The Painting Table - October 2022

I have managed to clear some space on the table this month! The 3mm 1980’s Soviet support vehicles are finally based and textured so that’s got them out of the way. I also finished a 28mm Foundry old west figure. This is a civilian who can flesh out town scenarios. He is checking a fob watch so could be waiting for a stagecoach or could be the town doctor wondering why his next patient is late. I also finished one base of ten 6mm cavalry. These are Irregular Miniatures’ Celts but I’m going to add them to my Dacian forces.

O8 3mm Soviet  SA-9 Gaskin armed BRDM 2

More 3mm - Soviet AT3-B Sagger armed BRDM 2

Dacian Light Cavalry

28mm Foundry civilian

On the Modelling end of the table, well actually a different table in a different room but you get my drift, I have completed the Sheriff’s office scratch build by adding the fencing. That build has been a longer job than anticipated and it’s MDF kits for me from here on in.

Rear of the block house scratch build

Next up for finishing are those long-suffering Hun horse archers that have been clamouring for some attention for the last few months.

Ukranian Guests - an update

Our Ukranian visitors are still with us, but it seems that they are planning to move on to Canada in the near future.  Or at least we have been asked to take Mum to London for an appointment at the Canadian High Commission.  I did a bit of research to make sure it wasn't going to be a wasted trip (as it's a long drive from Elenderil Towers) and it seems that appointments are only issued if an application to travel to Canada has been made.  So, it seems that it's being seriously considered.  Mum hadn't told us that she was making plans to move on and only last week was asking the local council about housing grants.  It actually makes a lot of sense as her adult son has either just moved there with his job or is about to move there.

This lack of sharing information has been a common theme for the time she has been with us.  We get told what she thinks we need to know.  From what I have read this is common as Ukrainians are very private people.  Still, it would be nice to have a bit more warning other than a Thursday evening chat on the lines of:

"I need you to take me to London on Monday"

"Really, why is that?"

" I must go to the embassy for a visa, I have an appointment at 12:45"

Being charitable I'm going to assume that she has no idea about how long it will take to drive from Humberside to Outer London and then travel onwards by tube to Charing Cross (I'm not going into Central London by car what with congestion charges and parking costs).  Things are not helped by the fact that we are never sure that she understands the processes and procedures for these things.  I would also need a second person to travel with me and Mrs E can't do so on Monday.  

Another interesting thing we have learned about Ukrainian culture is that they are loud and sound aggressive when having even a friendly conversation.  Even her nine-year-old son is like that, shouts of Nyet when he doesn't like what mum is saying at a volume that would have me reaching for earplugs if I was in the room with him!

There is also an interesting view on rules!  Apparently, we have far too many rules on things like medicines and medical appointments, driving rules, schools, road safety... the list goes on.  In Ukraine there is always a way around the rules we have been told (Which seems to be code for 'a way for me to get what I want straight away or not be stopped from doing what I want').  An example being that her son was recently prescribed antibiotics for a chest infection.  The British ones were not strong enough, so she was going to take those for her cough and buy a new supply from Ukraine for her son.  It came as a bit of shock to be told that unapproved medicines were unlikely to get through customs!

Talk about different strokes for different folks!

The Painting Table - September 2022

 It's been more of a modelling table for the last month rather than a painting table.  I finished the Old West General Store scratch build and then started onto the County Sheriff's office.  That isn't quite finished though.  I have everything glued together except the fencing around the exercise yard and an external stairway and I need to paint in the window on the front door.  My first attempt at the roof and parapet didn’t look right so I had to do it over.  The original roof was based on a sheet of card which didn’t sit flush to the top of the side walls.  I redid it using a foam sheet which I sat inside the parapet edges which looks much better and was actually easier to build.  Instead of having to plank the roof with individual lengths of bass wood I could scribe the foam sheet with a plank pattern.

View of the exercise yard end (Fencing not yet erected)

Front and roof area

Overview of the interior

The astute viewer will have spotted a couple of 'features', no stairs to the roof inside the building and no gates on the jail cells.  There are three hatches in the roof one for each cell and a ladder will be stored up there.  I'm going with an external wooden stair way to access the roof for reasons of playability.  The overview shows a front office accessed off the sidewalk, a rear office with a door to the cell area and a living area come bunkroom.  The corridor to the front of the cells would act as a drunk tank (this is a friendly jail only the real nasty types get chucked in a cell).

The jail also features ‘granny grating’ cell walls and window gratings.  I think that worked well.  I’m going to use the same material to make some snake rail fences for 2mm ACW games. Output during September and early October suffered as we had a weekend away and because of George’s declining health.  Hopefully next month will actually see some figures painted.

In other news, the figures on the painting table haven’t changed although they may have moved around a bit!  There are currently Hun light cavalry, Pictish cavalry, Late Roman infantry, Byzantine infantry (using Sassanid figures from Baccus) and an assortment of Dark Age command figures in 6mm and the Old West figures in 28mm awaiting my painting attention.  I also have Soviet light armoured vehicles in 3mm to finish basing.  It’s a good thing I don’t overstretch myself!

When events overtake you!

And they certainly have done that, with a vengeance.  There is no way to sugar coat the thing, George died on the 3rd of October.  We knew he was ill, and his arthritis had progressed despite all the best efforts of the vet.  Worse though was the tumour in his mouth.  That had grown to the point where he bit it every time he ate, and it was in danger of falling back and blocking his airway.  He was fine in himself wanting to go for walks and to come upstairs to sleep with us.  It was just that his joints were so sore that he struggled to do it.  I could watch him screw up the courage to climb or descend the stairs and walks required regular stops and sit downs.  I carried him up and down when it was too much for him.  Yet we never heard a whimper or a squeal from him.  We bought him a dog trailer that could be used as a dog pram so we could take him to the park and let him have a short walk there before wheeling him home again.  He only got to use it half a dozen times.

We took him to the vet thinking he would have some treatment options to offer, but when he examined him, he told us it was time to make the hard choice.  We were given the chance to take him home and return the next day, but we knew we wouldn't be able to handle that, and more importantly it would have upset George.  So, he was put to sleep that day after we had sat with him for a last time.  Mrs E and I were allowed to stay with him to the end which was mercifully fast.  We were both in bits and cried all the way home.  I collected his ashes this afternoon which had me in bits again.  Our other dog, Barney, seems to be coping better than we are although he keeps looking in all the places where George used to lie.  He even put two dog biscuits on the sleeping mat George used and has refused to eat the second one, almost like it is there for George.

He was the dog we didn't plan to have.  He was a rescue from Spain who came over to a family in Lancashire at same time Barney came to us.  The original adopters found he was too much for them to cope with and demanded that he be taken back off them with immediate effect.  The charity asked us to foster him while they found a kennels to board him in pending a new adopter.  Within a couple of hours of him turning up on our doorstep we knew we wanted to keep him.  Brittanys are a handful but if you stay firm (but kind) they respond really well to training.  At heart they want to please their humans and this was very true of George.  Indoors they are snuggle monsters while outdoors the hunting instinct takes over and they become rugged individualists!  All that said he was a pleasure to have around, a real dog's dog, the only dog I have ever known to actually bury bones and dig holes.  He made dens in the shrubs around the edge of the lawn and even stole cushions to take out to put in them.  Every evening a 6.50pm we would be barked at if we were not already getting collars and leads on for walkies.  He was a dog that liked things to happen on his timetable.

I never thought losing a pet could be so traumatic, made worse by the fact that he was only nine.  In normal circumstances he might have lived to be anything up to seventeen or eighteen, in fact we worried that he might outlive Mrs E and I or at least still be active when we no longer were!   He has left a very large cheeky Brittany shaped hole in our family, and it is all a bit raw at the moment.  

RIP George Dog - April 2013 - October 2022

 

First western building completed

The first building for De Lancy is complete, well almost there are a few things I will probably touch up in due course.  That said it is in a playable form so the De Lancy General Store, proprietor Colonel J De Lancy, is open for business.  It's made of balsa and bass wood cladding over a foam board core.  I went with a removable flat roof design for this one.  Signage is a mix of home designed and Sarissa Precision items. The brown plate part way up the right side of the building is:

a) a plate for me to mount a lamp to, and

b) a disguise for a poor bit of building work!

My shoddy workmanship shows in this shot!

And some of the required touching up can be seen here.

I copied some modelling tips from a couple of blog sites where the authors had scratch built their towns, but I'm not entirely happy with the suggested build process.  To me the main failing is that there is a solid box core to the building with no gaps for windows or doors, so figures inside cannot be seen from the street and doors are always closed.  For my next build I have cut gaps in the foam board so let's see how that works.  The other issue is that there is no internal detail.  I don't think the designer really intended fights to happen inside buildings.  I'm expecting that they will.

That next building under construction is a County Sheriff's office and jail (Yes, I know that civilised folks spell it gaol, but this is Texas when all is said and done).  This represents a stone-built structure, so I have been inscribing the foam board and applying washes to make it look, well, stony!  That also means no balsa cladding is needed.  Unlike the store I am putting in internal walls and detail.  At present I have the external walls done and one of the internal walls completed but the building is not glued together.  The bits of bass wood lying on the foam in the picture are being tested for size, they will line cut outs for the doorways and windows to give a flat surface to place doors and windows into.

Who knew stone walls came flat pack!

As back story to the building I'm saying that it was a block house built as a defence against Commanche raids by the Mexican military back in the 1820's.  Subsequently it was taken over by the Texas Rangers as a way station before settling into its current use.  It will probably be known locally as the 'old block house' rather than the sheriff's office.

The end of an era

I have waited a few days to put my thoughts in writing since the death of Queen Elizabeth.  I'm not what you might call a dyed in the wool monarchist, after all I fight for Parliament when re-enacting the Civil Wars.  That said I'm not exactly a republican either, the thought of yet another job for politicians to screw up doesn't exactly fill me with glee.  What I do recognise is that for my entire adult life the same person has been Head of State.  Not having a huge personal effect on my life and yet managing to be a huge presence within it at the same time.  The ER II on post boxes (in England at least, she was Elizabeth the First in Scotland), the head on money and stamps, the person I swore allegiance to when I joined the TA.  Yes, there in so many aspects of daily life.

I think the suddenness of it all has been the most peculiar aspect of it all.  Greeting the incoming PM on Tuesday and dead two days later.  No time to get used to the idea.  Now it will be a new head on coins (looking in a different direction), a new set of words the National Anthem yet for most day-to-day purposes it is business as usual.  Others have given tributes in the media that sum up a life of service albeit one with few financial worries and a guarantee of continuing employment (although that was also a promise of dropping in your traces as well) but not a life without cares.  Looking in from the outside it is hard to know what sort of person she really was, but to me at least it seems clear that she cared about the role she filled and its continuation and the clincher to me she stood head and shoulders above the dirty mess of day-to-day British politics.  I might not be huge fan of hereditary monarchs, but I like the alternatives even less.

I have lived my life as a New-Elizabethan and from Tuesday teatime I'm now a something else.  What that will be called I'm not sure, Carolinian perhaps?  It really is the end of an era and the start of something new.

What does a good Old West town need?

A Western shoot out game needs a locale, perhaps not a full town but at least a main street, but what businesses would be on that street and the ones branching off it.  In fact, what would a town look like back in the period 1870 to 1890(ish).    So, it was off to Google to check a couple of forums for some information.  The answer I found is that town layouts vary by location, type of settlement (that's the main industry the town supports) and how long the town had been in existence.

Location would have been partially linked to the type of settlement, for example a mining town isn't going to be founded where there are no minerals to exploit.  In cattle country the movie style grid layout would be standard, but in areas originally settled by the Spanish there was a formal layout that was followed, based on royal law.  In mining areas towns tended to be in valleys below the mines and followed the line of the valley sides.  Railroad towns tend to develop with main street at right angles to the track with stock pens and related businesses over on the 'wrong side of the tracks'.  Most main streets were much wider than we might expect at around 100 feet to allow a wagon and its team to turn 180 degrees.  Side streets were slightly narrower at around 60-80 feet and residential areas had far narrower streets.

For most towns the first buildings would be a store and a saloon.  These would start with tented establishments and if the town prospered these would be converted to more permanent structures.  Brick or stone buildings would be rare outside the centre of older, more important settlements with two exceptions the jail and the bank.  These might not be made entirely of brick or stone, but the secure areas would aim to be made from one of the other (depending on local material availability).   In the Southwest adobe buildings would be found in the older settlements and those built to the royal law would have a plaza and a church from almost the very start.

In terms of businesses, as noted above, the average town starts with the general store and saloon but there would be more drinking establishments than you might expect (more akin to UK market town numbers in the period up to the mid 1970s) with roughly one saloon/bar for each 100 inhabitants.  A cattle town would also have stock yards from very early on in its history.  After that a livery stable and blacksmith and additional stores would be added with the owners often living in the back or above the shop.  As those businesses prospered or if the town was attracting families, then housing would appear at the edge of town.  With time a cemetery, County Sheriff or Town Marshall's office/jail would appear.  In farming areas, a seed store would appear fairly early on.  Other businesses might include:

- A hotel 

- Restaurants (Man's gotta eat)

- Billiard Hall (more common than I expected)

- Undertaker (Can't leave 'em on top)

- Saw mill/lumber yard (the lumber for buildings has to come from somewhere)

- House of ill repute (or three)

- Barbers/dentist

- Doctors office

- Gunsmith (for passing bandits to steal weapons from)

- Butcher

- Baker

- Dry Goods Store

- Clothing Store

- Rooming house

- Land Office (for burning down to get rid of land grant records)

Eventually if the town attracted families a schoolhouse and a church would be built.  There was some basic urban planning with building lots marked out but no strict rules on what buildings went where but the main street tended to be where the less salubrious bars and businesses were sited the older areas being dodgier than the newer ones.  Spanish founded towns had to conform to Royal building laws so would generally have a more structured layout to the centre of town.  One reason for starting in 1869 is that I can legitimately have a limited number of buildings in De Lancy and add to them over time.

Basic construction front view

and rear view

Front with just the window frames to complete and roof to build.

I'm aiming to start with a couple of stores, a saloon and some stock pens.  I will also need a county Sherrif's office for story line purposes. Work has started on an initial scratch build store but longer term I'm eying up MDF kits.  The De Lancy Construction Co has started operations!