This evening I decided to do something a bit bigger than the 2mm miniatures and settled on the Pikes, that is not to say that the 2mm bases stayed unwanted and unloved in their box…certainly not… I slapped some flesh base coat on some undercoated ones…
Anyway back to the pikes…
As you can see they are a bit further forward. Most of the armour has been given the base coat. Now these still have a lot of white on them, that hopefully, sooner rather than later I will get finished.
I had better get some shot and crossbow done next, then onto some knights.
Well I have decided to have a night off, as I am starting to feel a bit bleurgh. I think I have caught my daughter’s cold. I really hope not as she was floored for a week with hers. Luckily my lateral flow rest has come back negative.
I got the Aliens off the build plate and they are rather nice…
As it was very sunny here today I shoved them on the Windowsill to get some natural curing done.
I was thinking of spraying mine gun metal and then using the black Contrast Paint oder the top. Won’t that can happen is that it doesn’t work. If that is the case I will spray then black and highlight by dry brushing with blue.
If I do perk up then I am going to get some more done on my pikes…mi have got about a month before I need my army for our big Lion Rampant game.
Tonight I managed to get a whole lot done on my unit of flagellants.
I was hoping to get them finished, but sadly it was not to be. Hopefully I will get them done tomorrow. Now quite often I see these type of miniatures with pale skin, but they way look atitthey were out and about throughout the lands so mine are a bit tanned.
I also managed to get the ruins successfully printed at 18% size…
While was having a mooch for things to paint then I came across the trees too. I had printed some last nightwith the reduced sized cows… yes I really am that bonkers! The trees really could have done with some supportsas there are some pancakes on the bottoms, but,they still work, and to be honest they were a test to see if they would print.
As I have decided to go for 6mm Italian wars then, as you can tell by the blog, I have been reducing 28mm buildings to fitmy 6mm.this was because I couldn’t really find any suitable ones to print. Now if you remember, a while ago I found a guy making 6mm Samurai, I didn’t bother looking in the moderns section. Outof the blue today YouTube decided that I would want to watch one of his videos, lo and beholding January of this year he made Italian style buildings, so asylum can imagine I am quite chuffed and am printing a villa, church, some barns and smaller farm houses right now. I will photograph them tomorrow. You can watch the video below…
This evening I managed to get the base ready onto the pikes and other 28mm Renaissance miniatures.
Rubbish photos again!
I also printed off forty arqubusiers, and it was then that my epiphany arrived. If you recall, a week ago I suddenly had an issue printing 6mm miniatures. Today I think I know why… It seems to be the supports, and the way they work. The bases were too close together so they formed a solid and more importantly large base.
I printed an earlier set of models that I had had partial success with and when I went back to check part of the base was hanging off the plate… suction on a large area can cause problems with the print sticking to the FEP instead of the plate…
The sticks are the remains of the supports. There is a definite bend in the back bit and you can really see in the foreground where there are ghosts of miniatures. This bit was sitting at about 45 degrees to the build plate. So I went back onto the computer and, as the pikes worked without support, I just went for it… absolutely no problem at all. Forty arqubusiers came out absolutely fine.
So lesson learned… supports on 6mm miniatures are a bit of a no, no.
Believe it or not the printer has decided to behave itself, so I have been printing pikes like they are going out of fashion. I also shrunk the command strip a bit. They now fit nicely with the pikes…
Now in case you are wondering there are 75 strips of pikes above. This in fact won’t be enough to cover my four units of Pike… each base has three ranks behind the metal front one, with two wide for each one … okay there are two spare which can be seen in the photo above. I will use these to make casualty markers.
There are twenty printing now, so still a long way to go.
When I shrunk the command strip I decided to live dangerously and didn’t support the flags as I worked on the principle that at the size they were then they should self support… thankfully I was correct in my gamble.
I also worked on some big pikes too…
They are nearly there, hopefully I will get them finished tomorrow.
Finally I got a couple of parcels, the first was this one…
The second was my Furioso supplement, which turned out to be the rules I already had, so they have gone back to AA for a swap. I was really looking forward to reading them…. hopefully they will be here soon.
Tomorrow is some more work in the house and I need to get the shed back in operation as I have a postponed game I there on Friday.
I got another ruin printed today.this onetook just over 5 hours to complete. I also printed off the multi barrelled organ gun…
As you can see there is also a pikeman sneaking into the picture. I now have a full unit of twelve, with for some reason, an extra half dozen heads… teach me to try and add up when I am tired. I also did a driver for the wagon with a pile of camp followers too. They are still in the print head now. I will show them off tomorrow.
Well I have had a jolly old birthday. Got lots of brilliant presents from the kids. I also got some great maps for RPG’s from my mate. My main present is still in the post. As the old iPad has eventually given up the ghost then I decided to go for a new Android tablet as they are a whole lot cheaper.
Pressies from the kids
I had a lazy old day, eventually got the springs off the brake shoes too. I did manage to take time to flock the duellists bases…
And get another building printed…
The one on the right is from last night.
I am having to get used to slowwww print times… I went back in to check after leaving it for an hour and fifteen minutes (after the usual making sure the base layer was down)… it had got to here…
Luckily it is going over night! This new one is a two level one, hence the two separate bits.
I am also using up the resin in the vat by printing a wagon with a pair of horses. This was to take about three hours, if I can be bothered I will go and check on it in a tick.
Tomorrow I will do some more ruined buildings. They won’t be done in a hurry that’s for sure. The FDM is slow but it is a whole lot cheaper than doing things on the resin printer (if they would fit that it). I might actually do some for my 6mm Armies.
Today I actually managed to get the duellists just about finished. Still a bit of tidying up to do and bases to cover, but on the whole I am happy with them. Are the uniforms accurate to Flintloque cannon… nope not at all, well apart from the boots that is!…
I cracked on with the Cavalry command and the mounted crossbows…
Interestingly enough (and I just found this out) by the time of the Italian (Renaissance ) Wars the mounted crossbows would supposedly shoot from the saddle. Now this is something that is intriguing and I will have to look into it a bit more as it causes a lot of questions, first being how the heck do you recock the thing when you have shot your bolt? Secondly how do you stop the bolt just dropping off?
I think that is it for the miniature printing for a good old while… I pretty much have two Armies now or an army and an allied contingent. Upon saying this I want to just check on the Dwarves as they could do with a unit of light or medium infantry, plus there is the matter of the light cavalry and a giant.
it is handy having a South facing conservatory with a wide widow sill…
So instead of printing more miniatures then I decided to go for some terrain on the old filament printer. It had sat for a good while and the filament had snapped at the extruder. Luckily I managed to slot a new roll in.I took some of Iain Lovecraft’s ruins and shrank them down to 70% and set the printer away. I relevelled it a couple of times and still came back to this…
This is about the size of a cherry tomato. I was a bit miffed as it was an hour and a half into it when I went back. I set it away again, but sat with it whilst it printed the first couple of layers, this meant I could alter on the fly. It still tried stripping away at one end, so I am afraid I got the superglue out and stuck it down. Not clever I know but it was what was handy. After about 2 hours it was still delaminating so I shoved bluetack up against both sides of the bit that was threatening to cause the whole thing to come away. Hopefully it will be okay by time I go back tomorrow morning. The one thing I am not used to now is ten hour prints for a short run.
The first of my heavy cavalry came off the plate today, four are finished and two are still printing. I am doing six of these heavy cavalry…
Now with these I went for the smaller of the banners, part of me now wished that I had gone for the bigger one. In the second and third set I have printed a ‘warhound’ these came from Iain Lovecraft’s Frost civilians and are actually the rat catcher’s dog. As they had a spiked collar I thought the looked cool. I kept them at full size instead of dropping them to 75% like the rest. I reckoned they would make a passable mastiff/Great Dane type of hound.
I also got the hands glued onto the Flagellants… one is missing a left hand.. sadly I think it fell off the supports and was lost in the shed…
The top three on the right are the ‘command’ set… now these will make nice cultists as well as religious nutters. I also managed to get a photo of the Zweihanders…
And finally… I actually managed to get some paint onto the duellists…
I am pleased with how they have started, but less pleased with wood Elf. This is going to need another undercoat as the Gesso has left it shiny and the paint won’t adhere to it properly. My guess is that I really didn’t shake it enough to get the paint and medium mixed together. I did thin it down a bit with medium, but by all accounts that is what I am meant to do. Probably find I purchased the shiny version!
So as you know, yesterday I based all of my dwarves and today I decided to do the same to the spares on the Empire side. Sadly it would seem I either cannot count or have lost a pile of bases… I would say the former.
I set to work merrily glueing down miniatures to bases then suddenly realised that I had actually run out. It would seem that my seventy 25x25mm weren’t enough. I need another 36 to base the extra handgunners I printed by mistake, then I have a dozen flagellants and also a dozen zweihanders. Hopefully I should have enough cavalry bases as I didn’t order any more of those. I should have if I only go for the heavy cavalry and demilancers, but if I also print the cuirassiers and mounted crossbows then definitely not. I bought some more infantry, ogre and cavalry bases just in case. I also ordered the Furioso rules which are Renaissance rules.
So on the left front to back… crossbows, pikes and Ogres
Centre we have the culvern and volley gun with crew for both behind them are the command miniatures with some random ‘spares’ behind that.
And on the right… heavy Infantry, hand-gunners and Reiters.
All twelve flagellants printed really well, apart from the end of a two handed flail. Luckily it didn’t affect the next lot being printed. My first six zweihanders have just come off the build plate and have had a wash. They are sitting in their basket letting the ISO evaporate before I pull the supports off and then get them cured.
I got my elf duellists undercoated this evening. I tried putting some Contrast paint over the GW wood elf that I undercoated with gesso. It is very streaky. I will try a watered down layer of paint to see if that will help.
Last night I watched Tremors for the first time in an age. I really enjoyed it. Tonight I am watching Kill Bill as I have never seen it before… I am somewhat confused so far. Hopefully things will become more obvious as I go along.
