Misc: Wish List & Reference Resources

It's quite normal for me to have a plethora of pages open in my browsers simultaneously. This can make moving back and forth between the few most active pages hard work, as I scroll past lots of pages I'm really not using. I know this is what the 'bookmark' function is for. But I only really use that for a certain core of oft-visited sites. So I've decided to compile some of these links, or rather those related to my mini-military hobbies, on a post or a page here.

First is a list of useful reference type links. I'm starting with a few on casting in resin, or similar. As that's something I'm about to have my first go at.

REFERENCE / RESOURCES

Casting resin parts

Resin casting tutorial - David Damek.
Sylmasta - casting & mould-making - tutorial by the people I got my resin casting kit from.

BJB, Moulding vid #2 - not directly miniatures related, but filled with useful moulding and casting info.

Blue Stuff (new to me!)
Blue Stuff mould-making tutorial - David Damek.

Vacuum Chamber (for removing air-bubbles from silicone, etc) & Vac-Forming
DIY Vacuum Chamber - how to construct your own vacuum-chamber for getting air our of silicone, etc.
Mini vac-form set-up - could be useful in getting set up to vac form small parts for kit conversions and scratch-building?

And then here's a somewhat larger list of stuff I lust after (hence the Tex Avery pic, atop this post)...

WISH LIST

1/72 WWII German 

Ace Models - Citroen Avant staff car

Ace Models - SdKfz 10 w 37mm flak

Ace Models - 3-ton softskin truck

IBG Models - Own brand 1\72 home page, loads of great stuff, inc. Universal Carriers, etc.

IBG Models - Roden Opel-Blitz Omnibus Stabswagen, €8.50!!!

IBG Models - Roden SdKfz 4/1 w raketenwerfer, €8.50!!!

Mac Distribution - Steyer 1500A

modelhobbies.co.uk - Mac Distribution, Mercedes Benz G3 Ambulance, c. £20

Modelling tools and equipment

Amazon UK - 2 x Xacto style craft knives, +100 blades, £10.70 (free shipping)

Misc: 100 Posts In 2019!

This post is the one-hundredth of 2019. That's the most posts in any one year so far, since I started in 2014. And there's still one-third of the year left. So I'm in pretty good shape for a bumper year of blogging. It also seems to me like a good moment to take stock. What have I achieved, both in blogging and more generally? Am I happy with what I'm doing? And all that sort of thing.

A new display case, with dust-busting glass front! [1]

My motley selection of wings. Just two are actually completed.

First off, however, a word on my 54mm Napoleonics, as they've been my latest practical hands-on modelling project. I've more or less finished the three Frenchies, pictured in the next section of the post, below. But I have yet to even make a start on the two British figures. I have a feeling that I'll be taking a break from 54mm figures for a spell, and getting into my languishing 6mm and 10mm 1812 armies. That's an area I'm less happy about; the inactivity on that (Eastern) front!

One noteworthy development of 2019 was an invitation to review for Pen & Sword. I've been an Amazon Vine reviewer for a number of years. But, rather annoyingly, and despite getting lots of great stuff, almost none of it has been related to my mini-military interests. Andrew Roberts Napoleon The Great, for example, was given out to some Vine reviewers. But not, alas, to me. I love being part of the Vine program, But that really galls me! I wouldn't be surprised if I was amongst the most history and Napoleon obsessed of their reviewers! Hey ho...

---

But afore I go any further, yesterday's and today's activity, modelling wise, was further work on my 54mm Nap's: I did a tiny bit of touching up here and there, including some gloss varnish followed with washes (braid, horses mane, that sort of stuff), and a couple of coats of matt varnish. This time, with the latter I managed to be a bit more patient and methodical, thereby avoiding the dreaded clouding.

Rosewood bases, masked, ready for Milliput 'soil' to be added.

The pictures immediately above and below show the other thing I did yesterday, which is beginning the basing. I cut the bases from Indian Rosewood, on my bandsa and a hole cutting bit. They required quite a bit of sanding, and the circular ones needed the central drill-holes left by the hole-cutting bits  filling. I then masked a 5mm band around all the bases, built up Milliput 'earth', and tidied it with various tools so it follows the edge masking.

Figures on their bases, Milliput and gravel earth built up.

Scenic gravel and stones were then added, after which I marked mounting points from the base of each model, using the wire I'd glued into the feet/legs of each figure to mark the positions of the desired holes. I used a pin-vise drill through the still soft-ish Milliput and the wooden bases, which worked fine. Once the models were pinned in, and pressed into the Milliput, I used some liquid superglue to secure the models and the gravel in situ.

I'll let them dry and harden overnight, and start in on painting tomorrow. If poss', I'll add grass then as well... we shall see!

A different view. Grenadier's scabbards fell off!

---

Note tiny hole drilled into grognard's left buttock.

Well, it's now 'tomorrow' today, and I've painted the 'earth', and added some more gravel. I also attached the Guard Grenadier's scabbards with a tiny little metal pin, as they'd fallen off two or three times, and I was getting fed up with gluing them back on, especially as it entailed repainting that whole area, the gluing process having messed up the paintwork.

Scabbards superglued into position. Will this do the trick?

I'm now letting everything sit awhile, myself included, as I type this. And then it'll be time to add some grass. Think I might watch a YouTube vid or two on the subject first, to see how to go about it! I seem to recall folk using diluted wood glue... let's find out!

Bases ready for the addition of grass.

All of this recent stuff, WWII vehicles, planes, 54mm figures, book reviews, are digressions from my 6mm and 10mm Russia 1812 stuff. But there's no sign of any let up, and I'm tending to go with the flow. After all, this whole mallarkey is, for me, chiefly about allowing myself self-indulgent pleasure. And it's doing that aplenty.

A recent trip to Ely inevitably found me furtively sneaking into the City Cycle Centre model department. They've rearranged their stock (again!), and now have some models by a brand that's new to me, Forces of Valour. I decided I'd check out their King Tiger model, as I've been wanting to build a version of this mighty metal monster Sorcifically done out in the obscure but fascinating 'octopus' camo' scheme.

I think this might be my next build...

And this is the camo' scheme I intend for her.

In the meantime, however, I'm still working on basing my French Napoleonic dudes. Here are few pics showing how that's progressing. The plastic bottle with extra holes in the top is a home-made 'static grass' dispenser, based on an idea I've seen online; you simply shake the container vigorously, and both it and the grass being plastics, some static ought to be imparted to the latter. I did an A/B test on two bits of cork. The one at left had the static bottle treatment, the one at right didn't. I can see no discernible difference!

A small plastic bottle destined to become a static grass dispenser.

First use of my recently acquired Dremel-type tool, drilling yon holes.

Left treated, right untreated... hmm!? They look identical to me.

A first covering with grassy stuff (mixture of flock 'n' static).

Forward focus on same bases.

A liberal second covering, prior to 'shakedown'.

In researching basing I've learned a fair bit by simply watching a number of YouTube videos, some of which I already knew, such as flock and static grass being two different things, some of which I didn't; commercially available static grass dispensers are very expensive! One of the videos, by model railway scenery builder extraordinaire Luke Towan, shows how to make your own DIY dispenser. I think I'll be doing that at some point! In the meantime, I tried to emulate the Noch brand plastic bottle static grass dispenser, as chronicled above. Not sure if that was worth doing or not yet...

The bases unmasked.

Viewed more fully, models 'n' all.

Anyway, as with much of this stuff, one can continue fussing and finagling without end. I got my 54mm (or 1/32) models to a point now that I consider more of less finished. As pictured above, I've removed the masking, and I'm pleased with the overall results. I made a conscious decision, partially motivated my laziness, perhaps? to keep the bases blocky and simple. I could've routed ornate profiles (probably would've gone with an ogee). But I thought the grain of the wood is beautiful, and by keeping them simple I could make more of that.

---

To conclude this 100th post, I return to more general thoughts.

What have I achieved with this blog? Well, sharing my work with the world at large is definitely a type of motivation, and it's great to get some feedback. I'd certainly like more followers and a lot more comments [2]. I hope that'll come as I continue. I reckon I need to get more into following other bloggers as well. I did more of that when I started blogging. Indeed, that's a large part of what got me started. As with YouTube, other people's blogs are a great resource/inspiration.

More generally, I've drifted away from my 6mm and 10mm Russia 1812 projects, and gotten more into 1/72 kit builds of late, and book reviews, which is all fine 'n' dandy in itself, but... I definitely do very much want to get back in the saddle in those areas. I'm also slowly getting better at finishing things off. It's certainly easier, I find, to finish hand painted stuff, as I still feel that I'm an airbrushing novice.

Military movies remain an interest, although finding decent ones is getting trickier, as I've now watched an awful lot of the better known more mainstream ones. Recent viewing has run the full gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, 1864 being of the former, and The Battle for Warsaw the latter. It seems from viewer stats that my film reviews are of less interest to readers of the blog than other content. But as I'm really into it, I'll continue posting them.  I still need to work out how to code a dynamic hot-link 'picture wall' for the movies page.

Books remain a constant interest, with much reading and reviewing. Now that I'm getting stuff from Pen & Sword it's hard to keep up with these two activities and yet not get burned out. I try to hop around between types and titles, to prevent exhaustion. Sometimes things serendipitously connect, as when Philip Warner's excellent Anglo-centric D-Day book (my review here), from P&S, makes an excellent companion to Stephen Ambrose's much more American focussed D-Day, which I picked up in a charity shop for £1.50!

And the bookish and filmic stuff occasionally intersects, as when reading on the Bismarck (review here) and watching Sink The Bismarck. Or, whilst reading the above-mentioned D-Day books, watching the really rather excellent Ike, Countdown to D-Day, in which the rather unlikely casting of Tom Selleck as Ike actually comes off really well.

---

NOTES:

[1] This supplants my home-made pair of glass-less shelves. Models on those got very dusty. I found this shelving unit dumped on the roadside. It was a very lurid bright pink originally! So I stripped/sanded and painted it, and it'll serve me well. Though I do need more glass shelves and shelf support pegs.

[2] One thing I occasionally do with this in mind is post on TMP, The Miniatures Page, another source of inspiration and information. And I do find that does help drive a little more traffic to my blog. But nowhere near as much as I'd like!

Terrain & Buildings: Russian Buildings, 6mm or 10mm?

Undercoated in Halfords grey primer, base coats going on.

I bought all these buildings quite a long time ago now. They were gathering dust, very literally, in a plastic tub. I decided, when I recently made a scratch-built Russian church-tower, to get these out, dust them off, and start painting them.

All the better buildings base-coated.

The buildings from the Big Battalions range by Total Battle Miniatures are fab, and very nicely varied, even including burnt-out/ruined hovels. I've base-coated them in a range of grey/browns, some veering towards beige, some brown, some green-ish. Only a result of these building have much stonework. As was the case in Russia at the time, most buildings were largely constructed from wood. And most old external wood turns a silvery grey, unless it's somehow preserved or painted.

Some other 6mm buildings I bought, at Salute, years ago.

Pictured above are some 6mm scale buildings, by Timecast. These are a lot lower quality, the resin being fairly brittle, and therefore more prone to chipping. They're also less well sculpted, being rather too regular and 'foursquare'. I will probably wind up using them. But perhaps hidden in amongst my Smolensk project scratch-builds. One good thing about them is that they're smaller than the Total Battle buildings, so actually work with my 6mm figures and my own scratch-built buildings.

The better buildings, from the Big Battalions range, are intended for use with 6mm scale figures. But they are too large in my view: if buildings are made in 'true' scale to an individual model figure - and remember each figure usually represents about 20-30 actual soldiers - they actually wind up seeming oversized. So I think I'll use the 6mm scale buildings from Total Battle with my 10mm figures, and build my own 6mm buildings.

Gradually getting into layering the paint on...

Painting is proceeding slowly... but it is proceeding. The Total Battle Miniatures buildings are superb. I'm painting them with a mixture of artists acrylics (Windsor & Newton, Rowney, etc.) and Vallejo. Using washes occasionally, to build up uneven patchy finishes, for a more natural look. When I've done the basic blocking in I'll give the lot a gloss varnish, and do some oil paint washes, to bring out the detail, and then seal it all off with some matt varnish.

Lighter colours and oxidising copper roofs blocked in.

Buildings & Terrain: Painting my 6mm Russian Tower.

So, day three of my little 6mm Russian tower build, and I've finally finished the basic construction. I suppose I might add more, if things look too bare as I paint it up. But I hope not. As my first foray into buildings and terrain, I think I'll be content to keep it pretty basic.

Second and final grey undercoat. I'm pleased with it!

I've decided to use artist's acrylics, as you get a lot more paint for your pounds and pennies with them. Though they're still pretty dear, in my view. I mixed a pale brick colour from yellow ochre, white and cadmium red, and base-coated everything but the dome and 'spike'. I'm using the latter to handle the model at present.

 A pale terracotta type colour to start with.

As with my miniatures, I'm holding off basing at the mo', as I don't yet know how I'm going to base either my figures or my scenery. That's a conundrum for further down the road.

In the meantime I'm fortunate to have the leisure time to allow me to alternate painting sessions with lounging on the sofa, watching the snooker World Championships on ye olde BBC iPlayer. It's Gary Wilson vs Ali Carter, with the latter three one up (at the time of drafting this bit!). I think I'm rooting for ex-cabbie Wilson.

I'm a little chary of accelerating drying time with a hair-dryer, as much as I'd really like to, 'cause there's quite a bit of cardboard in this model, and I don't want that bending it all out of shape. I have to be patient, and pace myself. Not easy for an impetuous chap like me!

---------------

Okay, back to work after a 'foot long' chicken sub-sandwich. A darker red-brown artists acrylic wash over the terracotta base-coat looks fab! I actually feel it'll be a shame to paint over any of it! But I have to, really.

Dark red-brown wash, over two layers of varnish.

For the roofing and stonework I went with Vallejo's Basalt Gray, a colour I really like. The roofing will be various colours, ultimately. Not sure exactly what colours yet. The columns, lintels, arches, etc, will be various shades of pale off-white. I'm not sure whether this will have a gilded onion-dome or not. And the roof of the second-floor might be oxidised (green) copper. Hmmm?

Vallejo Basalt Gray for roofing and stonework.

Anyway, I have to confess I'm really chuffed with how this maiden build is coming along.

Getting the columns and lintels painted.

Doors and windows block-coloured in.

Getting there... still a fair bit to do painting wise.

Getting into the colour painting is fun, if fiddly. I'm not a terrifically neat painter. So I'm constantly having to go back and touch up bits and bobs as I go along. I think I need to do a lighter grey on the upper faces of the roofing, gild the dome and do a tarnished copper roof on the second story.

---------------

Dinner eaten, snooker on the telly, and my Russian tower more or less painted. I still want to do a wash or two, or some extra paintwork, e.g. to make the oxidised copper roof more defined, and get the whole building really 'popping'. But this will have to do for now. I've really enjoyed building this. And look forward to making more terrain.

Nearly there... copper roof and gilded dome painted.

I also glued a bit of cork to the base, so I could handle the model without using the spike atop the dome. Ok, it looks nothing like the building that inspired it (see previous post). But that's fine. That was just inspiration. And I'm very happy with how this has come out. Thanks to Tony Harwood and his title on Napoleonic buildings for the motivation.

One final thing I feel I should note: I think that reproducing building in 'true scale' doesn't really work. If we remember that each figure we have represents however many real soldiers, then we ought to realise that direct equivalence of individual figures to buildings will result in grossly oversized buildings. And yet we want the terrain to look right, in relation to our miniature troops. This is a tricky area! And in part why I named my blog 'a question of scale'!

Personally I like the approach this American dude whose name I forget uses. He wargames in 6mm, but using Heroics and Ros miniatures, which are smaller and less detailed than the Baccus and Adler I prefer. But his games always look stunning. His terrain being amongst the best looking I've ever seen. Taking a leaf from his book, my building are smaller than those commercially available from manufacturers like Timecast and Total Battle Miniatures.

This does present an issue: will I be able to use the models I bought from these guys? Will they work with mine? Or will I have to build all my building and terrain myself? I'm kind of thinking/expecting it'll be the latter. But I don't mind that. It's a challenge, for sure. But one I welcome.

Buildings & Terrain: 6mm Russian Napoleonic Tower

Having just read and reviewed Tony Harwood's new book on buildings for the Napoleonic era, I thought I should try my hand at making something. Most of my 6mm and 10mm Napoleonic armies were bought for recreating events of the 1812 Russian campaign, so I'm starting with a Russian building.

My inspiration for this project.

I picked a tower that appears to be part of an Orthodox church building complex. I'm keen in the long run to build lots of Russian buildings, including parts of Smolensk, and the town of Maloyaroslavets. I also want to make lots of ordinary buildings. Whenever I search for buildings of the era, I mainly find the most opulent and ornate Russian churches, or maybe a palace. It's quite hard to get good ref for more ordinary town or country architecture.

Started with plastic card an corrugated card in layers.

Added some paper and toothpick columns.

I also have a bunch of commercially produced buildings, which are mostly either log cabins or churches. That's partly why I've wound up starting on this particular building, as it's neither a log hut, nor a complete church. It also featured a number of things I thought might be fun to model: tiered or stepped levels, columns, porticos, ornament and doors/passages that can be looked through.

Tried my hand at using foam, a la Tony Harwood.

It bulks out quicker than card, but...

Scale wise, I've kind of busked it. I'm doing less levels/layers than the real building has, and simplifying what levels I do have. I'm also drastically squashing the vertical axis. If I built all the levels and stuck to true scale for this model it'd wind up massively tall and very spindly, and probably likely to topple over.

Bit of a jump to three storeys plus tower.

Approaching the 'onion' dome stage...

Already I've learned quite a lot about working with numerous materials. But I can see I still have an immense amount more to pick up. I've used card from bother back and front of old sketch-books, dense black foam from a circle template backer, plastic card, matchsticks, cocktail sticks, and numerous types of glue, including everything from PVA to super-glue. I've also used a Revell plastic putty filler, and DAS modelling clay.

All these each require different tools and skill sets, as well as China the mouse to use the right material or tool at the right moment. Certain materials, especially when working in thus tiny scale, like the foam and the corrugated card, can compress whilst cutting. The foam springs back. But the corrugated card won't necessarily do so.

There are aslo issues like knowing when to glue more detailed parts in place. I glued the matchstick and cocktail stick columns in place too soon. And without properly squaring off the internal corners, meaning that many of the columns lean rather drunkenly. Making the curved roof 'lights' (windows) on the uppermost roof (excepting of course the dome) was challenging. But I like how it's come out.

I had to stop at this point, not having anything to hand suitable for the dome. And then today I bought a few 10mm diameter wooden beads, sawing a small part off one, and passing a cocktail stick through. I reckon it looks ok!?

Wooden bead onion dome with toothpick spike.

At this point I sprayed the building in Halfords grey, so as to get a better sense of what I had so far. All the different colours, materials and textures were making it hard to really see the building clearly. I realised some time before this that I'd diverged from my inspiration/source ref in numerous ways. Which was fine. But one thing I wanted to preserve design wise, was the hermetically contained ground floor level.

Reworking the ground floor exterior.

More detailing on the top tower, etc.

I'm quite happy with how this is developing. Particularly as it's my first such build project since returning to the hobby. I think it'll make a decent addition to my Russia 1812 arsenal. It's great to get started on the scenery side of things. But I'll have to start working faster and more efficiently, given how much I want to build, e.g. a wargame-able reduction of the whole of Smolensk! I must be mad...

The tower at close of play today. Taking longer than planned!

Book Review - Modelling Trees, Gordon Gravett

I've reviewed this book here and over at Amazon UK, having just used it to help me complete my first two tree models (as blogged in my previous post!). I've given this book five stars over at the Amazon website because it is excellent, being both inspiring and informative. 

But I do have one or two little quibbles. My chief gripe is that various techniques are mentioned without a full break-down. E.g. the use of 'Artex' is referenced on numerous occasions, as a means to create the body of the tree, but - and I hope I simply haven't missed it? - nowhere could I find any guidance on what ratio of the various ingredients (Artex, PVA, water, or whatever) to mix. The same applies to mixing PVA and water in other situations. I'm sure I'll develop my own knowledge given time, but approximate pointers would've been very welcome and useful, and would improve the book.

But this aside, the book is great, and as mentioned above (and in my previous post!), at the time of posting this review I've just finished my first two trees. I'm working in a much smaller scale, by the way - making trees for 6mm and 100mm scale wargaming - whereas Gravett is making much bigger (and more detailed) trees for model railways in HO/OO scale (1/76). [1] I'm not a railway modeller, but I can see why people get as into it as Gravett has; the results he achieves are simply stunning!

----------

NOTES:

[1] HO and OO are actually different scales, but both use the same gauge. Confusing, eh? This link explains.

Scenic Stuff - Small Trees

My first scratch-built trees!

One of my ambitions with my 'one day I'll...' wargaming world, a world of glacially slow movement towards nebulous goals, is to have beautiful battlefields, as much like movable dioramas as I can manage. To this end I have heaped upon myself, in addition to the myriad other fractured paths I'm following, the task of building bespoke a forest of trees.

To achieve this I thought I'd better tap into some experience and expertise, i.e. read online and/or buy a book. So, after a fair bit of online research, I got this one:

I'm very glad I did, because, whilst this isn't a perfect book, it's certainly what wanted and I needed, and has really helped me achieve results I'm reasonably pleased with right from the get go. So, whilst I haven't exhaustively documented the building of my first pair of trees in my mooted forest, below are a few pics of some of the stages so far.

My first two trees were made, I think, from electrical wire, which I stripped out of some old discarded leads. Little bundles of copper wire were twisted around themselves in groups of three or four strands, and theses sub groups - the bigger branches with their bifurcating offshoots - were twisted together in groups of four or five. 

The final twisted grouping was the trunk, with the first set of twists making the larger branches, and the individual wires the smaller branches. I drilled small holes in some free thin circular MDF bases I acquired free at one of the several wargames shows we've recently attended, and cemented the trees in place using superglue.

The trees were then 'painted', first with a dilute mix of PVA wood glue and water, and then with a mix of 'artex' type powdered plaster, with more woodglue and a little water. The plaster hardens to form the white trunk and branches above.

Below are the trees after they've been sprayed in a black base-coat. The Adler Young guard figures are just there to give an idea of realtive scale. These first small trees are really being made for my 6mm wargaming battlefields, althought they'll probably also double as smaller shrubs/bushes, etc, in the larger scales.

A lick of acrylic paint gives the first hint of how these might ultimately look. At present they look, to me, pretty horrible. I've decided that individual strands of copper wire as thin as what I've used here are too thin. My next sets of trees will use different and thicker wire, so as not to wind up so delicate and easily damaged as these have turned out.

Standard Milliput and some scenic sand was then used to model the bases for more interest. These two trees were totally ad-libbed, shape-wise. The one at left looks a bit like a fruit tree (some nice vintage apple variety, perhaps?) in an orchard, whilst the one on the right is like a small garden tree, with the branches starting higher up, and a more compact,dense and evenly spread canopy.

You can't really see this in the pic below, but next I sealed the scenic sand onto the base with a mix of PVA and water. The pic below was angled low so one can see the different shapes of the two trees better. Sadly this was taken on my iPhone, and the damn thing focussed on the backdrop rather than the trees!

The bases painted in acrylic brown. These will be gone over again later, in several different shades and washes, before grass flock etc. gets added.

And finally, although they aren't quite finished yet, I added some 'clump foliage' I used different types and shades for each tree. The small 'garden' tree on the right was fairly easy to do, whereas the 'apple' tree was damned hard work. I used PVA to attach the foliage.

I'll probably be working more on the trunks and branches, using paint to develop them a little (perhaps even adding some splattered lichen to the apple tree?), working up the bases, and then finally coating the entire thing in a coat or two of aerosol matt lacquer.

Anyhoo, all things considered, I'm pretty happy with these. Especially for a first attempt. I hope with time I'll get better, and - crucially - much quicker! I've learned several things, as a result of which the next batch will have slightly simpler armatures, and be made from thicker more resilient wire.

I've been collecting photographic tree reference - arboreal portraits, I guess - and I plan to try a series of more specific trees. If I can, I'd like to develop a formula, for speedy production, so as to work up a good number in as short a space of time as poss.

And as soon as time allows, I'll do a comparison shot with some of the more easily available commercial alternatives, to show why I'm going to such bother!