Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Churchill

At last it is finished!

Some pillock evidently had it on super fine or something, but this took just under 5 hours to print. It is understandable as the MKIII took just under two hours at its resolution 0.15 I think, the Churchill was 0.1.

The one difference between this and all of the other tanks is that the turret on this one was printed horizontally. All the rest have been printed vertically with the rear on the base plate.

I reckon I will print another one (and only one) of these, but will do it at a lower resolution to speed things up a bit.

Tomorrow I carry on printing, but will also begin painting – I must remember to print the Char B turret first!

I wish I could remember what version of the Churchill this is VII or VIII is ringing a bell.

Anyway so much for an early night! With the power issued on the printer then I didn’t want to leave it running overnight.

More Tanks tomorrow… Char B turret followed by a MKII and then one or two MKIII’s depending on the time.

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Axis Tank Update

By Axis please read German, Although it is the desert war, I haven’t got round to printing any Italian tanks yet.

So here we have two MkIII with long barrelled 50’s

Two 38T’s, a MKII and a 222

Two early Stug with short guns and a later Stug with the long barrel.

Already printed are two MkIII, two 38T’s and a MkIV, not to mention a Tiger and a panther. I am hopeful going to manage to do at least another couple of MKIII’s and another MKII. I will try and get some Italian armour for completeness and possibly a couple if Early Marder for open topped tank destroyers.

As you can see, the allied armour has had another spray, this time in white. I decided to redo them as I found a bottle of Iraqi sand paint. This is (in my mind) closer to the allied tank colours from the desert. Once the spray has cured I will get the airbrush out and blast them with the appropriate base colours.

A Churchill is being printed at the moment. Sadly I couldn’t find an early version. Compared to the other things printed this is huge.

Once the Games day is out of the way I will have a blast at Azazel’s Orctober with these.

It is a bit of a mix of metal and plastic LOTR stuff I have lying around.

I also want to buy the 15mm Samurai from Tin Soldier, but all of a sudden I got an email about these:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/kitton

I am so going to have to get some!

Right off to check on the printer then time for more Cold and Flu plus!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Tanks… Off He Goes Again… Maybe

Well the nice people from Creality came back to me again, asking for more photos and advice on what to do next. I unscrewed the power unit from frame and then the plastic cover from the power unit.laid it down and switched on the socket to check the voltage and voila… power to the whole machine.

Hurrah!

Checked all connections and they seemed fine.

Put everything back together again and the power went off again…

Booh!

Fiddled with the wires…power came back on again….

Hurrah….

Started printing something and all of a sudden loss of power again…

Boooh! (I said something like that)

Fiddled with a connector and the power came back on again…

I restarted the print and watched the connector… as soon as it moved, power went off. I therefore got a glass jar and blue tacked the connector to it.

It worked well, right up to the point the tension of the wires popped the blue tack off.

More blue tack later I managed to print a 38T. You can see the extra blue tack in the background.

This one took 2 hours 3 minutes to print…

I am printing another one now to see how it goes. I have contacted Creality again to let them know where things lie now. It looks like either a loose connection or a fractured wire, so I am keeping a close eye on things.

The other thing I managed to do was to spray the Allied tanks… apologies for the purists amongst you, I grabbed my Army Painter Desert Yellow and blasted them with it.

Originally I had only done the French tanks as I reckoned they had ‘interesting’ camouflage patterns and I could get away with it, then I thought bollocks, I only have a couple of weeks to paint them all and I don’t have a British paint colour, so they got a blast too.

I must remember to print off a new turret for the Char B now that things are limping along.

I am going to get the short barrelled Stug III sliced tonight ready for printing tomorrow… not to mention any other Axis tanks I can think of.

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More Tanks… or Technically ‘More Tank’

The printer has been chugging away for three hours and four minutes this evening producing the first of the Stug III.

I am not sure what happened, but the barrel has had a bit of a wobble and has a melted lump near the middle. It seems solid enough though.

As can be seen from the photo above, I decided to give the statues a coat of dark grey. Once this layer is dry I will dry brush up through lighter shades of grey.

I didn’t get much more done as I have caught a lurgey from the kids in school. My voice has gone and I am alternating between coughing my guts up and sneezing. All in all feeling sorry for myself.

So to cheer me up please direct me to a picture of the back end of a Stug as I am not sure what is support that needs removing and what is AFV that needs to stay.

Tomorrow I will print off more AFV’s

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More Tanks…Update

Hurrah, the laptop is back and tonight has been spent slicing tanks.

Somewhere I have a set of pre sliced tanks but I cannot find them…

Sliced up and ready for printing are the following:

MkIII with a long 50mm

38T

MKII

Early Stug with and without schurtzen

I still need to slice a MkIV

I also sliced a Churchill… sadly it is a MKIII, I couldn’t find a MK1… well I could, but it was 1/72 instead of 1/100. I decided against the A10 etc as who in their right mind would want to play with one.

Just for fun, I also sliced a kubelwagen, an Austin 10 staff car and an Austin 7 Tilly. The latter is printing now.

So the allied force looks like this…

This will be split into two equal sets, one for me and one for the prize. I will print either two or four Churchill’s (I haven’t decided yet – they take over three hours each to print).

As for the Axis so far:

Yeah the Tiger would splat the allied tanks on its own, but it is for me. I might do a me against all comers with a Tiger, which might be fun…

The Panther is obviously in the wrong timeframe, but so far two MkIII’s a MkIV and two 38T’s (the MKII is a bit confused as I have a track from a C and a D on it… at least you can’t see both sides at the same time.

The buildings are mostly glued together too.

I have another half dozen that need roofs. I will have to get them printed off too. The scale is off with them, the seem more 1/72 than 1/100. In hindsight I should have reduced the size a bit more, but too late now.

The Tilly has just finished printing and here she is…

I will see what other non tracked vehicles are available, I really want a 222 as they are my all time favourite AFV.

Right I can go to bed now that the print has finished. It took a total of 1 hour 24 minutes to complete.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 13 Comments

More Tanks… Again….

So today involved some more tanks and giving them a spray of white undercoat so that I can use the airbrush to get some colour on. So I now have six Matilda, three Char B and four Somua (technically I have four and a bit Char B, but I need to print another turret before it is finished).

Things took slightly longer as the Somua in the middle had a bit of an accident. As I was stripping away the support I managed to pull both tracks off as well as the back off the turret. This is probably due to damp getting into the PLA causing it not to stick as well. I just need to find out what colours I have and what colours I need before I can get these painted.

I also ended up listening to this…

I remember doing a lot of Vietnam wargaming, primarily with Esci 20mm plastics and using Bodycount rules.

I then bought some 1/200 scale kit at a convention then kind of went off it again until, funnily enough, joining the Shetland club. I ran an RPG based on an Alpha team in the highlands of Vietnam. We had a hoot. Five players… a four man Alpha team and a Kit Carson scout. As all of my stuff had gone, I went for cardboard troops and flats for vehicles.

I still have the card figures…

Hopefully my good lady will bring the laptop back with her soon so that I can start on some more Germans. The other thing I will need to print are some more roofs for the buildings. Hopefully I have some suitable desert colours for the allies.

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Tanks…and yet More Tanks

So nothing painted today, but a few more tanks printed…

So here we have six Matilda, three Somua, three Char B, a Honey, a whippet and a very outnumbered MKII. I am part way through printing another Char. I have got some more early British cruiser tanks ready to go, but for that I need the laptop as they are stored on it’s hard drive.

These are destined for Games day next month. I still need to print some more honeys and some more whippets (possibly) then go daft printing more German tanks.

Each tank is taking about an hour and a half to an hour and forty five to print. Not the fastest thing to get on the bed, but to be honest some of the stuff I have printed took ten hours so by comparison these are speedy.

The buildings are already done and have been for months… April to be exact…

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/desert-house-5-update/

Evidently way back in March was the last time I printed any tanks.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/printing-tanks-ii/

The rules I will be using are ‘What a Tanker’

I decided on these thanks to Mark in the States who ran some games at various conventions and his local club I think too. He must be very persuasive on his blog as I have Sharp Practice and couldn’t get on with it at all.

I purchased them and liked their simplicity…As Mark pointed out… very easy rules for a participation game.

My plan is to basically print and paint two forces, plus a couple of small villages. One shall be for the Games day and the other is as a give away. Shetland is trying to get our own MRI scanner so my plan is that if people make a donation to the cause then they get a raffle ticket to win the second set. I will have to check all of the ins and outs of this. I was going to contact the guys to see if They would donate another second set of rules to go with the tanks and terrain. I think I have probably run out of time now…

I would have printed out some German tanks, but sadly my good lady had wandered off with the laptop and forgot to bring it back.

So tomorrow, if the laptop returns then I will print out a whole pile more tanks from both sides. I might print out some armoured cars, just fir the hell of it. My favourite being the German 222. Not sure why but it is most certainly my favourite armoured car.

We shall see how many tanks (if any) I get done tomorrow…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 8 Comments

Off Gallivanting II

Today we did a recce of the WW2 town defences of Lerwick. By all accounts these are the best preserved in the UK… which is pretty cool.

We just looked at the mid area defences and not the outer ring, the inner ring has pretty much gone due to houses etc. This lot are also up for destruction as Lerwick expands up onto Staney Hill.

Now to the photos.. a view from and of one of the observation posts…

The view out of the slit is off the South end of the harbour, the land beyond the sea on the left is the island of Bressay. The green lump jutting out to the sea is where the main seaward battery sat.

Some lumps and bumps, I am not sure what this is as it has a couple of bunkers/ pits and connecting trenches. It could be a mortar pit with ammunition bunker or I could be talking bollocks… A lot of this section of defences are sitting under those houses… just below them are a pretty well preserved section of tank traps.

Random shots of trenches and bunkers next. The last faces inwards and not towards the potential attack direction, this was deliberate as enemy forces were expected to make for the gaps in the hills and there they would be caught by enfilade fire from both flanks…

In the field below the track there are a host more bunkers and trenches and one of the three spigot mortar positions we have found.

This last photo is taken from another bunker towards more tank traps

This is just scratching the surface of what is up on the hills or down towards the town. I might try and get along to the gun positions at the south end. The north end guns were knocked down and an industrial park built over them. The blue building in the distance is somewhere near where they were.

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Panzer II

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.