Progress At Last: ACW and AWI Naval

It was a good weekend for getting stuff done. I managed to paint a few ships for the ACW. I am only missing two vessels for the Battle of Hampton Roads. I need to print and paint the Jamestown for the Confederacy and the St Lawrence for the Union. As has been my norm lately, I had a painted version of the Jamestown and managed to completely smash it to bits by setting the cover of my 3d printer down on it accidentallty. Anyway, I did get a number of models painted up.

I still have to paint the shore batteries. I started on this task but the primer started coming off the models as I tried to paint them. I did something wrong with priming them. I will have to readdress this.

AWI Supplement

As to my To Covet Glory supplement, it made significant progress over the weekend. I was able to get in a number of games. I played with both 1/300th and 1/700th miniatures. They both worked well. There are eight more scenarios to work through. I am really happy with the progress that was made this weekend. If I can get any more time to work on it, I should be able to wrap it up in November. As soon as it is complete, I will be getting it uploaded to the PayHip site first and then to Wargame Vault. It will become part of the To Covet Glory bundle on both.

Painting Boats

I managed to finish two more of the Hagen Miniatures boats that I had purchased. One is a small sloop that still needs paper sails. The other is a small gun boat with a gaff sail. These came out well. I also managed to dinish the repairs on the two damaged ship-sloops that I broke trying to move them. According to USPS, I might get my clear bases today. I will need to figure out what the right glue is to use on these. I will be basing all of my 1/700th ships from now on. The bases from Litko arrived. I think they are large enough for most of my 1/700 vessels. Some of the larger ones would not fit.

Current State of the AWI Supplement

I was able to get some writing and editing done yesterday. I changed around the headings and now have it trimmed down to 187 pages. There is still significant work needed for the Virgina State Navy section that is left. I have names of ships and that is about it. I decided to limit the work to not include the vessels of the Northern Colonies at this point in time. I will probably pick back up with that with another supplement. I keep finding more scenarios that interest me and need to hold off on expanding this any more.

As far as ships go, I am not doing badly. I am experimenting with printing to try to get the masts to fit better in the mast holes without significant drilling being needed. Hopefully that will help. My printer needs a new sheet of FEB for the printer tub and I am looking to get a magnetic flexible print platform to make removing prints easier. I have them in my Amazon cart and am waiting to place the order.

This puts me at a place where I am getting pretty close to being ready. I will work on some more terrain items to complete some scenarios. I need scale trees. The nice part is that these can be shrubs for my other miniatures (15mm). I am still looking to use a layered approach for naval terrain. A blue felt sheet for the bottom layer. Some sandy patches to lay on top for sand bars. A clear plastic sheet for the surface and then other terrain on top of that for islands, rocks and the like. It should work well.

I can use this with both my 1/300 miniatures and the 1/650 or 1/700 scale minis. For ships that I print, I am liking the 1/650 more and more. They are chunkier but easy to print and paint.

I still have to finish the repairs on the ships I shattered. As you can see from the picture, The masts didn't fair well in the fall. I have some clamps that will help but I am not sure how much longer this will take.

I did get a shore battery completed recently. It came out OK. I also painted up a sinking 3rd rate. Both of these were from Hagen Miniatures. I really like these models. I painted up a Lugger from their line as well but I need sails and rigging as they do not come with it. I will probably do paper sails.

Here is the fleet thus far, minus the two shattered vessels.

You can see the sinking third rate and the shore battery in this shot as well as the lugger in the bottom right corner. These are Hagen Miniatures. The flatboats are ones I created in tinkercad. i will put them up on my PayHip for free. The three bomb vessels on the bottom left are all Saturnalia miniatures. The Cutter in the center is from Daitra productions. I may have that spelled wrong. The small bermuda sloop is one I created from a 28mm miniature that I shrunk down. The sails are paper. In the top center are more Saturnalia brigs and to the right of them are a pair of Black seas schooners.

Everything needs more work. I need rigging for the most part. But at least it feels like it is coming together. I have plans to print a few more ships and they I will look to print some ratlines for the vessels that I have.

Bad end to the weekend

started to move the minis that i have painted. in doing so, I managed to drop two ship sloops that shattered on hitting the ground. very frustrated. I have started the repair work but it will take a while.

I need to base these ships to help them stand up better.

Focused on Ships Again

I managed to complete the painting and assembly of a few more 1/700th ish vessels. Here is the current line up. They need more rigging done but I have not figured out how much I will plan to do.

These are from multiple sources. Starting with the back row, from left to right: a brig from Saturnalia studios (My Mini Factory), A Bermuda sloop that was resized from a 28mm one from Wargaming3d, A Ketch from Saturnalia Studios, a Ship-Sloop from Henry Turner Miniatures (My Mini Factory or Wargaming3d).

Next two rows are schooners from Black Seas. The back one painted as a Frrench Vessel with cleaner sails and the forward one painted more or less as an American vessel.

Next row is a Cutter/Sloop from Productions Diratia and a Ship Sloop from Saturnalia Studios (both found on My Mini Factory).

The front row is a Lugger from Hagen Miniatures in Germany. I still need to add sails to this vessel and some rigging.

These were great fun to paint up. Most of them were primed with the wrong primer. It added a gloss finish with it and the paint didn't always stick. I bought some Army Painter Primer for some of them that worked out much better.

I also have some others on the bench that could be in the same shape in a couple of hours of work.

On the left you can see four of the flat boats that I made. These are very simple models that I made in Tinkercad. They will work for some scenarios that I put together. Then there are two vessels from Saturnalia Miniatures. A Brig and a bomb ketch. Their sails are partially done. The masts didn't fit and I had to do some work to make them fit. Then another flatboat of mine. Lastly there is a small bomb vessel. It was the same model as the previous one but i will be rigging it as more of a cutter than a ketch.

I still have four more Black Sails schooners to paint up. However, these are very heavily armed vessels and much larger than most that I have found for the scenarios that I wrote. I also have some more Henry Turner prints that I am struggling with fitting masts with. I think I have painted most of my Saturnalia prints so far. I have two more Hagen models to paint (a gaff riged gunboat and a small cutter). I also have some wrecks and a shore battery to paint up from Hagen Miniatures.

I will be reviewing scenarios and checking on what models I am missing so I can finish up my AWI scenario book. I will use my 1/300th models as well but they work better for vessels smaller than ship-sloops.

Hobby Time

I managed to grab some hobby time today. I glued about 70% of a Team Yankee T-72 together. I also finished gluing and primed a BMP-2, also team yankee. Then I primed three T-55s (Old Glory), a QRF M60, some US Infantry (Khurasan I think) and some Russians (Khurasan maybe).

But I also did some brick work on the old Warehouse building that I put together years ago. I have finished the tin roof on it. I will add framing to the doorways, some lintels on the windows and then weather it as the brick work paper that I have looks a bit plasticy. The tin roof looks good but needs weathering as well. Looks too brand new at the moment. I am very excited about this as this building was a plain white with a black roof before.

The Team Yankee BMP-2 comes with the upper hull and turret to give you the options to make a BMP-1 instead. I glued together the turret and have the hull top. I am thinking of making a stuck in the mud version. It might make a useful objective at some point.

I have not started on the Merkava tank yet that I purchased. Nor on the M163 (?) Vulcan for the Israelis. I did get an unexpected auction win though. I placed a $1 bid on a Blue Moon corner tavern. Somehow, I won it. The shipping was expensive but still cheaper than the actual building by far. however, in double checking the auction, the picture was the saloon but the description was for building set #6. So it was still a bargain but not sure I am as happy about it. It will be fine.

I found my old documentation on how I painted my previous Cold War minis. Even found a business card with the Israeli infantry painting guide I had made. I am really looking forward to painting them up.

I still have a table full of ships that need painting. I just am not feeling it at the moment. Hopefully, I will get some time to work on this again. Or steal a few minutes daily and get this stuff knocked out.

Cold War continued

i got in two of my ebay orders. A Merkava mk1 speue and a 3d print of an M169 (?) vulcan.

The Vulcan came with some supports still attached to the cannonball they came off easily with nothing broken. Other than the banana yellow color, it is great.i will paint this for my 1982 IDF force.

Cold War Chain of Command

While I still have a bunch of ships to paint, I am being drawn to Cold War Chain of Command again. I have reviewed my miniatures again and am excited by what I have painted. I would like to paint up a second platoon of Soviets and at least another squad of US troops. I have some more armor but I have enough to start. I have some more miniatures in the cart at Brookhurst Hobbies to complete out my IDF platoon. I am just missing m203 gunners for the IDF platoon. I got some models from Wargaming3d for a Magach 6 that I want to print out. I also bought an ebay model of a Merkava mk 1 and a M163 Vulcan. This will provide some interesting support options against the Syrian T-72 that I still need to build. Of the five t-72s that I have, I will make two for the Syrians and three for the Soviets.

I picked up 3D models for a number of other vehicles. These include civilian cars, civilian trucks, T-80s, BMP-1 & 2, BRDM-2, BTR-70, BTR-80, T-55s, T-64s, T-72s, BRDM-1, M109, M1128 Stryker, USZ-469, Chieftan and HUMVEEs.

I started to print out a Magach 6. The print completely failed. I think there is an issue with my print bed. I need to sort that out. Once resolved, I think I will be in good shape.

Progress with AWI Scenarios

I have completed the Royal Navy ship list based on the information in Winfield's book on the Royal Navy of the period. The various state and Continental navy list is proving to be far more difficult as many list only the number of guns and not even the size of the gun let alone the vessel. State Navies are worse than the Continental. I purchased a new primer. The one I had been using previously was a cheap spray paint that wasn't allowing the paint to hold to it very well. I bought an Army Painter primer that I am trying now. I hope to find time this weekend to get some painting in.

New Scenario and making miniatures for it

There was a scenario that I wanted to include into the AWI book an interesting small skirmish between two vessels of the Georgia Navy and some loyalist militia. It featured a flat boat. These were vessels that were very shallow drafted and were used to transport cargo down the rivers to port cities for transport. In this instance, the Loyalist militia managed to mount a few cannon aboard the flatboat to engage the Georgia Navy.

The flat boat was used well beyond the American Revolution and would be seen on the waters of the Mississippi River during the Civil War and after.

This image is taken from https://peoplesriverhistory.us/blog/history-of-flatboating-and-a-charming-educational-film/.

Based on the image, I have guessed this flatboat to be about 12' x 36' in size. I was using an actual picture of a flatboat from closer to the Civil War for reference. These could come in a multitude of sizes as there was likely no standardization. Since the design was fairly simple, I decided to try to make a model in Tinkercad.

So I created this. An armed flat boat, an empty one, one with Cargo and one with a structure in the center. The armed flatboat that was referenced for my scenario had no details on how it was armed. My guess is a pair of six-pounder cannon. But in truth, it could have had one large gun mounted in the bow or a bunch of swivel guns. Since many actions of the American Revolutions occured near river mouths, having flat boats wouldn't be out of place on the table. I believe in the main TCG rulebook there is reference to the same.

With any luck, I will print out a few of these and see what they look like.