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Desert Houses 3

Today I printed off my conversion of a house with stairs with an added tower.

It worked ok, but I reckon the tower needs to be a bit bigger. I dropped it down by 50% too. I do reckon it needs to be bigger.

When you compare it with the two story house with domed roof you will see what I mean…

The door is tiny for a start. This can be easily rectified with a bit of card and a printed door but the height seems a bit naff too.

The other issue I have is the lack of texture on it. Not a problem on its own but it looks a bit weird stuck onto a textured building.

As I was printing off some more walls tonight it suddenly dawned on me that I could actually stick them in situ on the buildings in the software and print them as one.

I shall give it a go tomorrow.

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Torpedo Los

My German is crap…. but tonight we managed a bit of Submarine warfare…

I played the Navigator and the Captain and my daughter, the First Officer and Chief Engineer.

We had a bash at the training mission and managed to sink a merchantman…

We fired all 4 tubes in our excitement! All four exploded so down she went.

The app shows the weather and time of day…

The observers were pleased when the watch changed as they would have been very wet.

We headed to another quadrant to find another lone merchant and somehow lost him! Then off we went to hunt a small convoy.

We managed to get to a nice firing solution even with a major electrical fault and the crew somewhat fatigued.

We were set up like this, we paused the game to take this photo the the app took us right back to the start.

We probably did loads wrong but we did have a good time.

We are off into Middle Earth tomorrow night, but will probably have another bash at this on Friday.

On a totally different note, I printed off a domed two story house today. It took 5 hours 6 minutes to finish. I also managed to add the tower to a building and will print it off tomorrow.

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Desert Houses 2

Another couple of houses printed today…

One with a domed roof and the other with stairs mirrored on the left.

On the post it notes are the time it took to print them. Today’s printing time a little under 6 hours. I forgot to check how long the walls took but let’s say 2 hours, so for 10 hours print time I have enough for a village. I have some already printed so half way there to my three villages.

Someone said to me the other day that the printers take too long. I can’t argue with the fact that a small domed house took two and a half hours to complete. But if I had purchased them online, it would be at least a week to get here. So my 2.33 doesn’t actually seem that long as I set it going, made sure the first layer was sticking well and voila off I went for some lunch and a bit if diggering.

Tonight the domed house with stairs was printing as I made tea, ate tea and watched some Allo Allo with the kids.

Tomorrow I am going to do a test print to see how they look painted up.

Regarding Allo Allo, I had forgotten how funny the first couple of series were. I have them on DVD. My eldest got some of the jokes but the other two saw funny things but didn’t necessarily understand the humour. Luckily I was able to side swipe the question about the egg whisk and celery!

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Desert Houses

Technically this type of house is found throughout the Middle East, but as they are going to be for a desert war campaign I shall use the term.

With the laptop replaced I managed to slice a pile more buildings. I printed off the domed one as well as a pile of walls. These are from Terrain4Print. I liked the free one so purchased the rest.

It was the second attempt at the particular dwelling however, it would seem that about 5 minutes after I left it to it, the Bowden tube coupler (the bit that feeds the filament from the extruder to the hot end) had decided to unscrew itself so the filament ended up as a nice coil all over the back of the printer. I had to dump a metre at least as it had fractured and I didn’t want to take the risk of it shearing off in the tube. The rest went back on the spool and back through the machine.

The walls come in two lengths with one of the longer ones having an arched gateway in it. The little diddly wall in the middle is just one of the shorter ones reduced in size the slicer program.

The weird gate is actually the infill to help the printer, I could probably have got away with it (the house doorway and windows weren’t supported) but I decided to be careful as there were a number on the raft. This is it in situ and removed. It has left a bit of a mess when I ripped it out, but nothing 10 seconds with a knife won’t shift.

I will build some compounds like the following as well as individual buildings. These are just placed in situ, but it kind of gives the idea.

I will print off some more houses tomorrow and see where I get up to. I have got a tower from another designer. It is a bugger as I really don’t think it will work without support. My plan is to split it at the upper floor level and print it in two pieces then glue them back together again. Another idea is to combine it with larger building above. I will have a play around tomorrow to see what I can come up with.

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No Painting Tonight

I wanted to get something done, but too tired. The reason is that I have sat in a digger for the last two days.

We had to dig a 220m trench to put a fibre cable in. The first bit see below was a nightmare as it was all rock from when the track was put in.

Most of the digging was yesterday, today was back filling. We then cut towards the house across the track…

I armoured the armoured cable a bit more by running it through a 25mm water pipe. This had to go under a wall and into the garden.

Things worked quite well apart from some nightmare rocks that were filling a gate opening, they were massive. The other slight problem I had was when I was backfilling the track. I might have inadvertently smacked the caravan with the digger…

It was already buggered and is held together by the straps. A storm tried blowing the roof off last year (luckily I had a digger then and managed to hold the roof on until we could get it strapped down).We were waiting until May to make sure the winds don’t blow up before I cut it up.

We got it finished by teatime tonight…

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Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

This post is to answer a comment that Ann made after me showing my Reaper Bones ghosty.

And to quote…

now this got me thinking. So I nipped out into the shed to find a couple of the bigger ones and set them out on the adventuring rock….

They do indeed have a bit of a sheen.. so for comparison I hoiked out a couple of GW plastic things I cobbled together.

I would say that the troll at least has a definite shine to it there does also seem to be on bits of the ogre. Because of the strong sunlight my test was not the best…

So I came inside to take another photo…

The two big ones do definitely have a sheen to them that isn’t present in the two hard plastic miniatures.

The interesting thing is that the ghost and the ogre had a lot of dry brushing added to them whereas the troll was base coated and painted up in washes.

But having a real close look at the ogre the sheen is there too.

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So in answer to Ann, nope you are not the only one it happens to… it happened to me too 👍

I am now of to play on a very expensive digger. I need to get a high speed broadband cable in by Monday. Wish me luck that I don’t find any power cables or phone cables. I know I won’t find a gas main as we don’t have mains gas on Shetland.

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Friday’s Forgotten Forces

This triple F is one with a bit of a difference. Normally I have a mooch about in the shed to see what has been languishing in boxes for the last few years. This is different in that these were in the house and errrr different in that I forgot I had bought them.

So sitting on the shelf by my bedroom door was this box…

Hmm says I, whatever is in this box,? So I opened it….

That’s a bit weird says I, let’s get everything out…..

And in the bubble wrap was the following…

These arrived somewhere around 20th January and I actually took 2 out to act as models to show the size of things I was printing.

The models are the Elite light infantry of the emperor Mordred. As can be seen, they are a basic paint job, and by that comment I mean no disrespect to the painter. I was there once too when I sold mine…. but for £11.40 I am not going to complain.

I have just had a really weird thought. Wouldn’t it be funny if these were mine that I sold in a bring and buy around 20 years ago 😱.

I will have a mess about to add some shading and highlighting to see what I can do to improve them. I will also fling some base ready flock onto the bases too. The white looks quite shiny so I am hoping they aren’t painted in enamels…

The question is though, what should I do with them?

I bought them on a whim as they had a low starting bid, I had checked with friends and associates to see whether they were bidding on them too. It wouldn’t be the first time we have bid against each other 🤣. I put on a low bid on as most Flintloque stuff goes mad or doesn’t sell at all. It turns out there were only two of us bidding on them and they gave up before me.

Foolishly I have just gone and had a look… there are a pile of boxed sets up that I used to own and really liked…oh woe is me… But I shall be strong and will resist.

They are on for £17 buy now… but with 9 days to go….luckily my new laptop is with me and I have some nice statues to print off. That may divert my attention long enough!

Here are the two models, before they were reunited with their platoon…

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Odds and Squads All Done

Well that is this lot all done,.

First up the Heresy Miniatures Inspectors.

These were painted up for my mate and to be honest I am rather pleased with them. They are for his secret project so I can’t say much more about it 😉.

Next up are the cultists…

I decided on a blue and red robe for this lot, my original idea was to have a dark red robe, but as I was severely lacking in dark red so I went blue instead. These still need varnishing but the ground cover has been sealed (something I often forget to do).

Finally for this month is my weird hand monster. There are only 4 needed for the game but at some point I might add some more, that is if I can remember what colour I used for the skin! 🙄

Again, like the cultists these need varnishing to protect them a bit.

I still have a few figures to paint to complete the full game. I need a couple of heroes finishing as well as the winged beastie then the game is ready to play.

One thing on a totally different track altogether was to start thinking about the desert village, I am getting a laptop back tomorrow the other was destroyed, well it was £120 to fix it or get an upgrade for £200. So more houses can be printed.

This is a sketch plan for one of the villages I am considering…

As you can tell, drawing plans is not my forte…

The houses in the foreground are two joined together by a courtyard. My plan is to have 6 to 9 houses in three villages. These will also have palm groves and the like to add further cover.

Regarding tanks I am going to go for some mkII’s as well as some Marder 2 and some Italian tanks too, then More British tanks including some M3’s.

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Wooooo Woooooo

A quick speedy paint of a ghost…

This is a Reaper Bones one, very soft flexible plastic but these things seem to take paint well.

Is it a male or female ghost, who can tell. It goes woooh wooh and scares people. I will need it for next week’s RPG session where the players will meet a shade from Angmar.

I will probably put it onto a larger base to help with stability, but the bases are in the bottom shed and I am in the kitchen.

Rather than the usual basing material of base ready I go for, this time I went for a less rocky flock. This is the flock myself and my daughter made. It is running out so small bases like this are handy.

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Random Ramblings…

Warning, long, long rambling post about… er… about elitism or something like that.

Whilst waiting for the Bases to dry on this lot

I had another notification from a well known Social Media Platform that rhymes with… well as I can’t think of anything … it was Facebook.

In one of the groups someone posted the following…

“Hi quick question, do any of you think that 3d printers will kill off terrain builders like us.”

Now it kind of made me think (it does happen occasionally) and I replied in a somewhat rambling post as to how it wouldn’t as it is a tool and it might be seen as a way to support the building of terrain. As you can imagine views were pretty much split yes and no with a nice smattering of who gives a shit.

But it did get me thinking about Elitism In hobbies. Will my sub £200 Ender 3 supplant the artistic talents of some amazing terrain builders out there, Hell no and I wouldn’t even pretend it might. But it does mean if I have half a dozen things I want, I can set it away and come back a few hours later and voila there it is on the bed.

Some people have said to me as a ‘joke’ that 3D printers are somehow cheating. Now claiming that you did all the work when all you press is start is a bit arsey. I am happy to say my models etc are there because I am standing on the shoulders of giants, but I am quite proud of my 30mm bases 😂😂😂. But seriously cheating!

Am I cheating, err no, unless you count MDF and card buildings cheating and if that is the case then shop bought flock or tufts or trees are too. I have in fact made all of these myself and although relatively easy it was a right pain time wise.

Part of me wonders what the original question was posted for, it seems weird, some did take it as a deliberate attempt to stir the shit a bit. Maybe it was, who knows

But it isn’t just in this hobby, my wife is a very talented knitter and it has hit their world too. On one of the forums someone was berating those people who used Aldi’s cheap wool to knit a jumper when they should obviously be using hand spun, hand dyed, drawn strand by strand from a 4 year old sheep in a full moon in late May or some other pretentious shite. Who gives a flying fling, it’s about what you can a – afford and b- what works for you. A Printer is the same. My desert houses. I paid the designer $10 for the pattern and I can print as many as I want. But I want about 6 to 8 of them. Now this has taken away a bit of business from other people, but it has technically saved me a hod of cash …but this is where it gets interesting…..

Building on the left printed on card by me and glued together. Building on the right made by me out of cork tiles. Because I made the one on the right, I have taken away further business from the designer on the left. But according to the poster on Facebook the one on the right is better as the card one is killing off terrain builders like him.

But it goes beyond that, IRO posted not that long ago about saving a blog, the blogger had written this…

“A while ago I came across a post on a fellow bloggers site informing the world of a cancer that was driving away real wargamers from the internet…”posers” who though claiming to be gamers were in fact nothing but shameless self-promoters, who like some sixteen year old girl posting endless “selfies” of themselves, merely used their blogs to showcase their latest figures and bask in the praise of other bloggers rather than posting “Batreps” of the games that they played.”

Well that is me buggered sideways, backwards and probably upside down. I therefore apologise whole heartedly for my shameless self promo… you know what bollocks to them , I shall keep on sticking my figures up here. If anyone would like to know a blow by blow account of how the elf wanted to save the donkey instead of the maiden from the wolves let me know.

But it is exactly the elitist bullshit that is creeping in. I call myself a gamer and apart from getting back into the RPG’s I have played in one HOTT tournament and one Games day since probably this time last year.

In conclusion, my favourite Facebook post was the following…

Yes – 3D printers are evil and only for untalented people who want to pretend they are crafters.

Is that the sort of thing you were hoping provoke? Virtually the same subject was brought up 2 days ago in Dragonlock Group.

It’s all just tools.

So there you go … It’s all just tools….

One last photo for JNV 😂

That is my painting snack sorted out for tonight 👍