More Terrian

Well my latest Ebay purchase has arrived. I picked up the GUM Department store and the Commissar's House in 15mm from JR Miniatures. The price was nice and it was delivered quickly.

Now what suck out the most was that there are several air bubbles present in the model. Not a deal breaker but annoying. Next was the size of the GUM department store. Instead of a department store, this is more of a corner drug store. The building is supposed to be a two story building but the base floor under the shown second floor is filled in. Not a problem but it seems that this was an older model compared to some of their other items. This will still be a nice model. The Commissar's house is very nice. These two with the other building I have already painted should provide a nice core to the urban terrain I am building.

The commissar's house has a nice poster on the side of the building. I need to think about what to put on that. Should be something fun that can be used in more than one theater.

Western Desert Air Campaign

Thank you to all who have viewed and purchased this supplement.  I am making updates to the doc based on some of the feedback that I have received.  I will also update the doc for the Check Your 6 air combat rules with the next update.  When the updates are ready, I will notify everyone who purchased on how to get the updates - for free.

Thanks again and tell you friends if you liked it.

Ruined Urban Terrain

I managed to purchase two more of JR Miniatures Stalingrad Buildings. I picked up the "Chemist Shop" and their "GUM Department store" to go along with my City Block Corner that I already had.

Most of the terrain that I have is based on a felt cloth. What would you place ruined urban buildings on to make them appear more city-ish on the table?

Frigate Updates pt 5 - Painting Started

Well this has been a productive weekend for the Frigate. I managed to get the ship primed and an initial coat of paint on it. I am using the painting guide found here: http://www.larsonweb.com/Transfer/Miniatures/Sail/NAPSHIPS.htm I went with the Black hull with yellow stripe.

I realized that I never made the gun ports for the five main deck guns that are open. I will make these out of card stock paper and super glue them in place. I managed to make one but have not gotten around to fitting it in place yet. It seems very fiddly and I am not looking forward to it. I am also wondering if that would be entirely necessary. Looking at the Fist Full of Seaman blog I see that his French Frigate of similar size (just in 28mm) does not have those same gun ports with hatches. I may just leave off.

Still looking for a good name. So far The Pickle and Bessie have been the suggestions so far. Neither are grabbing me yet. There used to be a great Campaign for India naval game on the web that had some good French ship names like Ville de Fromage and Droits des Animaux. The website that chronicled the campaign seems to have dropped off the web now and I can't find my link to look it up on the internet archive. Oh well.

I was thinking of something along the lines of HMS Indigestible, or HMS Inconceivable or something along those lines. Some other thoughts I had ran along the lines of: Indecipherable, Indeterminate, Irrelavant, Irritable and Irredeemable. No one can top the names of the ships over at the Fist Full of Seaman Blog (fistfullofseamen.blogspot.com). He even has a back story on the names of most of them. Very clever. Anyway, the ship has a nice little spot on the stern to paint it in. Speaking of, here is a picture of the stern.

The project really feels as if it is coming along now. Once I get some more of the painting done, it will be time to rig this thing. I found an excellent guide to rigging the ship on this site: http://www.warartisan.com This guy has paper models in 1/300 scale and they look fantastic. If there were crews and such available from Baccus or Adler, I would think seriously about going with this scale for small ship actions in Kiss Me Hardy. His rigging suggestion is to use cotton thread and rub the thread down with elmer's glue. This stiffens the thread and actually serves to reinforce the overall result. He said if rigged, his 1/300 models can be dropped from a table top height and not suffer damage. That will be worth looking at.

Aghhh! I keep forgetting to add the dolphin striker. Well, maybe tomorrow.

Thursday's Update

Well I managed to finish work binding the yards to the masts.  Tthat has proved to be a very tedious task.  Once that was done, I primed the whole mess and began to surf the web for painting ideas.  Nothing really jumped out as a great idea.  So the color scheme will be rather basic.  A black hull with a yellow stripe along the gun ports with the gun ports painted black.  The deck... well I still don't know what I will do with that yet.

Any suggestions on a good name for the ship?  Funny or serious suggestions are welcome.

Frigate Updates Pt 3

Not much progress last night. But all of the yards are glued. I decided to add the top gallant masts to the ship as the masts looked too short without them. No royals though and no flying jib. I will add a dolphin striker. Just trying to figure out what the length would look right. I have been lashing the spars to the rigging. It is a tedious chore but I think it will look good when done and add strength.

Here is an over all picture of where I am so far.

This next picture is a close up to show what a 15mm miniature looks like on the deck of the ship. I purchased naval figures from minifigs.com two years ago. As well as some from another vendor that I can't remember. Maybe Battlehonors. Anyway, this is one I have not done anything with. It seems to put figures on the deck, I will have to derive a new basing mechanism as small bases will be needed on the tight confines of the deck. I will be buying some sailors from Thoroughbred Miniatures to put some on the rigging and the like. I have a figure that someone (Terry I think) gave to me that is holding a telescope. Definitely a great officer figure.

Well, at least it is some progress.

Frigate Updates pt 2

I managed to get some time to mess with the ship again. I have mounted the Masts and Top Masts. The fighting tops are in place and I drilled and mounted the booms for the Spanker sail. I still need to wrap those joins in thread as well as the join between the bow spirit and job boom. Given that, here is what it looks like now.

That one is a little dark but you can make out the detail. Here is a brighter one taken on my work tray.

My wife was frowning greatly at the mess I was making in the living room working on fitting the masts and such.

Here is where I would like some advice from you. Do I add the flying jib, Dolphin striker and top gallant masts to this? Or should I leave the masts as they are? I am not sure what I should attempt. For those not familiar with all of the nautical terms, here is a great reference site that gives all of the parts in a couple of pictures: http://www.wanttaja.com/navlinks/SHIPVIEW.HTM

Frigate updates

I managed a couple of free moments this weekend to tinker with the frigate. I spent some time working on the gun ports. several of them were filled in by spilled over resin and had to be cut out. Then the detail work of the ship has some rough spots. In the bow of the ship, some of the details were filled in with bubbles of resin that were lodged in various crevices. Some bubbles were present along its outside lines that had to be smoothed.

Also there are several spots on the hull where it appears some of the detail work has broken off and will have to be replaced. Fortunately none of these was catastrophic and all easily dealt with. Once the carving was done, the ship received a thorough washing.

Then came an attempt to fit the masts to the ship. Well, that proved interesting. The instructions that came with the ship mention that all of the masts are cut to length. Yet for a 3 masted ship, it only came with 2 masts. As I fooled with it, the masts themselves were way too big and would need to be cut down. There is plenty of wood for the operation but the instructions were misleading.

Each mast comes with a resin fore, main and mizzen top. Each of these had a huge amount of resin flash that had to be cut away. The Top Masts, Top Gallant Masts and yards included in the model were bamboo skewers that will need to be cut to length. The only problem point that I am seeing is that all three of the masts have holes pre-cut for them. But there is nothing in which to mount the bow-spirit. I think I can figure out where to mount it without too much trouble though.

I will drill the hole for the bow spirit this week and cut and shape the masts to post a picture of the progress. I plan on getting the masts and tops installed before priming

I will get more time to work on this over the coming weekend. Stay tuned.

On other news I have sold 24 copies of the BTH Western Desert Campaign Supplement. Thank you to all who have purchased. Once you have a chance to read through it, I would appreciate it if you would post your thoughts on the blog here. I am interested in improving it. I have had some e-mail feedback and will be making updates to it based on that feedback. If/when the next version is complete, I will notify all who have purchased and give you the opportunity to get the revisions for free. Thanks again everyone.

Bag the Hun - A North Africa Campaign Supplement

I have decided to go ahead and sell the supplement that I wrote for Bag the Hun in North Africa on my own. Rich is currently overwhelmed with IABSM3 and at least two other projects that I have submitted to him.

The supplement has orders of battle and scenarios for the following campaigns: Operation Battleaxe (June 14 – 18, 1941), Operation Crusader (November 18, 1941 to Jan 18, 1942), The Battle of Gazala (May 26 – June 21, 1942) and
The Second Battle of El Alamein (Oct 23 to Nov 5, 1942). It has a campaign system to recreate an ongoing air campaign. And historical scenarios for each of the above campaigns. Rosters of the men from each squadron are provided from the information available. In many cases, the only available information was from the published losses and victory lists.

What this does not have is Rich's editing and art. As such, it is at a discounted price from what it would be through the TFL's site.

The supplement is availible through my PayHip Store. The document is a 13 MB PDF file.

Another Oh Shiny Moment

Well the purchase occurred a while back but I just now have gotten around to looking at it to complete.

I found this 28 gun Frigate online over a year ago. No clue who make it now. I have a bag of parts for the masts and rigging in my cabinet.

The ship is a resin model scaled for 15mm miniatures. I bought some guns for it too. (now where did I put those...)

Now, can anyone recommend how to begin painting this? Do I need to prime it? What primer should I use?