Alive I tell you, Alive!!!

Okay maybe a bit melodramatic (or a lot), but this evening I have printed a dozen crossbowmen in two lots of six and three pole arms that wouldn’t print at all….

I deliberately spaced things out in case the extra suction in the FEP was causing problems. I have attempted the pole arms three times before this and they failed each time. This time I just put them on their own on the build plate and voila they came out fine. I have changed nothing else. All settings are the same. Right now I am trying a dwarf mounted on a ram… not like in the hobbit thankfully, but a fully armoured one. We shall see how it copes. Hopefully everything is spaced out enough for a successful print.

I got nothing painted as I have spent all evening looking for some missing 6mm Samurai cavalry. When I checked the Baccus shop it stated the army I bought should have had two units of 15 strips. I can only find one. On the up side I did find the Daimyo base with all of the necessary figures still blue tacked on.

Silly season is upon us once again… 23.56 and I can still see up the valley…this was the view at 23.30…

It is now going to get a bit darker every evening 🥴

Well Max and the Dwarves came out really nicely…

I achieved a mage too! I have also printed out half of a rear rank of pike, along with some artillery crew. These will be available to view tomorrow. The second half are in the process right now. Over four and a half hours to print, for no other reason that the pike was vertical.

I also managed to get some more done on the Samurai archers….

That is them nearly done…I am not sure what colour to do the fletching on the arrows, if I do them white it will look like I have missed a bit so I might have to just water down some Contrast to make it off white.

Tomorrow I will get them finished I hope, then onto some cavalry before swinging back round to more infantry. I am sure that I have some Teppo too.

This made me chortle a bit too much…

Today was rather tiring. A day’s training via video conferencing… child protection training is never fun, but as a child protection trainer then it is always weird that I have to be trained in it. Yesterday I managed 9800 steps… today 4000 most of that after I got home. I managed to get some stuff done after the parent council meeting.

First off I scampered to see how the mounted Maximilian had got on… he hadn’t. The magician, the sword arm and Max himself were missing. Once again it is a bit of a mystery as to why they failed, when everything else has been working fine. As they were the first of their type printed It might have been an issue with the supports, but normally things are tested solidly before going out, so it could well be that either it was too cold and the light weight supports failed, or it could be that the build plate has gone off level again.

The only thing to print were the new officer and the lady magician (I am actually struggling with words tonight and cannot think what either are). Here they are with the flag and drummer…

They fit in nicely size wise with the others. I am busy printing a few of the Dwarves that came as part of the kickstarter. We shall see if they print okay.

I also managed to do a bit more work on the samurai…

So the amount of white on these has reduced a bit, this time each colour got a specific helmet colour, I really couldn’t be bothered messing around with half a dozen shades.

I am what is best known as knackered. The last time I felt this tired was when my eldest was born and they didn’t sleep for 12 weeks as they had reflux… a week and a half to go until the holidays, in that time I have to interview people, have two days of training, short list with a colleague, sort out for the end of the year and generally stop the oldest kids going off the rails before leaving for secondary school, sort out end of year assessments and record keeping etc…wish me luck!

Anyway tonight I seriously could not be bothered to do much, I sliced a pile more miniatures and rescued the remaining five halberds off the printer…

So I now have a unit of twelve with attached flag waver and drummer.

I am printing off a mounted general and entourage. I shrunk my Lovecraftian zweihander down to the same size as these ones to add in as a fancy officer type. I think he will fit right in (78%) seems the right size this time.

So that is three full units of twelve done, a half size pike unit and some officer types… in terms of Lion Rampant, when the pike are done then I will have 20 points of a 24 point retinue.

I really doubt I will get anything done tomorrow night as I have a parent council meeting until 21.00. Luckily I will be able to do it from home as we are online. I just have to write the head teacher’s report before 19.00 tomorrow… it is always a sod trying to remember everything that I need to add.

Tonight I had more success on the printer front. The next lot worked fine apart from a couple of niggles… First is the sword on the flag waver hasn’t printed again, second is that some of the pike and halberd shafts are wonky in places, but I am getting there…

I am printing another set of halberdiers and flag/drummer combo that will give me a unit of twelve halberdiers with flag and musician as well as a musician and flag for the pikes. I will need to print a few with vertical pikes to go as the rear rank.

I also managed to get some paint onto the samurai archers…

So it was a bit of a productive evening, not the greatest, but at least something was achieved.

Today has definitely been a day for the Queen, I spent most of this evening extremely annoyed. Partly at myself, but also at other people…or one person in particular who for whatever reason is not a team player. Anyway enough of my whining, I went the shed to see how yesterday’s print went and flipping heck another print completed. I set it away again and after a few minutes of grumping (still) I realised that the build plate was still hanging up. So after a bit more muttering, I cleaned the vat and set it away with three more bills. This time with them at attention to go for a second row. Tomorrow I have to decide whether to have the second pike rank at attention or similar to the bills …in mid poke.

Anyway I managed to crack on with the samurai and got them nearly there…

I am going to base them on 20×40 with eight to a base (I think). I still have to decide on a mon for the sashimono. To be honest it will probably be a simple dot or two.

Or perhaps it should be an evening full of crap….

The toilet wouldn’t flush properly so I checked on the septic tank header… it wasn’t pleasant… this was about 40 minutes Hin!

So to cheer myself up (after rescuing a bird from up the chimney) I decided to print a few of the new miniatures….

I put them next to a Mordheim chappy for scale purposes.

Well as with most things, the best laid plans etc… I was going to do so much this evening and achieved none of it… I did however work for about five hours writing reports. I managed to get nowhere with the caravan wheel, the nut holding the brake drum on would not budge.

Anyway enough whining… we may all have seen this photo of the Normandy Landings…

Interestingly enough, the gentleman in the foreground is one Jimmy Leask a sapper in the Royal Engineer’s and was from Shetland. As I have said before I had the honour and privilege of interviewing a number of The gentlemen who were there 76 years ago today.

Yes, absolutely nothing paint wise was achieved this evening. I sat in the bath, ate tea, prior to this I washed my horse, sadly I don’t have a big pond to throw him in, so it was a bucket, a hosepipe and a pair of rubber gloves. His tail was a bit of a mess so we did that first… I will let your imagination run as to why it was a mess, I luckily didn’t take any photos… but the following image is a pretty good example of the colour of the water in the bucket after the first wash!

Things did get gradually cleaner, after about the fifth bucketful. Sadly my trainers filled up with the overspill…so it was a squelchy drive home… come to think of it he flicked his tail while I was talking… it really didn’t taste beefy at all!

So here he is looking clean…

Hopefully I will get the Arbites based tomorrow evening. I am now on the lookout for a space trucker STL for my mates character.

Tomorrow I think I will start on this lot…

But to be honest, before that I have to get the wheel and drum off the caravan to see what the problem is with that as well as write a pile of school reports. I did some quasi shortlisting for my teacher’s job, I am working with another head teacher on Monday to do it together, but as there are four applicants and they all seem to meet the requirements then I might just interview them all. Last time we tried to get someone we had absolutely no interest.

Until tomorrow… I was going to add something else here, but am buggered if I can remember what it was.

Gaming has restarted… huzzah! We decided to give the Aliens RPG a go.

So my eldest asked for it not to be too shooty, so waves of xenomorphs are a definite no, no. So after a bit of head scratching we started off On a space ship that had a ‘containment’ breach… after a bit of panicking, they managed to make it to the escape pods seconds before the ship exploded… they then hurtled towards a water planet, the retro rockets and parachutes failed to deploy so they came down hard, cracking a few seals… with the water flooding in they fought to open the door before they sank. Luckily with a bit of hurried searching they got some survival equipment and managed to deploy the life raft before the pod sank. I couldn’t think where I got the idea from and then it struck me….