2007 » Tabletop Terrain

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses Complete

Dec 212007

As we’re now dangerously near Christmas I’ve been spending all my modeling time finishing the Linka Dublo terraced houses for my father in law’s present. I’ve just finished varnishing and assembling them tonight, so here’s all three in a row!

For some variety I’ve painted the doors different colours and glued different ‘drapes’ into the windows. The drapes are fashioned from various bits of coloured paper, while the window panes are cut from a 1mm thick piece of transparent lamination sheet supplied by my lovely wife. I was going to sacrifice an OHP transparency for the windows, but the thicker laminating plastic turned out to be a lot easier to work with, plus the extra thickness means it does quite a convincing job of looking like plate glass.

Hirst Arts Cathedral Update III

Mordheim, Warhammer 40k 4 Responses »

Dec 112007

Now that I’ve got around to doing some basic assembly using a new glue: Liquid Nails, this post continues from the previous Cathedral post.

There are various varieties of Liquid Nails, many of which aren’t water based. I chose the water based version because it’s easy to clean up plus I can use a wet brush to smooth away any extra glue squeezed out between Hirst Art blocks. This ‘fast’ Liquid Nails starts to skin and cure in about 20 minutes but that’s not a problem as I simply squeeze out small amounts onto a scrap palette (aka pet food container lid) and apply it with a brush to the Hirst Arts blocks.

It dries to a creme colour and looking at the photos it’s fairly obvious where I’ve been using it. However the whole building is going to be painted once assembled so discolouring the bricks like this isn’t an issue. Once dry it provides a very firm yet slightly flexible bond between the bricks which is just great. I found the PVA I was using wouldn’t always provide a good bond and even when it did the bond was quite brittle, so flexing the larger sections would tend to snap pieces off. You can seperate pieces glued together with Liquid Nails – which is a plus if you’ve misaligned a couple of blocks, but it certainly requires a lot more effort than the PVA glued pieces.

Regarding assembling the Cathedral itself I have to say it’s very slow going. There seem to be a million blocks involved in the building so it’s an exercise in patience gluing them together. I’m currently trying to build up the thirteen sub-pieces that go together to build the smaller removable side gallery of the Cathedral! In the photos you can see the two long interior and exterior gallery walls and various parts of the bell-tower that makes up the front of the gallery.

I’ve always been impressed by Mr Hirst’s fine molds however I have to say while building the Cathedral it’s increasingly obvious there’s some problematic pieces on the molds involved. In particular the small gothic arch pieces that make up most of the windows in the Cathedral don’t go together well. Maybe it’s because there’s definite left and right arch pieces (they certainly aren’t marked as such) but the archways always seem to be slightly too wide for their designated space in the wall, plus they don’t form a square unit when glued together. So a reasonable amount of sanding is involved with assembling each of those small gothic windows.

I’m also wondering how well the sub-parts are going to fit together to form the gallery. I suspect more sanding will be involved in getting the pieces level and well bonded to each other. Ah well, stay tuned!

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses II

General 4 Responses »

Dec 062007

I’ve made some progress on this year’s Xmas gift for my father in law. As you can see from the photo, I’ve got the basic structures built for the three houses I plan to make for his model railway table.

There’s a little detailing left to do but nothing major. In particular I need to use an old tooth brush to scrub wet DAS hobby clay over the gaps between the cast Linka mold pieces that make up the brick walls on the last house. The second house needs a chimney applied and then I can finish painting that too. I’ve completed basic painting on the first house and all it needs is a good coat of Moana matt varnish, followed by some Tamiya high gloss brush on varnish being applied to the window frames and front door.

Linka molds certainly produce some impressive results for fairly minimal effort. They’re also very easy to paint with some careful dry-brushing to cover the brick texture. Individual bricks have then been repainted a range of different colours to break up the monotonous walls.

To complete all three houses I intend to glue cut OHP plastic behind the windows to represent glass and also glue in some simple paper drapes. Once I’ve done that I can finish assembling the houses as they’re constructed from two separate storeys at the moment.

As a final touch I also plan to scratch build some gutters and downpipes, probably from plastic card and half-rods I have kicking around in my garage – assuming I can find them. Having painted one and a half houses this week I’m also quietly confident I can meet my 25th December deadline!

Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality II

Pulp, Tutorials 2 Responses »

Nov 292007

This post continues and completes the earlier part of the tutorial. Once again, I’m not an expert painter but always try to speed paint to a reasonable tabletop quality. If you recall we left the half painted Anglian Miniatures Moroccan drying after applying a chestnut brown ink wash.

This left the figure looking rather dark and very shiny because of the wax in the Klear floor polish I used. That’s fine though because once the wash dries you’ll have a very stable, hard coat you can easily paint over.

5. Painting Over the Magic Wash. The point of the chestnut ink wash was to define the folds and edges in the figure. In a sense the quick ink wash provides a similar effect to the ‘black lining’ others paint with. This is where you prime your figure black and build up the colours over that while leaving thin black lines between the various areas of the figure.

The Asus Eee: A Wargamer’s Laptop

General 12 Responses »

Nov 202007

Asus recently released their Asus Eee. This is a tiny Celeron based laptop running a Xandros Linux variant and it retails for $600nzd locally at Dick Smith. Detailed specifications are on the Asus site.

I’ve been after a cheap secondary PC for a while so I grabbed a 4Gb Eee the day they were released in New Zealand. They’re excellent value for the price and the Eee is the first laptop I’ve owned that is light enough to be carried to and from work every day in my satchel.

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses

General 4 Responses »

Nov 162007

Christmas approaches and this year we’ll be celebrating at my wife’s family farm. Down there they have a tradition that goes some way towards rejecting the crass commercialism that usually surrounds this holiday: every year you draw a single family member out of the hat and you’re expected to make a present for that person.

Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t because, like any family, there’s a couple of people that are difficult to make things for! Fortunately I drew my father-in-law this time and he’s an avid collector of Hornby Dublo tin-plate trains. I thought my hobby was expensive until I learned he’s quite happy to pay in the region of $400nzd+ for a single antique 1930′s tin-plate Hornby Dublo steam train in working condition.

Hirst Arts Cathedral Update II

Mordheim, Warhammer 40k 5 Responses »

Nov 142007

As the poll has ended, it’s time I showed I’ve made some progress on the Hirst Arts Cathedral: thus I give you the floor!

This is little more exciting than it sounds because it gives me a foundation to build the rest of the Cathedral on. There’s a couple of 28mm Games Workshop Mordheim figures on there for scale.

If you’re unfamiliar with Bruce Hirst’s Cathedral design, the floor is split into two parts to allow you to get inside the assembled Cathedral for detailing, painting and gaming. The split is cunningly placed, falling between the main room and one gallery of the final building. I may just build up the walls and towers for this smaller gallery first to see if the water based Selley’s Liquid Nails I picked up recently does a better job of holding the bricks together than builder’s PVA.

There are a few issues however. The first is that the join between the smaller and larger pieces isn’t quite exact and there’s a visible ~1mm seam between the floor tiles when the two parts are placed together. However hopefully that’ll be concealed once I’ve built up the walls.

The second issue is that I’ve glued the floor down on a single layer of 3mm MDF which is definitely not going to be rigid enough to support the finished Cathedral. I plan to ply 2-3 layers of 3mm MDF together with PVA and clamps to build up a set of shallow stepped levels up around the Cathedral. Hopefully that works since I’ve already glued down the floor!

Yes, I read all instructions and carefully plan all of my projects…

Older Entries

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses Complete

Hirst Arts Cathedral Update III

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses II

Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality II

The Asus Eee: A Wargamer’s Laptop

Linka Dublo Brick Terraced Houses

Hirst Arts Cathedral Update II

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