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Desert Dwelling Update.

The two story house just finished, but as I said in the previous post the ground floor is the same.

Here we have a comparison of the two. 50% and 60% of the full size.

I am going to go with the 50% size as I think it will look the best.

Here we have the two story version…

Unfortunately I printed the wrong size upper roof. I say unfortunately as although printing a new one should be Easy Peasy, it sadly is not as one of my dear, dear children have totally destroyed the laptop screen. Therefore we will have to somehow get it to Unst and then see if he can fix it before he can somehow get it back to us!

I can now only print the things on my micro SD card. Bugger!

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Desert Dwelling II

Well I down sized a building to 50% full size and it came out thus:

This is a different one to the first, but is another from the ones purchased from Terrain4Print.

If we look at the first print it looks like this…

It is quite big compared to the MKIII.

And then side by side…

To be honest I think the smaller of the two still looks fine, whereas the first one printed looks a bit on the big side.

I am printing off a two story house, but the base is the same as the one with the stairs.

Once it is done I will do a further comparison shot between the two. Let me know what you think so far.

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January’s Community Challenge

January’s challenge was terrain, so I decided to give some a go. I was rather pleased with the result, however I could have done more if I hadn’t become rather lethargic and lacked motivation.

But anyway I managed to get from the raw squirty foam to a few pieces of terrain.

As I had a bucket load of resin gravestones I decided on a graveyard theme. Rather than a flat graveyard I wanted something a little more dramatic.

I was pleased with how the ‘grave hill’ came out.

I then did some smaller hillocks using the off cuts from the foam. These were originally going to be covered in graves too, however I decided that the pieces would be more flexible if I avoided the gravestones.

I also made a start on another hill, but ran out time…

One of my other plans was to get this completed in January…

I did manage to print it in time, but it was meant to be based and painted too…

I will endeavour to get the last two finished sometime soon.

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Scatter (brained)

Well I had a whole month to make terrain and instead of doing everything I was going to do, I basically didn’t. Getting the 3D printer in and working properly didn’t really help but it is a bit of a naff excuse as the prints take hours to finish. I suppose I just lost a bit of motivation brought about in part by the realisation that I have to store everything somewhere.

That Not withstanding I did manage to finish the hillocks.

The biggest is about 15cm long by about 13cm wide the other two are roughly 15×10

I also got some base grass on the open grave hill…

This is bigger, sitting at 16 x 19 cm. it is about an 3cm high at the cliff end. Hopefully I will get it finished tomorrow a bit late for January’s community challenge, but it will definitely fit into February’s neglected challenge as it sat ignored for a good while.

The last piece of terrain I made a start on was my mausoleum. This came off the 3D printer this morning. It took 8 hours 40 minutes to print. The two 32mm figures show the scale of it.

It is pretty close to a 6cm cube with sticky out bits (I am tired and can’t think of the correct word!)

I am printing the roof just now. It is an hour and a half into a three hour print. Once this is done I will print the iron door and the sarcophagus for the interior. The coffin in the open grave sits in the sarcophagus. I can’t remember how much the above cost PLA wise, once the whole thing is finished I will price it up.

I will get it all painted up and put on a small base.

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Graveyard Scatter…The Return

I managed to get a bit more done on the scatter terrain this evening.

I got the small hill painted brown..

Still the cliff face to paint, but getting there. The one thing I forgot to do was the spoil heap from the hole. I will see what I can come up with tomorrow.

I also managed to get some flock on the other three bits…

Still some clump foliage and tufts to add.

My 3D printer is working away on my longest print yet. I decided to get the Mausoleum printed. The walls will take over 7 hours with the roof taking another 3.

I reckon it will be done at about 03.30 tomorrow.

I was supposed to be traveling to the island of Yell tomorrow morning but as the temperature has dropped to at least -6 and as the gritters were off work today due to Up Helly Ah then I seriously doubt I will get out.

What is Up Helly Ah? Well it is Shetland’s main fire festival, supposedly the biggest in Europe. You can find out more about it here: https://www.shetland.org/things/events/up-helly-aa/lerwick-up-helly-aa

It does look pretty impressive…

Taken from Uphellyah.org
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Guess What…. Not 3D Printed

I actually did something for my Graveyard… yes I really did. Look photographic proof!

I went for the open grave look. I decided that the original three scatter pieces were going to become just lumps and bumps as opposed to graveyard related. I decided upon this course of action as the graveyard would suit 28mm post 1700 games. Not much use when I have a lot of 10 and 15mm miniatures too. They will still be finished in the same flock as the large graveyard but will be minus the Gravestones.

I did however do some printing 😉

I did the missing wheel for the water cart.

I thought I might as well add a couple more as wheels are always handy

Oh and as I am writing this the printer is chuntering away making me some more barrels (the ones above), a couple of coffins, one open, one closed as well as a treasure chest too. I am still toying with putting the open coffin propped up against the end of the open grave…

Tomorrow I will get the terrain flocked and the other bit painted. Thankfully I am off tomorrow so hopefully I can get something done on them.

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Graveyard Scatter Hardly Any Progress

The title says it all really… hardly anything done, in part due to the fact that a PVA and paint mix takes a fair old while to dry.

I will choose some gravestones or something for them. Part of me thinks one of the carts should be put on one of them…probably the top one…

After some feedback I decided on one more piece, this time with an open grave.

The theory is I am going to use a printed coffin in the bottom or possibly an open coffin propped against one end.

Whilst mixing the PVA with the paint I came across this….

It was like a giant snot in the bottle, needless to say the bottle went into the bin. The snot would not go back into the bottle so much stickiness occurred!

My laptop is back home now and I have sorted out my gcodes for various things to print. Unfortunately the shed is too cold to print in…Bloody typical!

I am going to have to build some form of enclosure for it so that it stays snuggly warm 🙄. Technically I could move it into the house but I don’t have anywhere to put it. The shed is 2/3 the size of the house which is why it is out there. We call it the shed but it is the old cattle byre.

The temperature is dropping to silly levels again tonight, so probably no printing this evening. Which is really annoying as I have a backlog of stuff I want doing.

To be honest I am enjoying making terrain again, it is so much easier than painting miniatures. If you drop a clanger you can always shove a bush onto it 🤣.

On a whole different subject my Ebay purchase arrived yesterday…

I got twenty miniatures for £15. I haven’t checked to see whether they are painted in acrylic’s or not. If they are, I reckon I can tart them up a bit. If enamel then I am not sure. I reckon they won’t come off their bases which is a bit of a pain as most of my other Flintloque miniatures are on circular bases.

I will photograph them all tomorrow when I get them out of the mega protective wrapping.

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Graveyard Scatter… Further Work

I got some filler onto the bases and smoothed down with a bit of water.

I am making, what is best described as, slow progress. There is still plenty left in the tube in case I need to do another layer in places.

The filler in this case is Tesco super cheap stuff £2 a tube..

This contains 330g. Plenty left for other projects. This is the cheapest I can find up here. I can probably get a better deal online, providing the postage is free.

I am toying with the idea of doing an open grave, as I still have another pile of squirty foam ready to go. One of these was going to be a grave, but some knacker glued it to the base before cutting out the shape of the hole.

Another project that could do with sorting out is the 6mm road wars terrain. Once these are done I might make a jump to do the 6mm stuff, not to mention a pile of MDF buildings in 15mm.

Some good news is… the laptop is fixed, however my good lady forgot to bring it home with her. Much to our dismay, we will give her one more day or it will be dry bread for tea 🤣🤣

The following mausoleum is one of the things I have purchased from Fat Dragon Games and was going to be part of my January terrain build challenge, I might still squeeze it in as I have 9 days left.

I am really looking forward to getting this printed.

Click on the link to see it Mausoleum. Not a bad model for £2.49 in the sale. Full price would have been just over £3.00 so I am not complaining in any way, shape or form.

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Graveyard Scatter… Making a Start

Well after a nice run up to Yell yesterday to be a quasi supply teacher again I decided to make a start on some scatter bits for the graveyard.

I used the offcuts from the large hill to make these ones. I kept them for this purpose.

These were made in exactly the same way as the big hill. Stuck down onto EPVC and then, in this case, held on with painters tape. Once the glue is dry I will get some filler on.

It was a nice run up to Yell yesterday…

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Graveyard…Just About Finished

I may decide to add some variation to the main grass, I will have to see.

But to be honest, I am happy that I have gone from this…

To this…

This build is a bit like the dark side of the moon in places, no-one has seen the other side, so here you go, the dark side of the hill…

To be frank, it isn’t that exciting… but it is a nicely defendable spot, unless the enemy can fly.

So what do I think about it? Well it is pretty much looking like I had pictured it in my head, except in my head the top was bigger with a few more graves on it. I had to compromise as I was tied by the EPVC for the base.

The rabbit hole and skull was a happy accident. There were a few large holes in the foam. Some of them I filled, but this I left because of it’s location. Rabbits are a bugger for digging up Archaeology so the idea was born. I painted the inside black and then threw some PVA down and covered it in basing grit. I fully intended to paint it, but once it was dry I found I liked the colour so left it as is.

So where next? 🤔

I reckon a bit of tidying up on some of the Earth colour wouldn’t go amiss and as said earlier a bit of contrast in the main areas of grass would break things up a bit too. I also need to get this sprayed with watered down PVA.

I feel the urge to do some more scatter pieces involving gravestones. As mentioned in an earlier post I intend to put them on irregular shaped bases as opposed to CD types. I would like to do some Yew trees as they are very graveyardy trees… probably not for the January challenge, but sometime in the future.

I ordered a mausoleum for the 3D printer but until I get the laptop fixed (it is off being sorted) I can’t convert it into the necessary gcode required. Hopefully it will get sorted ASAP as I want to play with my printer again 😞

I quite fancy painting up my 15mm Lizardmen I won at the HOTT competition. But terrain first methinks then onto painting minis next.