Another Night Off

“Lazy Sod!” I hear you cry, however it was my good lady’s birthday today, so we got a take away and scoffed a very awesome Indian meal. Followed by laying about going “Urrrggghhh I ate too much!” However before collecting said meal I messed around in 3D builder chopping up a Kabuto helmet. I have only had it for about 5 months, better late than never I suppose.

As it is full sized it really needed a lot of chopping up, but I. Got there in the end. The neck guard is in strips, each of which is going to take 15 hours plus. The left and right helmet base a day and four hours each and then the helmet bowl in two bits will take another 16 hours plus each. I forgot to note the weight of it all.

It is pretty customisable, with various crests and accoutrements a available.

The helmet bowl itself has a few variants…

I believe that I am going to swear a lot making this, but I reckon the finished product will look pretty good…

Test Compound…

Yesterday I was messing around with 3D builder, building a wooden stockade to go with the 6mm Samurai (to be honest they will be useful for all of the armies).

The design using 3DAlienWorlds STL’s

This is the printed piece…

Now it isn’t perfect by any means and the top of gate posts failed both times, but I am really happy at how well the printer coped with it, as can be seen it will hold up to four of the printed buildings nicely. It could also make a useful compound for a shrine or small fortification.

While I was messing about putting the buildings on, I noticed my neglected 15mm Samurai on the shelf. I stuck a Couple of peasants and water buffalo in and voila a pen for 15mm farmers to keep their animals in. Yeah I know they wouldn’t be of that construction , but pretty multi purpose nonetheless.

The fences would be more like the ones in the foreground above…

A quick change of miniatures and voila… livestock pens….

What I am going to try now is use the STL’s to make connections so that there can be a T and a + to allow different configurations.

Off gaming tonight, the Starship Troopers game is on hold for a bit as my mate (who had the stroke) needs to have a steady run up to get it ready to go. So as I don’t have anything planned then we are going back to Middle Earth in a different way…

What Has He Been Buying Now!

This evening I spent a lot of time faffing around to make a 6mm compound in 3D Builder. Some of the angles were off so it took a good old while to get it sort of straight 🥴.

I am giving it a test print now… we shall see how it gets on tomorrow morning.

This time I have added it to a raft to help it stick, not to mention bumping the temperature on the nozzle up a bit to compensate for the drop in temperature.

So no doubt you will be agog to hear about what I have spent my hard earned pennies on today.

Well there is no surprise in the fact that I have gone for some more 3D Alien Worlds bits and bobs. This time I went for the castle walls and corner turrets as well as a bamboo cup (don’t ask why… I just like it) and finally some mon to go on various bits and pieces. These last two will be done full size.

https://www.3dalienworlds.com/shop-description.php?ID=1516184696

https://www.3dalienworlds.com/shop-description.php?ID=1543409008

https://www.3dalienworlds.com/shop-description.php?ID=1518461174 And then the clan mon Set…https://www.3dalienworlds.com/shop-description.php?ID=1521849726

I got a couple of parcels today too…happy bunny… the first is some water washable resin. I have chosen the grey as that green is a bit of a sod to see the detail on. This stuff is usually more expensive than the normal kind. But in the case of this one it was the same price as the Anycubic plant based resin…

My other parcel was a RPG map book. This was half price, but it may come in handy sometime (aka I will never ever use it and it will go the journey eventually, either that or I will lose it).

While I remember I got some flock onto the spectre bases and I think it has brought them out a bit more…

Walls, Huts and Printing

I pushed on a bit tonight and git some flock onto the base of the walls. I think it really brings out the colour of the wood… ye gods I sound like ‘Changing Rooms’ or some other interior design programme.

Of course I totally cocked up with the vegetation in the gateway. It should have three muddy bits and not two… probably shouldn’t have anything up the middle at all….I just noticed now! Poop! and generic expletives of that sort… oh well never mind I can scrape off the flock and repaint.

Thankfully I had success with the buildings off the printer.

They certainly have some supports going on there 🥴. I honestly don’t cabaret, they work and that is what matters. The pair of them (including supports) weighs just under nine grams. They look okay when you pull the supports off…

So Well Done to 3DAlienWorlds for making such lovely models.

If you remember, I had the spaghetti monster of doom the other day…

I started off printing them again and noticed a problem coming up so I stopped the print. Tonight I managed to rescue some of the roofs from the mess above and match them up with the building walls. I reckon that I can rebuild four of them. A bit of sanding and some superglue and voila, a set of useful buildings.

On a totally different note, I was perusing my piles of unpainted plastic and lead and thought I really must come up with a way of getting stuff done, as to be honest I seem to have the attention span of a stunned kitten. My plan therefore is to try and keep to one thing at a time. As I am not doing a One Ring for a while my Patreon models will keep as will my Neolithic hunter models (that haven’t been printed yet). So here goes. I will endeavour to get all of my samurai 6mm terrain painted and sorted ready for some games. I have a 6mm army so then I can use them in that. After that get The Khmer army painted and based so that the Samurai have someone historical to fight. After this get the 15mm Samurai miniatures and terrain finished, then move back to get the 6mm Baccus army painted. This way I am not getting bogged down on one project, but I need stuff done. A few people have been doing a tray at a time. I really think that I am going to need to do that to keep me focused. Wish me luck!

Torri and Bridge an Update

So after another bit of time, I rescued the two bits off the print bed…

Small wonder I couldn’t work out what was what. The tree supports went everywhere. Unfortunately removing said supports caused various bits to fall off the models. In the end the bridge ended up without it’s handrails as did the Torri gate…

I don’t think that they are too bad a size. I will try again tomorrow after I have taken the village off the build plate. (Yes I am printing more 6mm houses 😂).

Painting the Village

I leapt out of bed this morning and galloped into the shed to find some nicely (well okay they could be better) farm buildings suitable for my 6mm Japanese Games. The block in the middle had certainly worked and they now pretty much had doors.

I decided to get the fences painted this evening and managed to get a fair old way through on them. There may actually be more paint on me than on them though.

You will have to believe me but the fences are a grey/brown colour that looks pretty nice for aged wood. The solid farm house are still pretty much in their undercoat, but the hollow ones have had a bit of a paint, not that you can really tell.

As expected, as soon as I walked into the nursery today, my little chef legged it to the cooker to make my cake, as he had forgotten to give me it yesterday…

Finally, this made me laugh far too much…

Hopefully I will get some more done on the fences tomorrow. I also pick up the new(ish) car tomorrow. Both of my cheap run abouts have died, which is a right pain as they are not worth it to get repaired. But tomorrow I pick up a RAV4… I can honestly say that this is the first car I have ever driven and actually thought Wow, I like driving this.

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.

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.

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.

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!