Rock Outcroppings

 I decided that if I am going to play a Greek Andartes army then I could probably use some rocky terrain. I haven't made any rocky terrain in a good number of years and thought I would give it a try again using rigid foam insulation. I know a lot of people use tree bark to make rocks, but I don't like the look of it all that much. Thus the reason I tried the foam insulation. I don't think it turned out to bad. I tried to vary the size quite a bit and so the outcroppings vary in size from slightly larger than man sized up to around 12 inches or more.

The center piece is made from a single slab of foam and is supposed to be two rock outcroppings with a small saddle between them.

This is actually one of my favorites, though I think that it could use a little rock debris on the ledges to break up the straight lines, and perhaps a little work on the overhanging bits in the first picture.

Again, another one with multiple rocks outcropping. 

The two smaller rocks.

The biggest one of the bunch with a few boulders laying on top of the large exposed rock shelf. Below are a few overview shots of all of the pieces together. A pretty good spread across the table though I would like to do a few more to get a really rock strewn table.

I just bought the Citadel gaming mat as well. I scored it at a local hobby store that doesn't specialize in miniatures, and so I found it on the clearance shelf for half price. A pretty good deal at $15.00 considering these things are out of production now. Though, I am now kinda partial to my $8.00 green blanket from Target.

Foam Tank

So this weekend I got a little tired of painting and decided to take a break and do something else. I have a lot figures for my VACW campaign but I don't have anything armor wise. So I thought, I would see if I could slap something together using some foam. I didn't have any expectation that anything would come of it, but it turned out not to bad. My only concern is that the thing doesn't look very 1930ish in design and might be a bit to advanced looking to be honest.

I just started cutting out pieces until I had a basic shape blocked out then though I would add some pins to make it looked like riveted construction. I don't much care for the pins, they don't look the part very well. I think they are too large and flat and so I will pull them out before I go any farther and cover those areas with card stock like I have done with other areas. So if anyone knows of something good to use as rivets I would love to know.

The front hatch is just another piece of card with two bits of wire added above to act as hinges. Not sure what else if anything I should add to the front. Also I have now idea how to do the tracks and road wheels yet, will have to think about it for a while. Was thinking to have them mostly covered to make it easier.

I built two inter-changeable turrets for the beast. The first one is reminiscent of a Soviet T-26, but not an exact copy. The lower one reminds more of a Early WWII German turret a little bit.

So there  you go. My first attempt at building a vehicle. My second is underway as I found the perfect bits for it this weekend while I was out at the American Science Surplus store. This place is awesome by the way, I used to shop this store online before we moved up here. Yes! this store is nearby, and I go every chance I get, just to much cool stuff to check out.

Tower

This is a model that I had been planning on building for quite a while but kept putting off to do other projects. Finally, the weekend before last I had an entire Saturday to myself and so I decided to get started on this one. After about four or five hours I had most of the model mocked up and ready to go. The building is kind of vague, maybe it's an old monastery, church or just a clock tower.

 The only things that remained after I took this picture, was to add in the rubble and paint the model.

I added the rubble on Sunday night. This was done by covering the area with glue and then sprinkling the area with clay kitty litter and a mix of small gravel (model train ballast). After that I let the whole thing sit and dry overnight. Then the next day I shook off everything that didn’t stick and then poured glue over the top of that and spread it around so that everything was covered. This helps keep everything attached and where it was supposed to be. While that was drying I cut out some single-sided cardboard and added pieces of roof tile to the rubble.  After that I let the whole thing dry overnight again. 

Then finally on Wednesday I started painting. I did a couple of thin coats of color on everything. Painting the walls a light brown or linen color and then washing them with a dark brown / black mix. After that I highlighted the walls with the original color to make the high points stand out. The stonework I painted a light gray but I didn’t like all that much so I went over it with a light brown color.  As you can from the pictures, the light brown color didn’t cover up the gray so it is still quite visible. I painted the wood timbers and the floor a dark brown.  The rubble I painted the same color as the walls then washed several times with the brown / black wash.  After that I picked out a few bits and painted them to match the dressed stone and painted the busted tiles in the rubble. After that I painted the roofs. These I painted with an orange color then painted various areas of the tile light gray and dark gray. After this dried I repainted the whole roof again with a slightly watered down orange in order to tone down the gray colors.

This was where I finished on Wednesday night. I had planned to go over the building again and give everything at least another coat of paint and repaint the dressed stone which I didn’t like. On Thursday I threw this building in the car with the rest of my stuff and headed up to the Game store to play some Bolt Action. Well, the model never made it back home.  I ended selling it to one of the owners of the FLGS, who really liked it, even though I told him that it wasn’t done. It turned out to be a small consolation prize for the fact that I let a guy who had never played before run my Soviet Army and he crushed me and my Germans under his boot heel. Well you know what they say, “if you can’t beat them, rock in the corner and cry”, or something along those lines.

So on Friday I realized that I hadn’t taken any pictures of the tower since I had started painting it Wednesday, so I took a few minutes out of my busy day and stopped off at my FLGS and take some pictures.

As you can see in the last picture the roof of the tower is removable so that you can put a sniper team or observer in there.  The bottom floor is also big enough that I could fit my AT gun in the bottom floor or put a squad up on the second floor to shoot out the windows.

The Half-timbered House. Part 2: Everything Else

After a short break I started working on the half-timbered house again.  Is started by cutting the eaves, for which I just measures up 4” on both sides, marked this, then found the center of the top edge and connected the dots. After marking both of these off I etched out the plan for my timbers and cut them out as well.  I decided to go for a simple plan with no windows and some straight forward timber placement. 

After cutting out the foam along the timbers the area in the center of the stucco walls is much higher that the rest of the area. You can use a file, as I mentioned in part 1 to get rid of these. Or you can use a box cutter and lay it down as flat as you can get it, even bending it slightly and cut it off flat, as shown in the photo below. Making sure to not cut your thumb off.

The next step was to make a rabbet cut on either side of both of the side walls, and then glue the walls together. The rabbet cut was made using my Master Airscrew balsa stripper.

The cuts were not deep enough to detach the foam, so a little extra cutting with a hobby knife was needed to make the cuts deep enough to get it out. I should note that when doing this, to be careful when cutting the back of the exterior face of the building. As cutting to deep could cut through or even cut off part of the side. So again, just be careful to control the depth at which you cut.

Once you have these removed you can glue them together, I use a brand of craft glue called Tacky Glue, which is pretty common and it works fine. When gluing the pieces together I put the glue on then spread it around in a thin layer then put the pieces together, and use pins to keep them together while the glue dries. Occasionally I have with the pieces not fitting together very well. To help alleviate this problem I put some sand paper flat on my working surface and then take the wall that it causing the problem and sand it flat. You can also straighten out the inside of the rabbet cut  if needed, by wrapping some sand paper around two sides a small wooden block and lightly sanding. If your corners still are not as flush as you would like, or separate a little while gluing there a few more things you can try to get around this problem. The first, is to take some of those little bits of foam that you cut off from the face of the house, smear a little glue on both sides and then and shove them in the cracks, and once they are dried you can cut them off flush. You can also cover any unsightly cracks by filling them with glue and flocking and making it look like the area is covered with moss or ivy. 

While waiting for this to dry I made the chimney. This was done by taking one of the excess pieces I cut off when I did the eaves on the side walls. Since the bottom angle of this matches the pitch of the roof (since that’s what we cut it off of) it works out really well.  Just trim it up a little, and then etch in a brick or rock pattern as you like. I topped mine off with a thin strip of foam slightly larger than the chimney, and two bits from a stirring stick that were secured by drilling into the foam then gluing them in place.

The next thing to work on are the windows. You need to decide what type of windows you want.I decided to go with something fairly simple as you can see in the pictures. I glued one strip across the window, and then divided the upper pane into two halves. The bottom windows I split into three panes.

My biggest problem here is keeping track of the windows and putting them back in the right spot instead of getting them all mixed up.

For the roof I use card board. I start by measuring the roof and then add 1/4” for both sides (1/2” overall) to the measurements. You can add more if you want a larger overhang. I cut this out as a single piece when possible, then score it down the center line and fold over. On this particular house there seemed to be a shortage of appropriately sized cardboard so I used two pieces and taped them together with masking tape. After you have your roof cut, just glue it straight to the building. Smearing the glue around in a thin even layer and pin it until it dries.  You may notice the house isn’t exactly straight but gluing the roof on should help bring everything back into line.

So after getting some feedback on the first part of the tutorial, I decided to go back and make some changes to the original walls. I added a few extra timbers under the windows. This highlights another advantage to using polystyrene foam, its flexibility.  To add the timbers I cut flattened out the areas where I wanted to add the timbers then glued thin strips of foam to the face of the wall. When the glue dried I added the wood grain to match the other timbers. In two other areas I cut back the foam a bit and made the area into a brick wall in order to show the underlying structure. You can see all of this in the pictures below in the Roof section.

Starting on the roof required getting the material required, mainly my 1/4" strips of card stock that I had ran through my strip shredder many projects ago. These I cut, in bunches, into shingles of various lengths.

I also attached the chimney to the roof. On this house I choose the center of the house but you could put it on either end or wherever you prefer. After pining that in place I started putting the shingles on.

 

Putting the shingles on is relatively easy. I just put down a bead a glue from the left side to the right, starting with the bottom row. Then I lay down a layer of shingles. After the first row, I put the glue half on the row below and half on the cardboard above the previous row. I generally leave a little gap between shingles and occasionally put them on at a slight angle so that some of the shingles look a little loose. I try to keep the rows as straight as possible but there will always be a little variation. If you have trouble keeping a straight line, you might try drawing a line, or lines across the roof to use as a guide. For me, if it is reasonably straight, it's all good.

After you are done with the roof and it has all dried you can come back with a sharp pair of scissors and straighten up the edge of the roof, or you can leave it as is. The final step is the roof cap. For this house I choose to use a center timber as the top of the roof. So I cut a piece of foam and glued it to the peak of the roof. If you want you can also use a strip of balsa wood and sit it in the gap of the cardboard at the peak of the roof, which is what I usually do. In this case, since I taped the roof together I went with the foam.

If you look closely you will notice I forgot to paint the underside of the eaves. Oh the shame!

The next step is painting. I painted the stucco a light linen or cream color. Then I gave it a wash of a slightly darker color then highlight it with the same linen color. Timbers I paint dark brown then dry brush with a lighter brown. The chimney and stone work I kept a brown color, but gray, red or orange would work fine I think. The shingles I painted a shade of brown then highlighted slightly. If you wanted a more weathered look you could paint them gray, or a gray brown color. You could also paint them blue, red or green if you wanted.

Here is the final and parting shot. All done and over with...well except somewhere along the way I decided I didn't like the windows so I decided to add the fancy diagonal frame pattern on the bottom pane of the window. For this I used carbon fiber screening material that you can pick up from the hardware section of Wal-Mart and pretty much any DIY center as well. This stuff runs about $10.00 for a gigantic roll that will last an eternity if all you use it for are windows. To add these to the windows I cut out little sections, turned them to a 45 degree angle and put my window face down on it, and cut around the window. I then glued them into place with some tacky glue. When dry I shoved my windows back in place. You will also want to paint your windows before you do this, otherwise you will get an excruciating exercise in tedium trying to paint all of those little diamond shaped panes of glass. I painted my window glass a pretty benign light gray color, but light blue, green, yellow, or brown will also work. As many of these houses were built in the days before clear glass.