Happy New Year

2023 has come to a close and 2024 has started. I had a good Christmas that netted me some new books. I picked up British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817 by Rif Winfield. While it is outside of the period that I am working on for the AWI scenarios, it is actually a significant help. It has shed some light on ships from the AWI as there were numbers of veterans of the AWI that continued service into the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. I also picked up James Henderson's Frigates - Sloops & Brigs. It is two books published together and was a great read. It gave me some ideas about the use of tenders. The British had armed tenders serving larger vessels to expand their reach. I have previously looked at examples around Charelston in the early stages of the AWI. These two have given me additional information to push forward on the AWI scenarios.

I also picked up Sacrifice on the Steppe: The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942–1943 by Hope Hamilton. This could become a follow up to In the Name of Roma.

Santa left me two new jugs of water washable rein under the tree this year. I have already used it to print out some 1/700th scale ships for a convoy scenario for To Covet Glory. With 1/700th scale, I find that I can get more than one complete ship on the build plate unlike 1/300th scale. I am trying to find out how to print out some smaller vessels than what are currently available. I am having fun with the resin printer. It seems to be much more straight forward than the filament printer I was using earlier.

I have found a figure to convert for my 1982 Israelis for Lebanon. I plan on printing a few and seeing how they look when I match them with my exising Peter Pig miniatures. I printed a Merkava Mk2 that came out rather well. I need to sand the barrel a bit to fit with the turret. Somehow I lost the turret hatch cover and need to print that.

------- 15 days later ---------

Somehow I forgot to hit the publish button here. I found out that even with water washable resin, you MUST wear gloves. The resin gave me a bad rash and swelling around both eyes when printing. It took about a week to heal. I am going to invest in lots of gloves. Will probably wear a mask and goggles as well.

I did purchase a 3d Model for a Bermuda Sloop from Wargaming3d. The model is very nice and the producer was more than willing to talk to me. I am shrinking the hull down to 1/700the scale. I am printing it with and without guns. For a mast and spars set, I had tinkered with some for a cutter a while back and I am going to try to reuse that even though the topsail will be too large for a Bermuda sloop.

I had done some more work on my AWI book for To Covet Glory. I am having great fun going through Winfield's book on the Royal Navy in the Age of Sail. He has a vast amount of information on ships below the rate. Thus far I have been making ship stats for all of the Ship Sloops of the Royal Navy. It has shown me a few mistakes in the original To Covet Glory. I will have to update the book at somepoint.