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Honey I Shrunk the Village

Eventually, after a lot of procrastinating, I managed to build my rural houses in 3D builder and shrink them down to an appropriate size for 6mm.

They were super tricky to build on the computer, but I managed. A huge well done to 3DAlienWorlds as the files were so good that it allowed me to do it. I did have to set about the fences with a mini blow torch to get rid of a lot of the stringing, but Success!

Ready for an undercoat.

These were printed at 0.2 layer height so basically draft quality, I am doing another pair right now, but being me I forgot to change the layer height.

Now the extremely weird thing is that I added doors and window shutters… as you can see, they disappeared! The only thing I can think of is that I forgot to merge them into the walls, therefore when I moved the buildings about the build plate the doors remained off the plate. This would explain why they were showing the size as being 4500%. Somewhere there is a door lurking 😂.

I haven’t managed painting tonight as I spent ages faffing on with building the houses electronically. I reckoned that trying to stick all the bits together with superglue at this size was just asking for trouble.

My plan is to do a few more of these as well as some with wooden roofs. I will also try the rice store and the well.

I really am having to fight the urge to purchase the castle walls, towers and gate house from 3DAlienWorlds. They are pretty awesome and would be used for skirmish gaming in 15mm. I know I am going to get them, but as I have spent a fair bit on toys recently, then I had better be a good boy and hold off for a while.

As we finished the adventure in the One Ring yesterday, we are going to do some Starship Troopers next. I think I will be building some bugs pretty soon. On Saturday we are going to be making characters and then onto playing next week.

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Japanese Town

I got on with some more painting of the town tonight. Mainly adding the wood to the buildings and getting a wash on the tiled roof of the wall.

Some the woodwork could certainly do with a bit of a tidy up, but at least I cracked out the paintbrushes.

I have half a dozen houses still to do, but things are getting closer to finishing.

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Splashing Some Paint About (literally)

I decided that tonight I really needed to get some paint put onto something. I thought I would do the walls. I painted the stonework and then when dry I added some wash. When it is all dry I will get it dry brushed and add some other washes to the tiles…

I came extremely close to throwing a can of paint across the shed and printer. I pulled it off the shelf and vigorously shook it. unfortunately the lid hadn’t gone on properly and my fingers became a little grey (actually a lot grey), thankfully I actually had my thumb on the top as I started shaking. if I hadn’t have done that it would have been a rather grey event. when I checked I realised that I hadn’t actually put the lid on properly last time. This was probably due to a build up of paint on the lid. It took me ages to get it all off the lid and inside too.

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Painting Walls

Tonight I decided that my printed Japanese Walls had sat long enough, so I sat down to give them a lick of paint. As I had the paint out anyway I set about the houses too.

These were painted in Artist’s Acrylics, still a fair old bit to go, but. They are definitely beyond thee grey undercoat. I will get washes. On them as well as paint in all of the timbers on the buildings.

I am rather pleased with the way they they have turned out so far.

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What’s in the Box?

So a small, but heavy parcel arrived this morning…

I wonder what has come from Baccus?

So inside the box were a whole host of 6mm Samurai miniatures…

So what do we have?

Enough forces to keep me busy for a while, Cavalry, Yumi and Teppo armed Ashigaru, as well as pavaises to hide behind. Yari armed samurai and Ashigaru as well as mounted generals (not shown) and a seated general with his retainers (and the odd head or three) inside Maku screens. They do look really nice.

I think I am going to base them for the Banzai ruleset, which also means they will match in with the ones already done in 6mm. They state that the miniatures must be on a base that is twice the depth of the base so basically a 20 x 40 or 30 x 60 etc.

On a totally different note, we had our One Ring Campaign tonight and the participants liked their miniatures. Highlight of the evening was when the hobbit took down a bear almost single handed!

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Longest Print… Ever

Well I think it is… I decided to print a Twylite samurai castle that came with the samurai buildings already printed. So I ran it through Cura and sliced it. Total print time 26 hours 51 minutes

It is a lovely model, with one major flaw… I made it too big. I bumped the size up to 140%. I know castles are big, but this seems very big. It’s not really a problem as it can go with my 10mm Forces if needs be.

Another flaw is that the stairs don’t actually go anywhere. They meet a blank wall. I am sure that I can make something and stick it on. Next question…what colour to paint it 🤔.

If truth be told I am lucky to have it at all. I popped in at the 18 hour mark and found this dangling from the side…

It is actually the base of the layer above the first roof line. I haven’t got a clue what happened, but the layer that was being printed was a bit of a mess. So I snipped off as much of the spaghetti as I could with the only thing handy, a pair of kiddy scissors! Structural integrity will be compromised to some extent, but at least I got a completed print.

Now part of me quite fancies printing this again at 100%. Print time should be faster, possibly 40% quicker.

I deliberately haven’t painted this evening as I have spent a lot of today hammering and sawing and my arms are buggered, on the upside I managed over 10,000 steps 😂.

More of the same tomorrow. Hopefully the bloody midges won’t be out, they were a nightmare today.

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Small Japanese Town

Today I set the Ender away and printed myself half a dozen new houses to go in the town.

I must remember to add the roof to the gates!

The buildings are from Twylite games and the walls are from my favourite maker of Japanese things 3DAlienWorlds. I dropped the size to about 18% or so and I don’t think they look too bad.

I would have undercoated them but it has been up to 40mph winds today so no spraying for me. Weather is better tomorrow so hopefully they will get done soon.

We will see how the resin and filament compare when they are painted. The resin weighs at least twice the weight of the filament.

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Lizard Cavalry

These are pretty much finished now apart from the fact that I forgot to paint the back banner!

I also had a play about with some of them on a 30×40 base and a 20×40 base. I still can’t decide which to go for. There are twenty in total so I could get 5 bases With 4 to a base and 6 full bases with 3 To a base.

Pretty much everything I have done is on the 20×40 bases so I don’t know whether adding something bigger into the mix will look a bit weird or not.

These next miniatures are not lizards and definitely not 6mm.

I decided to get some paint on these. These were the underexposed lot so the features are pretty much non existent, but as I am a stingy sod I am painting them anyway. Hopefully I will get them finished sooner rather than later. I have been a really good boy and my resin printer is having a rest while I think about what I am actually going to do on it.

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Village Walls

So the walls finished overnight only one failure and to be honest I don’t actually know what it is 😂. I had to do some speedy repairs to save the bottom left gate. Luckily two layers of the blue tape pretty much matched the base that had pinged.

The other problem I had was stringing. Before I went to bed I bumped the temperature up about 10 degrees. I think it was too much. I used to do this over the colder months, so just automatically did it last night.

When I did the test print I had no stringing, so I reckon the change in temperature was the problem. Easy enough solved with a lighter…

I have been busy constructing the sitootery again today. It was meant to be heavy rain, but thankfully we had a couple of twenty minute drizzling and that was it. Strong winds are forecast tomorrow so I might not get any more done.

Next on the printer are the paddy fields…

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Teeny Tiny Walls

I took my print off today and have enough bits to make my small town. I will need to print some more houses as six do not a town make!

I bumped the gate up to about 200% and left the walls at 140 and they seem much better (I had originally shrunk them down to 15% in 3D builder but they looked too small so I increased the small size by the above amounts).I can make the compound for the temple separate from the town as I have extra walls knocking about.

I also shrunk the wooden fences down to fit the 6mm scale too these were a bit trickier to print, luckily I did a test run of all the different bits, before the mammoth 13 hour print (3D printing certainly isn’t a fast affair).

Unfortunately the gate posts couldn’t take the strain at the top and both came off. I improvised with a bit of plastic rod…

These wooden fences were the ones I built in 3D builder to allow me to print them pre constructed for my 15mm village… I never thought I would be printing them for 6mm too.

So where do I go from here. First up some rice paddies. I am actually just going to print the 4’s that I did for the 15mm village (without the rice) I will give it a go with static crass as the crops and avoid the resin pour stage. I really do need a better system of making the static grass, that does not involve forking out £55 for a WWS one. I will have a play around with my cheap (tea strainer) one and see what I can come up with.

I also intend to see if I can build some of the 3DAlienWorlds farmhouses in 3D Builder and then shrink them down too. The ones I have really only work as town houses and not ones you would find in a rural setting. To be honest I could just buy the ones on 2D6 world’s, they aren’t that expensive but to buy enough for a couple of hampers then I am looking at over £30. Interestingly enough they have just brought out the stone walls in resin. But 3DAlienWorlds ones are spot on for me and I can also print as many as I like for pennies, plus it gives me a bit of a challenge 😂.