As I said in yesterday’s post, we have been visited by large pods of orca. This is someone my wife knows who had a close encounter…
Photo by Karen Hall
The boat is in the foreground of the picture.
So far this year we have had dolphins – pod of about 40 of them. Orca, humpback, Minke and also a Sperm whale.
We set the camera trap up near the stream and got some great rare birds. We caught a male teal as well as some grey wagtails. Not to forget the regular snipe, oyster catchers and mallards, including a pile of ducklings. We haven’t managed to catch the otter, but one of the Oyster catchers spend ages preening itself in front of the camera so we got loads of footage of him having a right good clean.
Still the tufts to add, but definitely getting there.
I did have a bit of an accidental purchase of another army this evening. I was on Irregular’s website and was after some bits and bobs and somehow managed to hit purchase on a Khmer army.
The other news is that the printer has arrived. I am leaving it in it’s box until a) my Birthday on Tuesday and b) I actually have somewhere to put it where the fumes aren’t going to kill me!
The other thing that came today are bucket loads more resin stuff for the kids and I to mess with. This time UV resin and well as a light and colourants and hundreds of moulds.
Oh and one last thing… we have had special visitors around Shetland over the last couple of weeks…
Not my Photo, but Richard Ashbee’s
Facebook has a Shetland Orca sighting if anyone is interested 😉
Tonight whilst watching Frozen II I managed to get these based up.
I was dead chuffed that they were finished… it was as I had glued the last one down that I realised that I had forgotten the Sashimono… I swore…lots. Tomorrow I hope to get the bases flocked and also the sashimono finished.
I might order some monks for Irregular, they are 5 to a strip so are on a smaller frontage but I don’t think it would matter that much. I also might order one of the banner troops from the Sons of Set. This would make a good background filler for the seated Daimyo. The big Nobori banners they are holding would work well I would imagine.
Tonight I cracked on whilst watching Monsters Versus Aliens. I am now within spitting distance of finishing.
It is so funny. Yesterday I hated these and today with a bit of flesh colour, some silver and a lot of black then I actually quite like them again. My next thing is the sashimono design. To save time and effort it will either be a straight line or a circle in the middle. I am probably going to go with white. Originally I was going to go with Gold, but I have now decided against it. The four mounted banners will have four similar designs, a bit like I did with the Sons of Set.
My resin has come, my UV light has come, my resin funnel has come, the one thing missing is the actual printer.
I was asked to show some WIP of the resin pouring that the kids and I did yesterday. So here we go..
On the left my son’s paper weight, then my eldest’s shot glass out of the mould and on the right one still in the mould.
Tomorrow is the last day of school in Shetland. So I will be running around like a bit of a loon to get stuff ready so that I won’t have to go in next week.
I am hoping that I can get these Samurai finished and based tomorrow evening.
More work on the 6mm Samurai and I absolutely hate them. They just seem to be taking forever!
Weapons are all painted in now as well as the sashimono poles. Hands are repainted white ready for the flesh colour. I reckon a few more days and they will be done. Still no sign of the printer ☹️. The kids and I played with the resin and a couple of the moulds today. They ran around and collected flowers from outside and put them into the moulds. They should be ready by tomorrow evening.
So I have shown a few photos and videos showing the light levels we get in the summer. Someone just shared this with me. It is a time lapse of over 2000 photos taken at Muckle Flugga at the far north of Unst.
Muckle Flugga was the most Northery manned lighthouse in the Uk. The outer stack is the most northerly part of the Uk, and is beyond the lighthouse.
Tonight was tedious in the extreme. Painting teeny tiny faces and weapons white on 6mm miniatures.
Tomorrow I will need to get them all painted too. I am thinking the Ashigaru helmets will be a different colour just to break up the blue a bit. Yumi will be red, teppo brown and the naginata light brown and silver. The sashimono will be black with white. The helmets will also not blend in with the black too.
I now have three more days at work, not that I am counting 😂
I must admit that I am a little bit excited about the resin printer. I am also going to be working with the children with resin too. They want to make things out of it, so I might as well start them young 😉 (with all safety measures in place of course).
So those of you who have read my blog regularly will know I love my Ender 3 Printer. Yes it has Wobblies every so often and I have to take it apart and put it back together again once in a while. But I have now had it 18 months and it is still pretty much as it came (apart from a new bed plate and also an aluminium extruded.
Yesterday I took a next step on my journey and pressed ‘purchase’ on a resin printer. Will I be getting rid of the Ender? Hell No. it would be like getting rid of your old dog because you got a new puppy!
So I am now preparing for another learning curve. The interesting thing about the resin printer is that height determines the time of the build. So printing one thing takes the same amount of time as ten, if they are all on the plate together. The down side with resin is the fumes, so I will have
to think of where to put the printer. Probably my toy shed. It was originally set up for me to do things in, so it will probably work in there… just a long way to walk…
So after much backwards and forwards between brands I eventually went for the Proton Zero, cheapest of the ones I was looking at.
Tonight I even painted some things…
I decided that all of my Ashigaru would be employed by the same daimyo therefore they would be all wearing the same coloured armour. The samurai would all be wearing their own clan armour so they can be more colourful. The one thing I like about the Banzai rules is that the edges to the bases are different colours to help with weapon and troop type identification.
Tonight I started on the samurai infantry. Again I went for the different coloured armour. Part of me thinks they are a bit bright, but with all of the white bits showing too then they aren’t exactly looking the best. The other thing I did was paint the undercoat in for all of the flesh on the cavalry
The other thing I think is the problem is that there is a lot of solid colour without a break. Once I add weapons and flesh etc it should look better… I hope 🤞
It was a nice day today so we went just over the hill to Catfirth. The kids went for a paddle and err, as you can see it progressed a bit…
Please note, the pile of clothes, by time we remembered, they were somewhat damp and my daughter’s leggings floated away! Not a bad place to live really!
As my Samurai army were already undercoated white I decided I would make a start on them.
I really hummed and hawed about colours, and in the end I decided that the samurai were going to be different colours. In my 15mm army I did three coloured clans. This time there would be lots of variation across the miniatures. For some reason I decided to start on the cavalry. Most of the horses are bay or chestnut, with a smattering of black and other colours too.
This is them looking a bit untidy as I just went for it, I will paint in faces, hands and weapons in later on. I have decided they will all have a black sashimono to tie them all in together. I haven’t decided on the mon yet,but it will more than likely be a dot!
The Ashigaru are my next problem… do I go all coloured natural browns and greens etc. Or do I go for a single clan colour… I will have to think on that one.
While I remember one of the ‘elf’ bases sneaked in for a white undercoat and they are very obviously skeletons with the undercoat on.
I gave them a quick blast with skeleton bone as well as grey for the cloak. I actually think they will look fine.
Bogenwald 