10K !!!!

MASSIVE GIVEAWAY

(if you're only 1 inch tall)

I am absolutely astounded that I have reached the blogging milestone of 10,000 page visits, though without the weird Russian thing a while back I think I'd only really be at about 9k but I'm going to take it.  

The numbers were slowly building despite my efforts to take many months between posts but there has been a real rush of late all thanks to your love of Pound shops, this has been my most popular post by a very long way with more than double the number of visits compared to anything else I've done, and it's nearly hit a thousand views on its own.

By way of celebrating this achievement and as a thank you I've decided to do a little give away.  You to could be the owner of a golden Buddha statue from the pound shop.  "Ooooooo" I hear you all cry.  All you need to do is comment on this post with something complimentary, or even constructive criticism, by midnight (GMT) on Saturday September 30th and I will randomly pick from the comments and then be in touch with the lucky winner to arrange getting it to you.

This could be yours, or one very like it anyway

Good Luck & Thanks for stopping by

Opening Tins of Gold

Well not actual tins of gold, but Golden Virginia tins which contain (hopefully) much plastic soldier goodness.

It has been pointed out to me that whilst there was some interesting stuff in GR III - The Final Shelf of Discovery - Part 2 there wasn't very much about the little guys themselves.  So, in an effort to redress that oversight, let's have a delve in to the tins and boxes of my childhood obsession with 1:72/1:76/HO/OO toy soldiers, or fine scale military miniatures as we now like to call them.

Boxing Clever

So let's start with the original boxes, at least we have an idea what's going to be in them.

The Hills Are Alive

Not a singing nun in sight, but maybe the odd bit of edelweiss.  I think this might be classed as 'mint in box' as it is all in perfect condition as if you had just brought it home from the toy shop military miniature emporium.  More details of this set can be found here.

Green Devils

Fallschirmjager on the sprue and with less flash than the ones reviewed here by PSR. Another MIB set which may have been worth something before Airfix reissued lots of sets.

Comrades

 

I didn't have any recollection of these but I must have bought them some time in the early 1980s.  Nice sculpting but some odd poses and quite a few of each.  The maxims a really nice.  More details from our friends at PSR here.

Our Friends Across The Channel

   

PSR don't rate this very highly for it's accuracy but WWII French troops are pretty thin on the ground, in fact these were pretty much it until recently.  More details here.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

A bit of a mixed bag here, all US troops but a mix of Matchbox Infantry and Airfix Marines.  Here's what PSR has to say about the two sets here and here.

G'Day Ya Pommy B@$*#&*

The first tin of gold and a display of my childhood lack of knowledge of actual military organisation, they all had machine guns ok so that made them a machine gun platoon in my naive eyes.  No a mix of Airfix and Matchbox once again, but not a huge number either.  Lets hope the rest of the tins hold more than this otherwise I'm going to be more than a little disappointed.

PSR's thoughts here and here.

By jingo somebody has had a bash at painting these Aussie bad boys

So that's enough excitement for one post, keep your eyes open for the next gripping instalment of plastic soldier goodness as I open more boxes and tins to see what we have in this garage time capsule.

* Thanks to the guys at PlasticSoldierReview.com for all their great work keeping us up to date with everything tiny plastic men related.

Afghan/North African Compound - Part 2

Somewhere I promised a comparison shot of my scratch built compound and the 3D printed building I've been given.  So here it is...

I think they scale reasonably well tbh, yes the door and windows are bigger on the 3D print, but the level of the protruding beams is roughly the same so I think we can get away with it.

Having given the 3D stuff a coat or two of paint the scratch built effort looked extremely stark in it's pure brilliant white, so it also got a quick slap of cheap house paint to make it blend with the rest of the evolving village.

Short and sweet post this time I know, but hopefully the next part will see a bit more colour depth added and the courtyard given a bit more attention.

A Nice Little Extra - Part 2

For a change I have not been progressing at my usual glacial pace and have actually got somewhere with my 3D printed gifts.  I've based everything on card and built up the ruined buildings a little more to offer some differentiation and to fill in the holes the printing process leaves when it is interrupted mid print.

I've also started to create some generic rubble which will be stuck around the collapsed walls.

Normal house filler applied to the walls and the half printed stairs

A blast of undercoat and the filler merges in to the rest of the walls quite nicely

After a liberal undercoat to the complete adobe house I've slapped on a quick coat of emulsion house paint, in this case Natural Twine from Wilkos.  For a quid it should see this project out.  A single coat doesn't seem to cover very well so it'll have to have a second after the one pictured below.

3D print next to homespun scratch build.  They don't size too badly next to each other

So with a second coat and 24 hours drying it's looking a lot better, so it can come back in to the house to have some details and aging/weathering applied.  Plans include nice tiled floor and window shutters made form coffee stirrers, the 3D pinted ones looked a bit rubbish so have been broken up and added to the rubble box.

All ready to be brought back in to the house

First coat of paint and they're looking good.  Rubble should give then each their own character

I've always enjoyed playing with fire a bit too much so making burnt beams for the rubble piles was a perfect opportunity to indulge my pyromaniac tendencies, all be it in a very controlled and limited way.

Look out for part 3 coming soon as the pressure rises to have something to show Mr M who kindly did the printing.

Spray Booth

To Spray or Not To Spray?

As I wanted to start spraying my models (for the big areas) rather than hand painting and making a bit of a mess of them I had decided on starting with the cans of spray from Humbrol as a first tester of the market.  If this proved successful and I wanted to carry on I might consider a reasonably priced airbrush set up, but we would have to wait and see about that.  

Not In My Back Yard!

So with that decision made for the time my mind turned to where I could actually do the spraying.  When I was a youngster and my mother was none the wiser I would do it in my bedroom with the window open and a few bits of newspaper and perhaps a bit of a box to protect the carpet etc.  But now I am a responsible adult and realize how much carpets and furniture and wotnot cost there's no way I'll be doing in the house (and SWMBO wouldn't let me with in a mile of the house with a spray can).  So the next place to consider would be the great outdoors where there is plenty of ventilation, but that would severely limit when I would be able to do it do to the famous British weather, coupled with living in a fairly rural coastal area with more wind than the big city.  So this left the garage which at the time of these thoughts was more than a little messy (see Operation Garage) so things were kinda put on hold for a while.

Boxing Clever

Whilst this may seem a bit of a tangent, our dishwasher was starting to fail a few months back with half the contents needing rewashing as it had failed to reach them with the washing jets.  What has that got to do with spray painting models I can hear you asking?  Well we bought a new dishwasher and there was a rather splendid three sided inner box made out of 1cm thick card that was incredibly sturdy and I instantly had it reserved as the walls of my spray booth!  Along with the lid bit to keep it all in line.  the card was of such thickness that I figured it should take staples well which could be the easiest way to hold it together.

Squaring The Box

So that was the base and sides of the of the booth sorted and I needed to figure out how to finish it all off.  This went through several variations including using clear plastic dustsheets across the top and lots of other lighting ideas.  But eventually (and I mean eventually) I have settled on the following ideas.

A Piece o'Cake

I could already foresee issues with getting around to the other side of anything I was spraying and I recall seeing somewhere a turntable being used to get around to all sides of a model.  Where to obtain such a turntable... PING!  Light bulb moment.  Rotating cake decorating stand - £6.95 from Amazon Prime -
Bingo.  Ordered.  Arrived next day.

Seems a good buy, and 4.3 star rated

Blinded By The Light

With the main body of the spray booth constructed the interior was a little dark and despite the plan for a clear roof it needed more light.  The easiest way I could think to get some descent light in there was with some clip on lights you can pick up from most DIY stores and some of the discount shops in the UK.  I thought 3 would be plenty, one for each of the sides, with some cheap daylight bulbs (they can be had for as little as £2.99 nowadays).

Putting it All Together

So the plans changed a little as I got everything together but I think it has actually worked out alright.

Marking it out

Getting it stuck together with some weights on top to hold it down, used PVA wood glue as well as staples as they didn't hold it as well as well as I had hoped.

Components assemble

Nice powerful daylight bulbs, bargain at £2.99 each and should put out plenty of light to see by.











OK so those pictures were all taken back in April when everything was going according to plan, though slowly.  Then life sort of got in the way and before I knew it we're in August and I spent more time doing Couch to 5k than I have on painting!  So with a few days spare after coming back from a nice sunny holiday the partly completed spray booth started to call to me from the garage, or more it was making sarcastic comments to me every time I went in there.  
And you know what there wasn't that much left to complete it really, apart from having to clear out lots of spiders and cobwebs

The lights were glued in place with a little bolt to help keep them in place, the cake stand was glued in the middle as I didn't want it moving around. and I added a bit of a roof as I didn't want stray dust and dirt just falling in if I was spraying.

All done, with a little roof added to keep some of the dust out

A 1/72 Curtiss Tomahawk for scale

Getting the Dak primed, at last

It's almost a production line now

Keeping them covered so the dust doesn't get to them

So there we are, finally completed my spray booth and started to spray stuff.  Just need to mask up the Dak and I'll be able to make much quicker progress with the sprays for the two top colours already sat waiting to be used.

Happy bunny.

An Unexpected Find

Well what a turn up for the books.  As things have been progressing with my Afghan/North African/Middle East compound (not decide which it is yet, the colour will determine it I think) I had run out of my to hand matchstick pile and so needed to get some more out of my long term storage, or at least where I hoped I had stored them many years ago, namely a big tool box bought especially for figures and painting stuff and shoved in a corner under the office desk (doubling as a foot stool). 
SWMBO has an identical one with card making/scrapbooking stuff in, they were pretty cheap considering the size and have proven to be quite sturdy and up to the job.  Anyhow I digress....

Baby brother more or less
 emptied when the bureau arrived

So I dragged out the weighty chest and flipped the first lid and marvelled at the amount of unpainted lead there was (I know a small pile by many peoples standards) and how many of them I had completely forgotten I had.

Dwarves, human and orcs in various states of finish

But I needed those matchsticks, so lid was closed and I  moved on to the interior of the chest.  The inner storage compartment was empty of anything of interest, lifting this inner tray away what created my eyes was quite a surprise!!  Three 1/72 armour kits I had completely forgotten about, and a bag of primitively finished and unfinished armour, along with two boxes of painted orcs and uruks and a bag of more unfinished lead.  Along with a couple of HO/OO railway wagons (for some bizarre reason).

Ooooo, a box full of goodies

99p for a kit, oh the days of cheap innocence

Not my finest work, but hey I was young what can I say.

The M113 was a terrible casting an today I would have sent it
back and demanded a replacement and/or my money back.

I can only assume I had these from a friend?

Old Citadel Regiments of Renown, with some supplements.

I think these were the first figures I ever bought, shocking paint jobs!

A mystery bag of lead.....

From the scratchings on the bottom I think these are Garrison figures, probably from the 1980s.

These fine fellows I couldn't identify a maker, but if anybody can please let me know.

Oh and the matchsticks?  They were in the baby brother toolbox which I hadn't completely emptied, or so it appears.

Ahh there they are, the little buggers!