Well I have been promising my eldest a game of Scrabble for the last couple of days…
Not exactly the newest edition, I did manage to beat her even though I had a slow start.
I was quite proud of my personal best score of 75 and just now I realised I only got 45 points…. I had better tell her tomorrow. We were feeling quite proud until we realised we just scraped into the Good score.
I also managed a little more on the weird hand monsters…
This Month’s Azazel’s Challenge is a squad challenge.
Here is my work in Progress for at least one ‘squad’.
These are being painted up for my mate to be part of an up and coming RPG we will be playing.
Still a fair bit to go but getting there. Another view of the same lot…
The other potential ‘squad’ is this lot.
Some form of cultists from Ill Gotten Games. There is one of the cultists missing, I must have left him in the shed (we painted in the house tonight). These are from the Curse of Moht printed game. Do fantasy figures form squads? I don’t know to be honest, but either way I want them finished by the end of the month. In the background is one of the heroes he is seen in his urban and rural garb.
It was nice to sit down with my daughter again and do some painting together.
She has decided her rabbits are finished and she is now starting on a printed dwarf.
She would have got them based, but bedtime arrived, much to her annoyance!
We shall carry on tomorrow…
I have decided to call these two finished…
I feel they definitely look different from the originals.
I also took a photo of the rear…
I added a crossbow to one and a coil of rope to the other.
Being evil parents that we are, we forced the kids of technology to do something creative, Lucy wanted to paint a figure, and so did James so off we went.
Lucy started her rabbits last year and decided to crack on and try and get them finished. James chose a chaos marine to practice on.
Lucy has started using washes and dry brushing. She was also really good at tidying up bits she had overpainted. Still a bit to go, but they were both very pleased with their results. Lucy has now asked for me to print her a dwarf too as that is what she wants to paint next. So tomorrow we return to the shed and get some painting done.
The other thing was my good mate from the North if England phoned up to say he had been watching Bolt Action YouTube vids and wished I was still down there so we could get a game in. It must be 25 years since we had last played a war game together.
Tonight was a totally can’t be arsed kind of an evening. I went off to paint a couple of my dwarves in the big shed. Outside temperature has dropped below minus so it was a little chilly. I put on my down riding jacket and the heater and waited until things warmed up. Whilst waiting for the paint to unfreeze (a slight exaggeration there). I played on the console and as you might have guessed, I achieved nothing.
Off into the bath and to while away the time, I watched the following
A channel called building Middle Earth. As I am into Tolkien I have been watching this channel for a little while, I do like his builds.
In this one he was building a Minis Tirith dwelling out of Hirst Blocks.
This was something I did about 10 years ago (by did read stopped doing). By the end I had around 20 Plus moulds, all imported from the states, I used to get a good deal… buy 4 get 1 free, plus he helped out on the taxes too. When I became rather skint I sold pretty much all of them on EBay and weirdly made more money than I paid for them. My eldest when she was a tot used to help me. She loved measuring out the spoonfuls of plaster. We got pretty slick at it by the end… if I left things for a while I would forget the ratio, so to remind me I stuck a label on the bottom of the cupboard shelf…
Yep it’s still there, in case I ever feel the urge to purchase Keramin again. The ratio above is not the recommended one from the package, but rather a trial and error system of getting the best results.
Anyway the moulds are long gone but the bricks remain. I must have thousands of the things, even after I gave a kilo or two away to the gaming club.
This is only one such box/bag/sweetie tin that contains various bits and bobs.
Although I don’t make things out of them any more, why?quite simply the weight – oh and time to cast enough blocks and then actually build something. Don’t get my wrong these are awesome, but I think I just ran out of steam. It didn’t help that the cost of getting the hard plaster up here was getting silly. A bag of Keramin cost £6 …postage to the uk was somewhere near £3 with an extra £6 to get to me.
They are handy for bits and pieces of ruins though…
I really should just bin them as in those 10 years I haven’t really used anything apart from some Egyptian statues. And truth be told I now have the printer. Okay it isn’t the same as building it yourself one brick at a time but the printed stuff does tend to bounce a bit easier and furthermore it is a twentieth of the weight.
When I say the moulds have all gone, that is not exactly right. I have one left… #75 the ruined Fieldstone mould. The other piece of Trivia is some of my moulded pieces supported my Wife in one of her International conferences. They made a pathway for people to follow (on a table – I didn’t make that many 😉). It went down quite well from what I remember.
Even though the Temperature here is chilly – spring is definitely on the way as the Oyster catchers are back and making a massive racket.
I managed the panzer 2 earlier. This is different from all of the others in that the tracks are separate to the hull and turret.
I have a couple of problems with this print. Firstly, the tracks don’t match. I seem to have printed a D and an F track! It gets worse…. one is the right track and the other is the left… so all in all a total bugger up! The problem now, is that I can’t change anything without the slicer on the laptop… So my MKII’s will have to wait until repairs are made.
I also printed off a 50% scaled house with stairs. I can now compare like for like.
First up the 60% one…
And now the 50% version…
I reckon I will stick with the 50% versions as to me they look better.
My plan is to print a few and make some hamlets, which can be joined to make a larger village.
And finally another Somua… I was so sad about the MKII
This shows it still with the support in situ…
I will get on with doing a test paint of one of the houses.
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!
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.
These are sooooo forgotten they don’t even make them any more!
I don’t actually know how long I have had them…. at least 40 years. I got them as a child. Still in their box and on their sprue.
Just look at the awesome detailing on these miniatures. Not exactly the most dynamic set Airfix ever made. I still have the Tarzan set and covered wagons somewhere.
I still think my most favourite set was this one…
I saved up my pocket money and went to the Toy Shop and bought it when I was around 8 years old.
The thing I remember from the boxes was the amazing artwork
I had the B17 amongst others…
I managed to print off the British MKVI
I still have a Panzer MKII to test print as well. I have also managed to find an M3 Grant that I can print. This one is 1/56 scale so will need reducing.
On the 3D printer front: I did purchase the village set from Terrain4Print. $10 for a pile of files is pretty good price. I will test print some of them as soon as I can.
I decided to have a go printing some buildings.Both of these came from Thingiverse.
The one on the left is from Jonnybrokenbones, I have this one and a two story one from him too.
The one on the right is a free sample from a set by Terrain4Print:
https://www.wargamevault.com/product/216710/Modular-arabic-village?manufacturers_id=11761
Now what can we say about them. Both of the took about two and a half hours.
The one from Jonny is a nice simple design with a roof that drops in. It doesn’t have a door (it is from the other house) I just stood one up against the hole to see what it looked like. It has a full base too. This one is designed for 15mm miniatures.
The other one by Terrain 4 Print was a reduced sized from 28mm. I dropped it down to 60% size. This one is a hollow shell with a complete separate roof just below the exposed beams.
It comes with separate doors and window shutters. In the free one it comes with a domed roof too. This one is really well detailed. It can’t be seen that well in the basic black PLA, but the render has ‘fallen off’ in a few places. The roof is also textured.
I checked up on the bought version…Basically 6 different buildings and a couple of separate walls (however if they are mirrored then it takes it up to 12).
Now if I were a total skinflint I could make 4 ‘free’ buildings from this set, plus another few free ones from Thingiverse. But you know what, of the two I really do like the one from Terrain4Print. A lot of work has gone into the design of these buildings and it only seems fair that I help out the designer. I will purchase the set of six and tip the other designer from Thingiverse.
I want these for a desert themed board for ‘What a Tanker’ If you look at the pic below you can see how big the buildings are compared to both a tank and a 15mm figure.
I reckon I will reduce the size down a bit more to 50% as the buildings look just a bit too big still.
Bogenwald 