These poses are a little bit, lets say, 'artificial'. Who would carry a musket like that? But the moulds are from the 70's and are meant to produce 'simple' toy soldiers and this is what my AWI project is about. All my cavalry troops in this project will be very small, so this is a full unit. Maybe I add some men on foot later.
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| "An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms 1775-1783: The American Revolutionary War", Lorenz Books 2008. My only book with AWI uniforms and a very good one I think. |
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Toy soldiers from Meisterzinn moulds waiting to be painted for my AWI project.
The boards I am going to build next:
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| How about a Vauban fortress? |
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| Ok guys, has anybody seen the bridge? |
And the President of the Antwerp Tin Soldiers Club wrote what I said very often before :
"On top of that the Brexit situation with more than 50% of the traders that are usually attending no longer able to do so without huge customs problems doesn't make it any easier either. "
Let's face the reality : The CRISIS, as we used to know it, is history.
When it comes back - and it will, I am sure - it will be much smaller.
Forty-five boards are done and three more street boards are nearly ready. All in all I made 48 pieces in 14 days. Not enough for all the gaming situations but a usable amount to start with.
The boards stored in a cabinet. They don't need very much space. If I dedicate another shelf to the boards I can store about 100 of them without any problem .
Nearly there. At the end of this building frenzy I am running out of steam. Only doing some detailing and painting the streets today.
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| Cleaning the water with a wet brush. |
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| Punching holes... |
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| ...to plant reed. |
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| Swamp board. The reed is cut down because big plants would be damaged anyway when the boards are stored. |
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| Dark grey color for the cobblestone streets. Later brushed over with a lighter grey. |
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| Looks like a street to me. |
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| Done for today. |
Not so productive today, I had too much else to do. Did detailing the lake/swamp boards. I am near to end of the first and biggest batch of the terrain boards.
This is a very old and I think nowadays almost unknown modelling technique : making cobblestone streets from eggshells.
First of all a size comparison. The 10 cm wide street that I mentioned days ago looks more or less correct with miniatures from 28 to 54 mm size. Its a full road for the small guys, a good one for 40 mm soldiers and still wide enough for the big ones.
And it has to be enough because nothing really suits 54 mm miniatures, most of the time it is impossible to support them with things that fit to their scale. A castle for example that is in the 54 mm scale would use up half of the room I am sitting in now.
The process is easy. First : Eat the eggs. No, I am kidding, simply collect eggshells for a while. Peel off the membrane and keep only the shell itself.
Apply glue on the surface of your road, put a piece of eggshell on the glue and press it down so that it breaks into small pieces. Arrange the pieces with a pointed tool.
Yes, I could have bought ready made cobblestone foil or something. But that would make me depend on them. I can make or repair eggshell streets as much or often I want (... and as long as I eat eggs). And I can make small ways or places with it and use the same stuff wherever I want.
At the end of the day I paved four street pieces and started a fifth. But I am running out of eggshells now. Hmmm, what are we going to eat today?
A lot of time consuming detailing today but no picture of all the boards I made.
A really nice effect brings so called foliage. I had that lying around for ages and I never expected to ever use it. But glued to the grass - preferably somewhere to conceal edges - looks nice and adds structure to the landscape.
PVA glue dissolved in water (about 1:10 or thinner) and applied drop by drop with a pipette helps to fix loose grass fibers. (It dries transparent, the white color disappears.)
Finally the resin on the lake/swamp boards has hardenend.
Today I am going to add the grass mats and the loose grass fibers to all the parts that are ready for that. As we can see I am making more and more serial work. Not much to say about, only that I needed the whole day.
The rivers are getting wet today. The one mistake I made is: some of them already have the grass mat on the embankment. And this makes covering the river with gloss varnish in the end dangerous since there are always some fibers falling of.
Step 1: Paint "Dark Sky" with a one inch brush on the river in the same direction that the water flows. All over the surface by the way, this here is not ready
Step 2 : Adding structure with a little bit of "Ultramarine Blue".
Step 3: And a "Angel Green" here and there. Very wet and thin. You can repeat all three steps if something does not look 'right'.
Finally, the water is coated with gloss varnish. I use a varnish from an art supply store that won't become yellow over time. (Company : KREUL)
And I cover the pieces with cardboard so that they don't collect so much dust.
When I poured the resin into the pond and the lakes I saw again that the previous painting was probably nearly unnecessary because the painted structures almost disappeared.
As with the first swamp - I forgot to describe it back then - I added a few drops of blue and green ink into the resin and stirred it up with a brush to form some lighter or darker areas.
Today I dry brushed all the boards from yesterday and also painted the green color on the outside of the pieces. You may have noted this before and asked yourself what is is good for. The idea was to prevent light lines from being visible when some boards don't fit. The other aspect is, that I cover all free parts of the wooden boards with paint to keep moisture out.
The result of some hours using the wood filler on the parts made before. I have never used so much of it in such a short time. Does not look like it, but I needed several hours to accomplish that.
Two more rough terrain boards: raised ground and a sandpit.
The outcome so far. Not finalized, the rivers still need paint and the boards some small plants to complete the picture.
