, and begin the painting to make these buildings ready for the tabletop.

Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Newten Town New District 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 the damaged roof I added a plasticard base to reinforce it, 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 District 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.

OMWB: Newten Town New District 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.

OMWB: Newten Town New District

It has been a while, seven years it seems, since I posted anything about my buildings for wargames. How time seems to slip through ones fingers.

Anyway, I decided, after seeing what the Too Fat Lardies were doing with their terrain that I could take a leaf out of their book. My town terrain boards are super fab, but each square fixes what buildings go where in a town.

I want more flexibility, I want the freedom to arrange my towns however I gorram please.

So, after much procrastination, I decided rather than finish off the last four town boards I have to hand, I would chop them up and re-build the buildings on their own discrete base. This would have the added advantage of getting rid if the seams in the road too.

An added bonus from doing a town this way.

And while I was doing all of this I looked at one of the resin buildings and decided to file out all the scarf left by the limitations of the way they were molded.

My beloved couldn't tell the difference between the building on the left, and the one on the right. Clue, the one on the right has the window frames filed clean.

 That's all for now, catch you on the bounce.

OMWB: M1120A2 HEMTT LHS

I've wanted a model to represent the truck that appears in several important scenes in my novel Strike Dog. It's the main vehicle used by the team to explore Two Moons. My original plan was to convert a 1/64th scale Matchbox toy.

But, when I saw that Butlers' Printed Models now offered models of the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, I couldn't resist buying them. I got two M1120A2 LHS HEMMTs, one soft skin A kit cab, and one armored B-kit cab.

Comparing both HEMMTs, Matchbox's model is quite a bit longer than the 1/100th scale model, which is not really a problem. But, being wider than the smaller trucks container, is a problem.

 

It's a problem, because I need a bunch of Conex boxes to represent the off world Alpha site base. Getting more containers from Butlers' Printed Models is easy.

Getting more Matchbox HEMMT containers, not so much. 

I plan  to convert the HEMMT to represent a 10 x 10 M2184 HUHMTT PLS (Heavy Utility High-Mobility Tactical Truck with a palletized loading system), described as having a cabin that seats four people. 

So, either way, I have to extend the cab, and lengthen the chassis.

Anyway that's all for now. Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Russian 15mm Armour

I bought a few Team Yankee sprues off eBay. These are easy enough to glue together if you have the assembly instructions. As the sprues didn't come with any, I had to hunt around the Battlefront website.

Above, left to right, are a TOS-1, a T-70B, a BMP-3, and a T80U.

The TOS-1 and T-70B are for my near future modern insurgent's force. I'll probably go for a dessert scheme for these.

I got the T80U and BMP-3 to use as near future Russian reserves. I have also got a T-90MC awaiting assembly too. With the Kurganets I got earlier I think I have more than enough armour to meet my future needs.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Not Dead; Just Resting

Okay, it has been (time-wise) a country mile, since I've posted anything on a regular basis. What can I say, life sucks!? That, and setbacks. First was the unfinished mini-gun arm for one of the previous batch of CASE-2X Dogs.

Second being the missile pod mounts. The problem was the cast metal pods drooped.

Can't have one's missile pods drooping so, after much procrastination, I came up with another way of mounting them with magnets, which involved order some more parts too. I need to add Milliput to fare the pods to the magnets to finish them, but the end is in sight.

Hence the delay in getting around to doing the work. I've also started a couple more combat armour Ape suits conversions.

And, there's more to come. I've been beavering away, and have a bunch of stuff I need to take glamour shots of. This includes some NAC laser towers and turrets, the finished Russian quad mechs with decals, and more.

 So, watch this blog. Catch you all on the bounce. 

Still Alive!

Catching shingles for the New Year is not the kind of present that anyone wants. A surprising amount of pain is utterly discombobulating. A lack of sleep has rather cramped my hobbies, and not wanting to move my arms much because to do so causes stabbing pain.

Anyway, still recovering, but managed to apply some decals to these models.

Now I just need to matt varnish them, and then I can all them done. Well, almost done. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed one the mecha is missing an arm.

Yeah that was an oopsie.

Forgot I needed to rebuild the arm, modify the minigun casting to feed from so the ammo belt would hang properly, and lost track of it while I was prepping the rest of the models.

I still have some other models I finished, or have managed to finish that I need to take pictures of, but shingles. Just saying, shingles takes the fun out of everything.

Catch you all later.

Russian Quad Mech Repaints

It has been a year since I posted anything about my Russian four legged walkers. I seem to be suffering from the time loss equivalent of the MCUs Infinity War snap. Instead of half the population disappearing, it's time.

I start writing something, get distracted by something else, then look around to find the whole day has flown by.

I was going to apply decals, but I wasn't happy with the paint job. I wanted more contrast and to also make the models look sharper. Make them pop. So here's a comparison shot of the revised paint on the left versus the old paint on the right.

And I'm still not convinced this new look is the look I want (edit to add first version of this scheme).

My painter's lament, sigh...

OMWB: Subatduku Alien Mecha

This is RattapoomK Gorgon Frame (Lancer RPG Mech) Machinegun and Grenade Launcher. Printed by my beloved, her first resin print. Woot!

Took a while to clean up supports, and while the arms detached, everything came out looking pretty spiffing.

Okay, so what's this all about?

Well, you might remember I had a short story in this collection, Clash of Steel, an anthology with a number of much better known writers. This model is going to represent those alien mecha that Sargent Jones unit faced.

You can buy the anthology here and at other good retail outlets.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

OMWB: Laser Towers for Ogre/GEV

I received the Combine laser tower set as a gift, and like lots of projects, it has taken me more time getting around to them than I would've liked. I ran out of spoons, but it is what it is.

Anyway, I decided to base them, and I took the opportunity to base my two original Pan Euro ones at the same time.

I also magnetize the new towers allowing the turrets to swivel, but skipped doing the same to the old models, because I didn't want to damage the paint and touch up any damage.

Far too much faff.

The Combine towers are primed so now all I have to do is figure out how to apply the colour scheme I use to these buildings.

Desert Oasis and Ruins

Ta da... three oasis bases completed. Look at the reflections on the acrylic liquid water. Pretty pleased with how these bits of terrain turned out.

Below the fallen pillar.

The ruined head of some ancient god. Could pass as a very stylized Anubis or Khnum I guess. Let me know what you think?

And, the next project. The bases for my forest/jungle. 

The one in the center/bottom has had its edges beveled, which I should've done before painting. However, it was only after assembling them and priming did I realize that I needed to do so.

As they say, things are obvious in hindsight.

An Interlude: Trees

Here's where I am so far with painting the palm trees and the oasis bases from Charlie Foxtrot. This small little project that was just meant to be a quickie has turned into a monster made of trees.

As I said I have a whole bunch of trees, so many trees to finish working on. First up, evergreen pine trees.

Followed by deciduous trees of various sizes. All built from Woodland Scenics sprues I assembled many years ago that have sat in a box languishing ever since.

So many trees that need finishing. Above small and medium trees. Below large trees.

Hear the lament of the tree maker for she has bitten off more than she thought.

Catch you all on the bounce (probably while crashing into some trees on landing).

Ma.K Acquisitions

Look what arrived from Slave 2 Gaming in Australia, 15mm Ma.K miniatures. Arrived super quick. Totally Bonzer service.

What arrived in the packaget is six of each of their SDR Schwarzer Hund and Kradenvogel.

I plan to convert the Schwarzer Hund into power armor for my Subatduku.,The Kradenvogel were acquired for parts when I start building some Chinese Fatties.

I acquired two walking and four flying poses of the Hunds, which are multiple part models that require assembly.

These are not generally available for purchase from the website, but Drew Edney very kindly let me have these on the understanding that they're likely to be revised to make assembly easier before general release.

I may have some thoughts on what could be done to make them less fiddly.

However, given he's a pattern maker, and has a professional mould maker working for him to produce this range, my input, thoughts, idle musings etc. are probably unwanted.

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

Palm Trees

This is where I'm up to on getting these palm trees, though actually it's a mix of coconut and palm, and other stuff tree bases.

Desert Oasis

While this stage of the project has pretty good contrast, it still feels like the miniatures appear a bit flat. It might as well be monochrome, despite all the different shades of brown, tan, and sand used.

And while painting the desert ruins I assembled the Charlie Foxtrot Oasis bases I acquired in 2021. Amazing how times flies?

So currently the project looks like this. More work to do.