Windows and a door

I managed a bit more work on the house last night. I got the front first floor windows applied. I applied a touch of brass paint to the door knob after this. In addition, I finished the second chimney. I had a harder time with the brick paper this time for some reason. I just started to tile the roof as well. I got one whole strip applied before I had to stop for the night. I didn't get a picture of the roof tiles. Maybe tonight. In the picture, you can see the porch laying upside down to the right. After the rooftiles go on, I will put on the porch. That will let me determine how much room I have for the upper floor windows. In all honesty, I think the building should be taller. Possibly by another 10mm or so. It will be tight between the porch and roof to get them in there. But it is starting to come together.

This Old House

The front and back steps came in yesterday from my printer. Also I received my package from Warbases with the roofing tiles. These made it downstairs to the hobby table. I am now trying to figure out how to paint and assemble the building. I have the blockw with brick paper on them ready for the house. I think I will have to glue these to the bottom of the building before gluing that to the base.

The initial pass was to prime the pieces black and then drybrush the base building white. I am adding Brick paper to the chimneys and the base bricks.

Over the weekend, I managed to finish one chimney and start on the second. I also started to paint the windows and doors.

I also managed to finish bricking the supports of one of the porches and painted the porch and front steps.

This week, I am hoping to finish the doors and windows and start to glue them to the building. The roofing needs to be done. I started to cut out my Warbases tiles. I am rather concerned with getting these to line up correctly.

I also did some work on the TRE Games snake rail fencing that I purchased. They are nice kits but look a little large to me for 15mm miniatures. I made one section of fencing.

The upper rail is head height with a 15mm figure. Here it is compared to my existing snake rail fances.

I may skip the 'x' supports and upper rail. I also need to sort out how I will base these.

House on Horseshoe Bend

I have received the model back from the printer. It is looking pretty good. I made the windows and doors of the house separate from the frame. The porch and porch roof & railins are separate items as well. I also had the chimneys printed separately and the foundation columns. Once he brought them to me today, I realized that I was lacking steps up to the porch. I spent a few minutes working on that and sent him a new file. the plan is to attempt to assemble the building on a base. I have sent a set of steps to a friend to print as well.

The roof will be scratch built. I have ordered several sheets of shingles from Warbases. Somewhere I have a a sheet of their 15mm shingles that I will need to find. The new building will be taller and wider than the exising building that I have. Since I have no pictures so far of what is printed, I took a screen shot from Thingiverse of a partially assembled structure.

I am working on the base blocks currently. I am attaching brick paper to them and then will glue them to the base. This is slow going.

In the mean time, an order from TRE Games just game in. I received three packs of Snake Rail Fencing and a windmill. All useable for What a Cowboy and the fences for AWI Sharp Practice. Honestly, these seem to be a complicated model. They are very small pieces of wood and the instructions are the same as if I were to attempt to build these at actual size. The windmill looks relatively easier. What I like is that TRE Games put some painters tape on the back of each sprue to prevent the pieces from falling out in transit. For such small pieces, this is great.

The next best part is the smell of the cut wood that comes with opening each pack. I really like that. I do think I will need additional sections of fencing. TRE Games was very good with communicating and sent updates from ordering on Sunday to delivery today. I am looking forward to trying some more of their products.

Mountain Lard Prep

While working on completing preparations for Mountain Lard, I have finished with fitting the miniatures to their sabot bases. I have decided to lay out the table and run a practice game with what I have. I still want to replace the plantation house with a larger one. Hopefully, I will pick up the replacement building this week.

Here is the table layout so far.

I think I will add a few more trees to the overall layout. In addition, I was not happy with the snalke rail fencing that I have. I have several sets. The first is from Terry Haney that are rather nicely based. These are great but only have enough to barely surround the farm itself. The fecing that is extending past the end of the house is some that I had made. It does not fit in with the other fencing that I have. I just placed an order from Tre miniatures for some of the fencing that they have for salw. I like the look of it in the pictures on the site but will see what I end up with.

I had purchased some additional milita figures on eBay and they arrived this week. I am not sure what I will do with these. They look far more uniform than the others that I have. I may use them for long service militia. Or just a regular unit. Will have to see.

House on Horseshoe Bend

As I close in on finishing the miniatures for the Battle at the House on Horsehoe bend, I am dissatisfied with the plantation house that I have. It is an old model from Old Glory Miniatures from their Americana line that is now discontinued. It is a great model. Well built and very robust. But, it is too small to represent one of the grandest houses of the North Carolina back country. As such, I am looking at how to build one. The house itself should be simple as it is basically a large rectangle. There are two chimneys, one on either side centered on the house. On the front and back there is a porch that extends the entire width of the property. There are five smaller windows on the front and back of the upstairs. The front of the house has four windows and a central door. The back has two windows and two doors. One door is centered with a semi-circular window above the door and another door to its right that blends in with the rest of the wall. The two windows are to the left. The house is raised on some brick supports and there are steps up to the front and back porch. There is a low railing across the front and back porch.

My thought is to make a model of this in tinkercad. I am going to divide this into multiple parts. The first one will be the main building. Then the brick supports that the building rests on. Next will be the chimneys followed by the porch roof, porch base and railing. Or so is my thought. The base building and the planking is done. I have made the front door and attached it. The windows are next. There will be 3 different designs. The first level all have the same look. The second floor also has the same design. On the two ends, there is an even narrower window that is for the attic. All are similar in design so that once I get the first floor windows done, I should be able to knock out the others based off of it.

I will shingle the roof once it is printed. The reason being that I am unable to figure out how to model shingles in tinkercad. And I am likely too lazy to learn.

This is what I have so far.

I have decided to separate out the base building from the doors and windows. I have also eliminated the roof as this will be added later.

The Mountain Lard Scramble

With a goal in mind, I managed a few hours of work to get miniatures rebased for Mountain Lard. The rebasing efort went fairly well. The bases and sabots were flocked.

Once that was all dry and set, I began to work on the bases to get them to fit back in the Sabot bases. This required a good bit of trimming. In some cases, i had to cut away part of the base itself to make them fit back into the sabot. The process was rather time consuming.

Once fitted back to the sabot, most of the figures held in rather well. I am just over half way through with the rebasing effort. I am pleased with the look. The new basing has recuced the width of my troops considerably from the original penny basing. I would say the frontage is about half of the original. I have round leader sabots for the leaders giving a number on the back to identify which leader is which. Given this, here is Colonel Philip Alston's Regiment of Militia.

Actually this is larger than force as he only have a three groups of militia. I have a three more groups to finish off. Then I have to figure out basing for a "skirmish" group. I am not sure how I will handle that yet. I also am looking at what figure to use for Colonel David Fanning. I think I will just pick on of the Provincial officers that I have so he will be in a suitable red coat. And just because one can never have too many militia, I just bought another group of 12 militia off of eBay. These probably won't be ready for the game. But I am getting closer to being ready for April.

Mountain Lard - Sharp Practice Game

Coming up in April, there is an event in North Carolina called Mountain Lard. I am going to be able to go. I would like to play some games while I am there but I thought I might run a game of Sharp Practice. I am looking at running the Battle of Horseshoe Bend that also happened in that state in 1781. The battle is a rather small one that occured on a house on a small hill amidst some fields. Over the weekend, I have been working on my Militia troops to rebase them. I have them all rebased now with texture on the small bases and they just need some flock. The movement trays is the tricky part. The figures still need to fit in the movement trays. I primed the trays black and then painted the tops. I need to add some sand and flock to the tops of the movement trays still. I figure just a couple of hours of work is left to get these ready for the game. After that, I need some kind of markerson the bases to signify which troop types are which to help the players. That and review what other things I need. (Unloaded, Shock and the like. I really don't have enough casualty figures. I have a few but never enough.

Once all of the figures are sorted out, I am going to cull through my terrain collection to attempt to sort out if I have what I need. I think I do. Most of the battle is over open fields. The house in the center of the table is the focal point of the battle where the defenders are hiding.

I am thinking about making some filler spots for when losses are raking on the movement trays. I had printed a bunch of tricorn hats from the Henry Turner miniatures that I bought. Gluing these to a stand and dropping it in the empty spots when a casualty is taken. This is the lowest priority on my list at the moment. This should be a fun event.

What A Cowboy - Project Wargaming Buildings & Warbases

I had a couple of buildings printed for me that I bought from Project Wargaming. One is the two story Saloon. It has a fully detailed interior with both floors playable. It is really nicely built with an external staircase on the outside. The supports were not as difficult to remove as I thought they would be. The front overhand and boardwalk also printed well and I was able to get the supports off without too much trouble.

The second building is the corner store. That has an angled overhang and boardwalk that the supports have been driving me crazy. The building comes with a printed base that the overhand and boardwalk are part of. It also includes options where these are separate. I am still removing the supports from within it. Hopefully, I can complete that job later this week.

I have also bought some small store buildings. These are really nice as they are basically one building with three different false fronts and multiple roof and awning options. I have printed one in the past. I would like to print a few more. Once I figure out how to keep flat items from curling up on my printer.

I also dropped an order for a few Warbases buildings that I am waiting to show up. I picked up items with two purposes in mind. To have a trading post type of settlement and then more buildings for the main town. These buildings will have a different look from the 3d printed ones that I have. I am not sure yet about using them together. Will have to see after they come in. I am looking at what I can do to base these buildings. I think the 3d printed ones would definitely need it as they will be much more fragile than the Warbases buildings.

I still have a cantina from Sarissa Precision that I need to complete as well. The Sarissa buildings seem finer with their details than Warbases. Having the variety is a good thing though. I am also thinking about some Game Craft Minis buildings and some Tre Games buildings.

Much still to do.

What A Cowboy - A School House

I have had absolutely no time to paint over this past weekend. No progress was made on the existing miniatures either. But, I did have a late night at work monitoring things and had time on my hands. I began to work on a School House for my town. I managed to make a mock up of the school house based on the one from some pictures that I found and the excelent paper model from Eric Hotz's Whitewash City. Here is what the model looks like in TinkerCad. It is just small enough in 1/100th to fit on my build plate!

I have the files sliced and ready to go. I am not sure about the roof. I was trying to figure out what to do with it. I did not put in a stove pipe into the roof. I probably should go back and do that. The roof on the Whitewash City model was a planked roof. Many of the buildings that I saw pictures of had a shingle roof. I have some left over shingle sheets from either Sarissa or Warbases that I may use for this. That could provide a nice look to the building. I made the planking effects go deeper this time into the building to try and have them show up in the scale. So far I am happy with what io have done.

One shange is that I did not include a boardwalk section in front of the building. The one I did for the small office did not work out that well. It lifted up during curing and was so thin that it broke in half while pulling it up off of the curing plate. I will need to create something for that but it will be so thin, I am looking more towards scratch building the boardwalk rather than printing one.

Anyway, it has been fun to work on. I will throw it up for free on the PayHip site once I have a chance to print it myself or get someone to.

Weekend Update

Sharp Practice - AWI

Saturday was rather productive. I made some progress on my AWI miniatures. The British Legion had some bases finished off for their first group. I went as simple as possible given the small size of the bases and trays.

I have the other group to do as well.but still it is good to have at least one completed. The infantry has one group that is at about 60% painted. Another that is 10% painted and an additional four big men and a standard bearer that are just primed.

I was able to get a few minutes to work on the bases of my provincials. One group is rebased but needs finishing. I still have plenty more to rebase and even more to paint.

The British Legion Cavalry didn't get touched. I have 8 cavalry that are six cavalrymen, a bugler and an officer. Then I have more command figures. At some point, some will have to be used as troopers. To save myself some painting, I will likely only paint 1 bugler. I also have horse holders and horses to account for a dismounted group.

Lastly for the AWI, I have all seven of my Militia groups on the new basing. I have a single group of militia skirmishers remaining. I am happy with how these are looking in formation.

What A Cowboy

For WAC, I painted up the Peter Pig Sheriff figure. I really enjoyed painting this. I am not a great painter, but it was fun painting him up. I still need to base these miniatures.

I also managed to get most of a store done for the Mexican town. I think I will change the windows. But it is close to done. I should have enough terrain now for a game on the Mexican village. I have number of buildings still in my want list at My Miniature Factory still but I have enough to start.

I also started work on a train station. I had no idea what I was going to do with the building. I decided to start with painting the brick and stonework on the building. THen I will drybrush over this. I want to wood to be painted and have the building look well maintained. I just don't know what to do with it yet. I need to google some pictures.