The painting table - May 2022

My painting table is unusually crowded at the moment.  Mainly this is due to the 2mm ACW production line.  On the table are bases that just need the bases a dry brushing in green so they will be out of the way PDQ.  Towards the top right are a couple of 2mm artillery bases but I can't rebase these until more MDF bases arrive in the relevant size

There are also some Brigade Models small scale scenery buildings from their Medieval and ACW ranges and some 6mm Hun Light cavalry, from both Irregular and Baccus. The later have been waiting on my attention for quite a while now!  There are also a few bits n bobs awaiting repurposing for my 6mm ancient armies and a small number of O8 3mm armoured vehicles for the 1980's cold war gone hot games.

The current state of play

I'm going to try to make inroads into these before I post a June painting table update, well it would be embarrassing to keep posting the same picture wouldn't it!  Lot's to do and so little time to do it so if I don't make progress feel free to nag at me!

New Housing from JBM homes

A lovely gift dropped through the letter box this morning.  A nice selection of homes fit for heroes courtesy of the Jolly Broom Man.  All from Brigade Model's 3mm scenic range as far as I can see, painted and very nicely based by JBM himself.  Lots of nice detail and added features.  The clocks on the churches both say four o'clock.  Which seems right as it is always teatime in a traditional English village when we look back on them.

The full collection.  I rather like the multi building bases.

The first village base

I'm thinking this must be the Central Banking District

Probably the main retail area

For some reason this reminds me of Chigley

A Post mill

The big church, that will be the High Anglicans then. 

Lastly the 'big house' where Squire Broom 'isself lives

I have to say that these put my own efforts to shame and I'm going to have to up my game now or the tenants in the houses I created will be raising complaints about the poor standards of maintenance in their village!  JBM thought I might need to rebase them but I'm not so sure I want to do that.

Thank you so much JBM these are exceptional and will be getting lots of use on my game table.

Making a wargames board part 3 Snagging and finishing.

I got side tracked from finishing the board off last week and only got back to it this weekend just gone.  I drilled the frames through on the long edges and bolted them together to ensure everything lined up and fitted snugly together.  This is one of those jobs where measure twice cut (or in this case drill) once is very much the thing.  It would have been easier if I had remembered to place all of the screws which hold the frame to the MDF table top the same distances apart.  What saved me was that I used 50mm deep battens and 20 mm long screws so that even allowing for 5mm as the depth of the counter sinks into the table top the screws only reach 25mm down into the batten.  That meant that I still had 25mm of the frame to drill into.  Live and learn as they say.

Framing all done.  Centre line battens are to help stabilise the end sections if they hang over the end of the banquet table a bit. 

Bolts help the sections butt up tight but mainly are there to stop sections moving apart in use.

I have bought 6mm diameter bolts with 50mm length.  So I drilled 8mm holes to give a bit of leeway. but I didn't really have any problems as the holes all lined up and the sections bolted together fine.  I do have some snags to deal with.  One section doesn't butt up as closely as I want.  This is either the batten not set square to the top so the bottom of the batten is leant outwards a little or the drill hole having to be tidied up a bit, but either way the application of a wood plane will sort the issue.

Some of the filler I used to hide the screw heads has shrunk and I need to add a second layer but that is a simple job to do before I apply the second coat of the green paint to the table top and paint the edging strip.  One more weekend's work should be sufficient to see it all done.  The only outstanding question is should I leave the table top the single shade of green or try to break it up a little?  I'm open to ideas here.

I haven't got it to the point of  gaming on it yet but while I was trying out the 6' x 4' combination I did deploy some 2mm ACW figures.  This was to give me a visual on the Altar of Freedom First Manassas scenario comment on this being a very large table for the small number of troops deployed, but it recreates the issues of command and control on the day.  I set up all the forces in the game's order of battle for First Manassas and it is clear that there is a lot of ground for them to cover.  Next step on that particular project will be to make the specific terrain called for to replicate the main features on the battlefield.  Some of my existing terrain can be used but there are some items I don't have or don't have enough of for the scenario.

You can see how lost the troops for 1st Manassas are on a 6 x 4 table

At the moment I have some Brigade models ACW small scale scenery buildings on the painting table.  These are slightly smaller than the figures and still wildly larger than ground scale but they work well enough in use.  I'm making some additional river sections especially for the scenario, first up are the numerous fords that allow crossings of Bull Run, then some additional hills.  More on those in coming posts.

2mm buildings for Altar of Freedom

After a bit of Googling I have come to the conclusion that I need to scratch build some of the buildings I will need as no one seems to have all the buildings I want and some of the ones which are available may be incorrect.  Beware, what follows is the result of entire minutes of detailed web surfing so may not be accurate! 

That warning aside lets look at the first building I'm interested in Henry Hill House from the First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run.  A number of models of this house are available in different scales and mediums.  Below is the Leven Miniatures 6mm version in resin.

From the Leven catalogue - Henry House as most models show it

As with all Leven models it really is a lovely casting but sadly it is too big for 2 or 3mm use and it may not be as the house looked in 1861.  That is no reflection on Mick at Leven,  as every other model of this house is the same.  In fact I used the Leven version as an image as it is such a nice item.  Until an hour ago I would have unflinchingly accepted those models as accurate (damn you Google search).

All of the models I have seen are based on the building which sits on the site now.  The original was very badly damaged during the battle and demolished sometime before 1870.  According to the US Library of Congress >>Link<< the existing building was built on the site of the original property in 1870.  The Library of Congress site says that it was "Built of wood frame construction on a fieldstone foundation, the Henry House originally consisted of two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, with an external chimney centered on the north gable. By 1883 an addition had been constructed at the north end of the house, adding another room to each floor, and including a cellar." 

The chimney is the key as the modern property has the additional two rooms beyond the location of the chimney.  Photo's of the present building clearly show that there is a join at that point with the pre 1883 extension to the left in the photo below.  So it looks as if the original house was smaller than the current one and so smaller than the available models. 

You can see the join in this shot.

Another factor is that several Civil War websites also have the drawing below listed as a drawing of the damage to the Henry House after the battle.  If that is accurate it does have the chimney on the outside of the gable but there are no windows to the upper floors as the roof comes down to sit level with what would be the ground floor rooms' ceiling.  (Source is the Civil War Wiki).  The upstairs rooms would have had to be in a loft or attic space.  Its side doesn't look like the Robinson House which has a prominent extension to the roof forming an attached rear room and porch and the only period photo I have found doesn't have windows in the end elevation of the building.

Is this really the Henry House after the Battle?

There is also this photograph which is also  described as the Henry House after the battle  But I'm not convinced by this either as it has two chimneys.  Clearly at least one of them must be wrongly identified and possibly both are wrong.

I'm almost certain that Henry House only had the one chimney not two, so where is this?

It can't be the Stone House as, .......well,  its clapboard not stone.  That leaves Sudley Sulphur Springs House which I don't know anything about so can't compare to this image. Of course it could be a different house on a different battlefield altogether.  Its a bit of a puzzle really.  So where does that leave me?  Personally I would go with the design of the current house but shortened and with an external chimney effectively removing the 1880's extension and be very happy with that.

In other small scale news I ordered the Brigade models pack of ACW buildings in 3mm yesterday so I will wait to see how those look and scale to the figures I made before deciding what to do.  All of which simply proves that sometimes I'm far too much of an accuracy nerd for my own good.

Back in front of the keyboard - what have I been up to?

 What have I been up to of late?  Well Mrs E and I took a short holiday, nothing fancy and mostly taken in our garden and then we have had some building work under way which has slowed down my blog output.  Oh and I was binge watching 'The Big Bang Theory' on Netflix as well.  The other thing (and probably of more interest to you) is the progress on the 2mm Altar of Freedom units.

I sent off an order to Irregular Miniatures, just after my last post, for some 2mm castings to cover the HQ elements, Artillery and and command bases and have painted these up and based them since last I posted.  The army command post casting  is really rather nice having tents, picketed horses and a couple of figures gathered around a table.  It comes with a flag attached to one of the tents but I clipped that off.  The rows of small tents are also very useful and the large tents add a bit of variety.  Throw in some covered wagons and all the components for the command stands are sorted!

As you can see from the pictures I have added some overscale flags to the HQ and command bases so they are easier to identify on the table.  I'm ignoring the fact that these are wildly out of scale as they will help show where the centres of operation are.

HQ and Command stands for First Bull Run/ Manassas 

I also bit the bullet and purchased the STL files available from Forward March Studios these only cost $15.00 and provide a huge number of files for troops from late renaissance through to the late 19th century along with some terrain items.  Once I have decided what I need I will arrange to get some  printed. I also lost some time playing with Tinkercad a 3D modelling software package.  This is free on line and although it's not a professional level package I think it will let me edit the STL files from Forward March should I want to.

The thing which is slowing me down is the sourcing of 2mm ACW buildings.  The Altar of Freedom site provides some paper models for free covering some of the best known  buildings from the various Battle sites but although described as 3mm scale I found them a little over sized.  Nearer to 6mm then 3mm in fact.  Still reducing the size on the print settings easily solves that.  What it doesn't solve is the the fact that I find making a 1/900th scale paper building tricky with full scale fingers!  Brigade models do some ACW buildings which include some I can identify as being based upon those on the Bull Run Battlefield as well as from A few others.  They don't do the bigger buildings for say Gettysburg though and I can see why from a commercial perspective.  After all how many Lutheran Seminaries will I, or other ACW gamers, need to buy?  Demand would be limited so its never going to be a priority.  Which is where I was hoping 3D printing might help but 2mm and 3mm is not well catered for at present.

Nice production values for a free download

I have tried my hand at making some using some old house shaped pieces of hard wood from the bits box which are not too bad but don't look like any of the well known buildings.  They will work as generic buildings for towns and villages but I should really like to have a recognisable Henry House or Stone House available.

Most Altar of Freedom games are played on a 6' x 4' Table, with a very few using a 4' x 4' table.  I have been meaning to create a wargames board for a long time (If I'm honest that's a very, very long time) so I dug out the MDF boards that have been sat in garage since we moved in and stripped off the badly made Bussaco terrain they were covered with, to bring them back to a level surface.  They have warped slightly since I made the Bussaco boards back in 2007 so I need to batten them to take that out and then seal them.  I have four 2' x 4' boards so that's more than enough for what I need.  1" x 2" timber should be enough for the battens and I intend to drill through them and use kitchen unit connectors to fasten them together as required.  A coat of cheap emulsion paint and Bobs yer Mother's Brother and all that.  

Urban Sprawl

I took delivery of some of Brigade Model's small scale scenery range last week.  They arrived within three days of ordering online which is a decent turn around time by anyone standards.  The items I bought were the Small English Churches, the Agricultural buildings set and the Normandy village set.   I choose these as they gave a range of buildings which span several centuries and can be happily used (with one or two exceptions) for 17th through to 20th century western Europe.

The Small English Church set



The castings were very crisp with good detail and a slightly granular surface texture which suggests that the masters might have been 3D printed.  It also helps with painting if you are using a dry brush technique as the surface texture helps grab the dry brushed paint.  There was minimal flash mainly from air channels I think, and not much in the way of visible mould  lines.  They did need a wash to remove the traces of mould release agent though.  Of the items I bought my favourites were the churches.  They all appear to be based on real English churches from the Sussex area.



Agricultural Buildings



Although the range is described as being 3mm it is fine for use alongside 2mm figures.  The doors scale to the right height and the building footprints are not excessive.  The ratio between height and foot print hasn't been adjusted as with some other ranges I have bought in the past for larger figure scales, so that the buildings proportions look correct rather than being over high for the size of the horizontal dimensions.

Normandy Village - 20th Century styles at the rear



The buildings paint up well.  I used the technique I use for 1/300th scale AFVs, as shown on the excellent Ritterkreig 6mm WW2 site.  Undercoat in white, add an ink wash to bring up the detail, block in the main colours, and dry brush for high lights.  I then pick out any detail like doors, windows and ridge lines and varnish.  One trick is to use contrasting tones between roof and walls to give definition.

 

I have posted images of two of the churches to give an idea of how well they paint up, remember these are both less than 4cm long!  The detail is far superior to the Irregular Miniatures buildings for this scale, so they will be my range of choice where they cover the structures I want.  Look out for them to feature in a game before too long.