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Building, Printing and Painting

Cor blimey, I have been busy today, shopping, building, sawing, Printing, Painting and making dinner to name but a few.

Well as you know I do like my 6mm Samurai and 3DAlien World’s has produced a very nice temple building. It came out today so I just had to get it. In 28mm it would be huge, in fact the Ender would only take one base bit at a time, luckily I was going 6mm. So I built bits in 3D Builder first and then reduced them down to 24% the base is printing right now, but the walls came off really nicely…

Unfortunately I don’t think I am going to be able to pre build the roof, but I will most definitely give it a go.

I also got the Trewell Common buildings finished too..

Now you may notice that the photo was taken on a different surface… this is because I now have a dedicated painting place I; the lounge…

This pretty much can store most of my paints miniatures and other bits and pieces. I tried it out this evening and did some more on the Cultists…

I also did some work on the conservatory. We are putting down decking as a different kind of flooring and to cut a long story short…short being quite appropriate here….

I swore….lots!

80cm short! It comes in 4.8m lengths… hopefully there will be a knackered piece that I can get cheap… wish me luck!

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Printing Cock-Ups

My FDM has now been running for 26 hours straight and is making a rather lovely small cottage… there is however a bit of a problem, this one seems to be a bit on the large side, especially for a small cottage.

Considering that the build plate itself is 22cm square then you will see what I mean. I am just going to let it run its course and then shove some figures near to it and see what they look like. To be honest I can’t remember adding a raft or the tree supports, so I am now wondering if I had somehow clicked a button to increase the size.

My other balls up was my goblin Warg rider and Warg…

Now the more observationally astute will notice… a) the lack of any goblins, or Wargs for that matter and also b) its a 2 legged moose… evidently I pressed the wrong button last night on the resin printer too…

So as I was faffing on for so long, the prints have eventually finished, the FDM printer taking 27 hours plus to finish, and it is indeed bloody huge….

On the up side, the goblin and Wargs printed properly this time…

Diorama Idea number 2

Finally… when I was hunting through a box Then I came across some of my earliest ever painted miniatures and I thought it was time for their 25 (or more) year update. So they are going to get stripped and redone in a new paint scheme… let’s see how I have progressed…

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Diorama, Paints and Superglue

I decided to get the diorama finished tonight. I went for some blood in the end, I think it looks okay. Not much, but a bit of red to give a bit more to the story.

I also got some paint put onto some more of the 3D printed stuff. I needed the superglue to repair a few miniatures too.

We had a bit of excitement in school today as a pod of Orca came into the bay. We went for a look, but by time we got out they were motoring away…

You can just about see them in the photo…

We took the kids for a walk down to the pier, it was a nice morning for it…

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Diorama… Nearly There

Today I managed to get some more of the wolves done. They, like the rhino, need some Matt varnish. I haven’t quite decided on how everything will look in the end. So this is a starter for ten.

So this is where we have got to in the build. Part of me thinks that the wolves are a bit dark for this, but it is how they are in reality. I may have a play around with them and see how I get on.

Next question is blood on the calf or not….? I think not, but maybe I should.

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Diorama Update

Tonight I bit the bullet and poked holes into the base work and then shoved the trees in. Thanks for all the positive comments as they really did help. What didn’t help was when I used my cutters to chop the stick size down. A whole pile of flock came from somewhere, I had visions of a totally bare tree on one side. Methinks it came from inside.

I also dry brushed the bright green tufts as well as most of the other ones as well to blend it all in. I also managed to do a bit of work on the rhino, basically getting a dark wash on them before dry bushing tomorrow.

I also tested the miniatures to see what they would look like in situ and I think they will work…

Stunt rhino were used in this shot…still a bit of brighter green to tone down too.

So on the whole I am happy with this. If I were to do it again then I would build the base up by two layers to allow trees to be placed anywhere.

Hopefully I will get this finished by the end of the weekend. I am considering another one with hunters and a mammoth, but I will see how I feel after finishing this one and after checking on how much space I have to store it.

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Trees, paint and a Three Legged Wolf

So tonight I managed to get the trees reflocked, blasted with hairspray and then given a couple of coats of Matt varnish to try and seal the whole lot down.

Not exactly the world’s best photo, but I think you can see what I was aiming for.

I also made a start on the animals, I couldn’t be bothered to try to get them undercoated white, so instead I just brushed on some Foundry ‘Canvas A’ paint. In doing so I sadly snapped off one of the feet off a wolf.

He is the wolf nearest to the rhino, his foot is the grey lump sitting next to the right hand wold. Luckily I didn’t drop it so a bit of superglue fixed the problem after the photo was taken (I finished undercoating everything too).

I am starting to get a little worried as to how this whole thing is going to look when finished. Not sure why, probably just cold feet as it has taken me so long…

And finally, shock horror, my blog has now had, at last check, 6012 visitors with 19200 views. That is pretty amazing if I say so myself. I never ever, ever though I would get 1000 visitors. So a big thank you to everyone who has popped by and to everyone who keeps coming back. I really do appreciate it. ❣️

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Back with the Trees (and camels)

Today I bought some brown spray paint, it was a satin finish, but for the trees I really doubt it will matter. So the four I did last night were given a spray…

From this…
To this, (the sun was going down when I took the photo… so apologies for the crap photo).

I then hunted out my hair spray and gave them a dashed good squirt and then a blast with flock. I found that there was too much liquid on them and the flock dropped off when attached to droplets. I gave the next one a spin after soaking it. This certainly helped as less plopped off.

The lighting was a bit crap in the house, but I reckon you can see the difference between attempt one and attempt two…

Not perfect, but loads better than yesterday’s version…

I will give them a blast of watered down PVA tomorrow and seal this lot in, or possibly will do the lighter flock for highlights first then onto the sealing. As you can see from the photo above the flock is very loose on the hairspray version, hardly any fell off on the spray glue…

I will have another go at making some more trees tomorrow (or start tonight) and then try again with the hairspray, another option is to retry the spray glue. One of the thing it has is this button that you turn to change the spray flow.

So Facebook has this memory thing that keeps popping up, today was a cracker from six years ago when my son was four…

We were watching a nature programme and he suddenly said..

“Why aren’t those camels blue?”

“Well camels aren’t blue.” I replied.

“Arctic camels are! Arctic camels are blue!”

“There aren’t any camels in the arctic!”

“That’s because polar bears eat them!” He replied.

“James, they cannot life in the arctic as it is too cold.”

“That’s why they are blue!” he said triumphantly .

I tried really hard. “James, camels can’t get to the arctic as the sea is in the way.”

“Well they swim there!” He pointed out.

“I really don’t think camels can swim THAT well.”

“Ahhh Daddy, but you have forgotten, camels have swim knuckles!”

At that point I gave up… we never ever worked out what Swim Knuckles are.

But this camel seems to have them…

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Well That Didn’t Work!

So tonight I tried my super duper spray glue and totally ballsed up… I hadn’t realised that although super sticky, it was also foaming too…

So, after swearing lots, and lots and probably more than that I went back to square one and made another four. Tomorrow I will get the super hold hairspray out and give these a blast with that and then throw the flock on

I will get some lighter flock onto the other ones as a highlight so they are not a complete waste, it will give me practice in trying something new.

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Paint it Black

Sadly not a rather funky song by the Stones, more like me out in the wind and rain in the pony shed with a torch and a spray can of black paint.

But I did get them sprayed black. I will paint the trunks brown tomorrow evening and then get the things sprayed with glue and then flocked, depending on what I have got flock wise.

To be honest I am really enjoying making this thing, so much so that other things have been pushed to the back of the queue.

This is kind of a pity as I think it would look more balanced. If anyone could give me any invoice then I would Appreciate it. I did think about drilling through the base and pinning into the wooden dowel of the skewers and supergluing everything in situ.

I recon I can get the skewers into the top of the hill but the depth of base on the flat ground will not allow the placement I had in the test shot…

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Ohhhh Tannenbaum

Tonight was another one of tree building, I got a pile more circles made out of the matting…

I managed to get four more trees done with what I had. Now to be honest I only used a quarter of one of the mats so I can make a whole host more…

Four more basic trees

Now the next question is to undercoat them in what colour? I have black and green here, I can probably pick up some brown on Saturday. The other option I have considered was dipping them in some brown drawing ink.

I have spray glue and or heavy duty hairspray to put the flock down. Next problem is I need some flock to add to them, now I have sawdust stuff, but I think foam would look better. I have posted on Geek Gaming to ask what they would recommend.

I will carry on with the diorama tomorrow and will make a start on the animals.

A big shout out to everyone who has sent out positive vibes, useful comments and support for this project.