Let's clean up this town!

Cleanliness is next to Godliness or so they say, and as De Lancy has no church yet I thought that a bath house might be a half way decent alternative. I also had a couple of ideas on how to make some of the tented temporary buildings which often sprang up as a town was growing, so the bath house is located in just such a structure.

Basic framework done

The core of the building is made of cardboard with a balsa and coffee stirrer frontage.  The external timber footings are also coffee stirrers and the canvas is printer paper laid over the card and soaked in PVA wood glue.  A nice simple construction technique.  As always the key is to measure twice and cut once.  In this case that meant drawing the front elevation at full scale and then measuring the sides and sloped top on the drawing so I knew the dimensions to make the card tent top and sides.  I was still out by a small amount but the papier-mache covering hid that.  The trickiest part was gluing the front and back to the top and sides piece, but I got there in the end.  To create the illusion of a frame I cut some thin strips of card and glued them to the tent shape which worked rather well.  I put a groove down the centre of the coffee stirrers (length ways) to make each one look like two narrower planks and added some grooves for the ends where planks butted up against each other.

Frontage added along with 'canvas'

Painting was fairly basic; a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade over the wood work and to create the impression of shadows in folds in the 'canvas'.  I searched the web and found some useful signage that I reduced in size so it was roughly to scale. After gluing them to the frontage I added a wash of Windsor and Newton white acrylic ink to the top of the false front and some rolled up PVA soaked loo paper as rolled canvas over the doors.  and a half open curtain inside the doors.  I'm really quite pleased with the result.

First stage of painting completed

This being a bath house means that hot water would be available (for a small extra fee) so I needed to create the means of heating water.   Further Google searching gave me an example of wood fired water heating used in the 19th Century that looked easy to create.  This is a brick box with a door for fuel and an enclosed cauldron above it.   This was made from three layers of 5mm insulation foam, a skewer and the head of a roofing nail as the caldron lid. 

Around back is the water heating system and fuel

Closer view of the frontage

To flesh out the town I have also been making more fences.  There are going to be quite a few of these so to aid with that chore I created a framing tool to line everything up and mark sizes and fence post locations.  It isn't exactly high tech but it does the job.

The fence framing jig in all it's low tech glory

 

Of course you didn't expect me to stop at one new building did you?  No I didn't think so.  I have started work on a very basic shack or maybe it's going to be an outside store.  Either way it's an extra building.  As you can see in this case measure twice cut once didn't work!  Fortunately dog food card packaging is pretty forgiving and a new false floor hides a multitude of sins (and Tesco branding).  Cladding the exterior walls is a slow job and I need to go find a new Stanley knife blade as the current one is now very blunt so that's it for this post.   

Next up is a very basic shack

Have I mentioned that I hate rebasing

I really hate rebasing, really, really hate it. You think you have done a decent job on some bases and either they are the wrong size for the latest ruleset or you realise that they aren't as nice as you thought they were! In this case it's the latter situation, I based some 6mm micro armour and now I don't like the basing material I used, its a cardstock and has warped over time. So it's time for a slightly bigger and more robust base in MDF or mounting board.

You can see how this base has warped....bah!

The vehicles in question are mostly for the 1940 WW2 project which has lain unfinished (possibly they have been languishing, to be honest I haven't looked that closely in the storage box to check) for a couple or five years.  There are also some mid war Eastern Front models which were bought even longer ago, pre internet probably, as the German stuff is in Panzer grey not Dunkelgelb.  The main thing is that I need to do something with them and to finish painting the ones which are still in bare metal and to get on with rebasing the rest.

Painted 1940 German stuff, all for a rebase!

Mid war Germans for a repaint and rebase

Also from way back when is the Soviet contingent a mix of GHQ and Heroics and Ros (I think).  The hulls and the turrets could very well be miss matched!

Soviet armour, including two with lost turrets!

The Russian vehicles will do with a quick touch up and (the dreaded) rebasing.

Soviet artillery support SU-76s and an unidentified gun

Lend/Lease half tracks for Ivan probably H&R

The British Armour is mostly done with just some highlighting and shading to complete and tracks to paint.  Some of the German stuff is not even started, then their is the infantry and artillery to do.  

British Armour (GHQ) and some German transport (H&R)

Lastly I have several bags of Infantry, a battery of 25pdrs with tows, a battery of Hotchkiss 25mm AT guns and Austin tow trucks and a platoon worth of Universal Carriers to do something with.  So much lead, so little time! 

The Painting table - March 2023

I took a bit of a break from painting and modelling during March, so the report is a bit sparse this month. As regular readers will already know I finished the 2mm ACW project early in the month and towards the end of March I took a paint brush to two of my Vapnartak western shootist purchases but didn't completely finish either one. I also took a look around the various unfinished projects that litter the hobby room and decided that I would have to rebase the 6mm 1940 stuff as part of bringing that project to a conclusion, although I'm not sure that planning counts for the purposes of this monthly update!

One thing I have rediscovered is that my 6mm painting technique really doesn't cut it for 28mm stuff.  I was never a great painter at that scale and my old technique based on Humbrol enamels as used on 25 mm Hinchcliffe ancients doesn't look right, so it was back to basics.  I'm not 100% happy with my results but I'm hoping that with practice that will improve.

I have found the Galloping Major style of sculpting slightly easier to paint than the Empress figures as the folds in the clothing are more pronounced which makes shading easier.  I will have figures from both ranges completed soon and you will be able to make your own minds up as to which you prefer.

Galloping Major's 'Soldiers Free' figure