Shutters...

I haven't been playing many games or finishing anything on the workbench for the last few weeks.

I have some French 25mm Minifigs Marlburians about 70% done, the French WW2 townhouses I 3d printed about 80% done and I've started on a couple of Marvel Crisis Protocol figures to see what might work for painting them.  But nothing is finished - I am managing a colour a day on something so they'll get there eventually...

 I've also been distracted this week by 2 minor ops in 4 days - nothing serious but they take time to get over. 

 I spent some time today designing and cutting some shutters for the Dendermonde houses.

Also cut a small add-on to raise the front wall design of the test house to match the others so the roofline is no longer visible.

Thinking I might paint the card before cutting the shutters so I don't have to paint them on the models.

Next up is cutting some tile strips  that I can roof with, overlapping the tiles - also cut from card and a surround for the doors.

I will also make some window surrounds without shutters for some of the houses for some variety.

More Seven Years War Prussians

 I have am still working my way through the painting pile in between doing a lot of reading for a writing conference I am going to for the whole of next week. In the mean time I have fitted in some other bits and pieces.

More rebasing of 25mm SYW Prussians - adding another 4 infantry units to that army.

These were a bargain purchase from ebay - 60 foot figures and a heavy gun and crew for £40.  I have added 4 minifigs to make up the units to 16 figures each.

I am not sure exactly what the figures are - they are more slender than current minifigs, but it has been suggested they could be S range but I am not sure they are quite the right style.  Still, lovely figures anyway.

More Painting...

 

Been away for a few days but have had time to finish off most of the WW2 troops

2x 25pdrs, 4 Vickers and 4 Boyes Rifle teams.   I still have 2 x quads to finish off.

Also managed to paint a Battlemasters tower for a friend.

After the 2 quads I am probably onto some 25mm Minifigs French Marlburians next.

Putting away unfinished things...

 

I decided this weekend that  I needed to be more disciplined in my approach to painting, so I have spent some time tidying out the Bureau I use for painting and painting projects.

I have filed away anything I won't get to this year or that has stalled and cleared the bureau surface off all paints and detritus.

The painting area will now only have one unit on it and the paints required to paint that unit.  I hope that helps me focus on finishing things a bit more...  I have tended to jump from one project to the next without always finishing stuff off or seeing things through to completion.

I have finished 12 x 25mm Minifigs Colonials today that I am painting for a friend - so it might be working.

Next up on the painting table is 20mm Early War British Boyes ATs, HMGs and 2 x 25pdr guns...

A Bridge of sorts...

 I have been away for a week at a Christian Festival my wife usually attends - I went this year with the caravan to socialise (as I know a lot of people in her church) and get some writing done.

We had fun but came back last Tuesday and on Wednesday both came down with Covid - like a flashback to 2020! I have been pretty ill all week and still have no energy and feel run down.

What I have been able to do is send some files through the 3d Printer.

Four days of running the 3d Printer on and off and I have a Star Trek style bridge...  It is 390mm x 390mm square

This consists of 9 "tiles" which each took between 1h30 and 3h30 to print, plus the middle command section (1h30) and the rails, 10 chairs and the door...

Now I need to work out how to paint it (possibly with an airbrush? or may speed paints ) and I need to produce drop in pictures for the view screen and the 16 other screens...  I'll probably get the ww2 stuff done before I start on painting a test corridor piece.

The design is by lv427-designs who produce a whole range of SF corridors and rooms.

3d Printing and a new toy

 I have been thinking for a while about upgrading my 3d printer.  I bought the Cubicon Style 9 years ago when I wanted to design and print Toy Soldier terrain and vehicle parts in ABS plastic so I could mould them in metal.

The Cubicon was expensive  but worked straight out of the box which meant I could spend time learning the software, rather than rebuilding the printer every time.

Technology has moved on and I have been keeping an eye on Bambu printers as a possible replacement as they have a good reputation and are a lot faster than the Cubicon.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Bambu had a sale on so picked up the Bambu A1 printer for about 20% of what I originally paid for the Cubicon.

The printer is easy to put together (just 10 screws or so to attach the two halves, plus some cables to plug in).

One of the reasons for wanting to upgrade the printer was that I was finding the 150mm cubic bed of the cubicon limiting on what I could print.  There is a lot of very good 3d printable terrain pieces now and I needed a larger printer to be able to print them - the A1 has a 256mm cubic bed.

In particular I have been looking at getting some French houses, etc for my WW2 setup and this enabled me to buy the 3dprintterrain WW2 buildings which I really liked the look of.  For £58 you get a huge number of very well designed buildings - I bought the 80th anniversary Normandy set.

The buildings print much faster than on my other printer - typically 4-5 hours for the main building and 2 hours for the roofs.  I am printing them at 0.2mm quality in Matte grey PLA which gives a good effect and minimises the print lines.

I have started painting them and am pleased with the results so far,

I want to make a number of town/village bases for WW2 games so I can play through the Blitzkreig scenarios in the Rapid Fire scenario book which require a fair number of buildings.  Most of the WW2 building I have are ruins rather than complete buildings.

I am also looking at printing some bits and pieces for my Gangster city (such as water towers for the roof tops and a train carriage to go with the existing train and tender) and some starship corridors and rooms for Star Trek skirmish games.

More progress on Dendermonde

 

Finally finished texturing and painting the main elements of the Dendermonde defenses.  Still need to finish off the Gatehouse but getting there.

Next up is working out exactly how I am going to do the grass on the Glacis and designing and cutting the causeway from the gate to the glacis via the demi-lune.

Very rough setup to see how it looks...