This evening I didn’t really have much opportunity to get much done so I decided to crack open the brown paint and to get the 28mm Pike bases done… I squeezed a bit too much and ended up painting a lot of bases, some not shown…
I have also printed another hundred Pike strips… that should keep me out of mischief for a while.
I am now on the hunt for 6mm printable Italian buildings that would fit… I already have a small Spanish Town, but these are the ones that have multiple buildings on a circular base. If I cannot find anything else then they may have to do, but I managed to find pikes so I am hopeful.
So I have had another frustrating day on the printer front, I have relevelled the print head, warmed the resin, checked the supports, lowered the print head speed, increased the print head movement and still it is being N absolute swine. I tried printing the zweihanders in various orientations to check it wasn’t problems with the supports…
All five printed perfectly, so I tried a test print with some halbediers, light artillery and artillery crews and boom, only some printed. I now have two with the long match as I did the test twice. This miniature refused to print yesterday.
Needless to say, it is getting a smidge frustrating to say the least.
Now daggerand brush asked about the resin I use and I said I was pleased with how it worked in terms of flexibility and the lack of shattering. I said I would do a little flexibility video to demonstrate things a bit better.
The hole in my finger is courtesy of a small kitten who did NOT want to go to the vet! I learned a really important lesson whilst doing the first video… do not shove a 6mm Pike into one’s kitten tooth hole. It hurts, a lot, I swore lots too.
I am now printing off another test, this time without the raft just in case it is having an effect. My originals didn’t have one, so this is a bit of a vain hope that it is that. Next stop new resin, just in case the original has got something wrong with it – to be honest the bottle is nearly finished so if I need to swap it out then so be it.
I did manage to shrink and print my 28mm guns (eventually)… the second small swivel gun for the base will just not print at all….
Today we went of gallivanting and I will write about it tomorrow. I set the printer away before I left and came back to a mess, print after print today has failed… I am going to have to do some checking to see what is going on…
I also got a fair old bit done in my 28mm pikes…
And finally in our gallivanting we gotta a beach that was heaving…
There were about six people on it… temperature got up to 21 degrees today… I actually took my jumper off it was that warm.
Mini update. I managed to print off the hand guns and cannon and they came out fine.. one gunner lost his legs, but there are five remaining, not go mention he was the least useful.
I also manged a bit of painting …
I think most of the cloth is done apart from the hats. I will get them and the metalwork done tomorrow evening.
I have come across a bit if a conundrum regarding Pike blocks, now a strip of pikes costs 44 pence on its own on a 20 x 40mm base it looks naff. So I would need two on there… like this:
So here we have 88p worth… problem I am having is the gap surrounding the pikes on the base… so I could double the amount …
This looks a bit better (we’ll apart from the slight overhang on the right). Problem is double the figures is double the cost. So instead of 88p it would become £1.76 per base. This is one base out of either a unit of 8, 12 or 16 as you can see it would soon add up. A 16 strong Swiss Pike block would come in at just over £28, as it happens at two to a base would still come in at £14… quite pricey for 6mm. I thought I had better make it clear that I am not criticising the pricing policy of the miniature manufacturer here, far from it…
I think my problem is I would normally just buy an irregular army, so in this case an imperial army and a French army at about £18 each. I think the problem is the new rules, well those aren’t even the problem. It is me getting used to a new system where I need to work out points and follow a basing system, rather than my usual 20×40 and 20×30 ironically these rules use both of these sizes. It is more a unit of Pike is 8 bases strong. Heavy cavalry are 4 bases strong etc, which is rather alien to me now I come to think of it.
It will probably do me good to stretch my wings a bit and do something different.
Apologies for the rambling… probably just tired… tomorrow is another day…. having just noticed the time,I am now into the tomorrow I just mentioned .
This evening started off on a roll. I got the 28mm ruins from the Frostheim set sprayed their base colour. I decided to do these in browns instead of my usual grey. For this reason I went and bought a chocolate brown spray paint, which turned out to be more red than brown…
I put the can in the photo to show the difference in lid colour and final spray. The can was a nightmare, it kept clogging. At one point I had to take the top off and give it a wash. It spent more time upside down than it did the right way up.
After spraying the above I set about getting the Baccus samurai onto the sticks, ready for the white undercoat. I had just started when I got the massage to say that this little chap heeded picking up…
He is a feral kitten, that we have been waiting for for about 9 weeks. He was caught this evening, so off we went to pick him up.
We are going to be getting a second one tomorrow, if it will be caught.
When I got back I finished getting them in their sticks… I will spray them tomorrow morning ready for a bit of paint tomorrow evening.
Of course I now have a problem, everything else was in fours or a nice even number so I had either yellow sashimono or teal sashimono… I now have three units… what do I do? Nightmare scenario…. the stress, the stress… as you might be able to tell, I may be a little OCD… actually easiest thing to do would be to paint it a different colour totally.
I am going to paint these in different coloured armour, so they will likely take four times as long as the ashigaru.
The one thing that dawned on me today was that I am probably going to run out of bases. My packet of two hundred 40x20mm seemed more than enough for many armies, problem is…I have now painted many armies.
Well I got back from the caravan trip safe and sound. I was a bit knackered, so I did a bit of painting on the Ashigaru still in progress. I then spent about 45 minutes hunting for the missing samurai then it kind of dawned on me that I hadn’t really had a look at what was left to paint… my only excuse is that they are very small and have exactly the same pose!
Samurai, Ashigaru, Samurai
Well that is that conundrum solved , well as I said yesterday that I had been shown a company that does 3D printed miniatures for samurai in 6mm. So in true Stephen style I jumped in… I wanted some peasants and monks that would fit in with my Baccu models. So here we have them at 100% next to Baccus on the left and 2D6 on the right…
They are a little in the small side, so tomorrow I am going to go for 110% Up to 120% and see what I can do. These are probably the smallest things I have printed.
Well we made it to the camp site and settled in. Half the lights don’t work, the water pump is acting up and the electronic toilet flush… won’t. It’s not a biggy as there are good facilities here.
Okay our £700 caravan is letting the side down a bit as the rest are all at least five times it’s value.
I did manage to bring the 6mm samurai with me. I might not get any painted, but it would be good if I could get them onto their bases.
Yes tomorrow we pack up the caravan and head to where I work, well not exactly where I work, that would be weird. We’re going to the Skeld Campsite for a couple of nights. So there will be no painting for a couple of days until I get back Sunday night.
I have pretty much finished these, apart from the belt and rope on the milkmaid. I also got some more done on the Samurai (Ashigaru)… mainly sashimono and head gear…
I would have got the finished but at 22.00 the owner of the horses field dropped us a message to say he had put some weedkiller down to kill off the thistles… then realised that the ground couldn’t be grazed for a week. So I had to drop paint brushes and head off to the hill with the horses in tow. Not what I wanted to be doing, but it pretty much went really easily to be honest.
I also did a bit more on the Flintloque miniatures. A spot of colour here and there’s it isn’t really worth adding a photo each time.
I will still get to annoy you by adding to the blog, but therefore therefore be a miniature in sight… unless I manage to get something together, along with all the other stuff to do.
Tonight I bit the bullet and started the next unit of Ashigaru. Nothing special, just the same as normal, slap the paint on and hope for the best.
I also did some work on the 28mm Renaissance stuff, the cart now has a driver , although he is a little on the short side, but hey, short people exist.
I also did a tiny bit on the Flintloque miniatures, but nothing worth showing on here yet.
Tomorrow I hope to carry on with these and get some more finished.
Bogenwald 