Armored Cruiser, further details.....

     Having assembled a few details I decided to take a look at them in the altogether and see where else I could go without impairing the playability of the model.

the smokestacks, cranes and ship's boats really crowd the top of the superstructure

28mm Armored Cruiser, detail, details.......

    Now that all the big stuff was done I had to set about providing some of the eye-candy that makes bigger scale models fun, details. This includes stuff like doors with handles, ship's boats, cranes for the ship's boats, smokestacks, and so on. Knowing that this isn't a true scale model but rather a caricature of one, a lot of fussy little details got swept aside or reduced to incidental appearances and I had to go for playability over delicacy of detail.

I started out with the easiest one; doors, I cut about a dozen out of thin card

Arming the Armored Cruiser

     Having plated the hull with armor it was now time to provide some offensive power to the vessel. At first I was tempted to just buy some gun barrels but the desire to stay as true to the "scratchbuilt" claim as possible I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and went to the "small wood things" aisle (not\, that is not what they call it, it IS what I call it however). I spotted some Tie Rack Pins which, to me at least, looked a lot like gun barrels so I grabbed them and a few other things that might be handy as well.

tie rack pins, just the ticket

sponsons fitted into place and their positions marked

Book Review Napoleon's Swiss Troops

    Author; David Greentree and David Campbell
    Artist; Gerry & Sam Embelton
    ISBN: 978-1-84908-678-3

      Another period piece by Osprey this covers one of the more colorful units in the service of the Little Corsican. Contained in this volume you will find the usual potted history (thankfully devoid of the chronology  that often wastes valuable pages in so many Osprey books)  that traces the Swiss troops in French service from the Bourbons to the last days of the Empire. Backed up with comprehensive organization and uniform data this was a fun little book to read through and makes me want to dig out some of my (as yet) unpainted French 15mm figures and paint them up as Swiss, just so I can have some that aren't dressed in blue!  The artwork is up to the usual standards; crisp, clear, with vibrant colors and displaying the uniforms well. This is supported by a good number of period drawings as well as photos of existing uniforms.

     If you are doing French in the Age of Napoleon give yourself a treat and buy this book and paint some of these colorful troops.

     Very Highly Recommended;   John

28mm Armored Cruiser; planks and plating

     One of the folks that commented over at TMP about my last post asked how I intended to cover the hull. Frankly, in my excitement while cutting the foam this hadn't occurred to me. Upon reflection I really wasn't prepared for that part of the process at all when I was feeding foam to the newly refurbished hot-wire. The more I thought about it the less I liked my ideas (one of which involved Bondo and a lot of sanding!).

      I looked in on some scale modelling sites and found one covering paper models. It was in German so I could get very little from the text but they had very clear pictures of the guy carefully cutting out and attaching paper hull-plates to his exactly framed model boat. I knew then that I had an appointment with some 3x5 file cards and some diluted wood glue. Miss Allen (my third grade art teacher) would be proud that those decoupage lessons were about to be put to good use!

     The first thing I did was to get my hands on some cheap 3"x5" file cards, you want the cheap ones (usually they can be found at a dollars store or in an office supply store) with a coarse open surface, not the fancy glossy kind that cost three times as much. Then a largish bottle of the yellow wood glue, I don't make a lot of recommendations in the supplies area but this time I will; I use Titebond. It dries fast, strong and hard, dilutes well in water and has a faint yellow cast so you can see where it is on white paper. A cheap paintbrush and some decent quality large scissors round out the materials list.

     The first step is to cut a lot of the cards into strips the same height as you hull sections are thick. Here I wimped out and traced the blue-board onto the card to get the correct height. After cutting about as many as you think you will need you can begin attaching them to the hull, I started at the bows, it just seemed natural.

Titebond, this is good stuff, you should have some

Going in a Whole New Direction with Blue Board

     Having finally fixed my hot wire cutter (it was the switch, it is always the switch that fails, again I just by-passed it) I was itching to try out an idea that I had; to make a table-saw equivalent using the wire-cutter. A little bit of blue-board, some super-glue and duct-tape and a few bar clamps and I was in business. The results can be seen below, mind you this is a primitive prototype and will be improved upon/replaced as time goes by (probably with stuff from these guys). This set-up allowed me to cut crisp ninety degree angles so I set out to try my hand, first on various bits of scrap that were lying about the shop and then on a couple of larger projects that I had been holding off on.

     First I tried my hand at an ECW star fort (or "sconces", as they called them then) this turned out very well so I moved on to larger projects. For a long time I have been wanting to build another pre-dreadnought style ship for a VSF campaign but was not looking forward to the amount of work involved in the hull assembly. Cutting a hull (and superstructure) out of blue board would save me the bother and greatly speed things along so I sketched out a bow-profile on some board and set to work.

the technology is crude by it does work rather well,

a bar-clamp holds the frame of the wire-cutter firmly

More magic with MDF

     Another company that is making lovely models with a laser-cutter and thin MDF board has a stunning collection of goodies in 15mm, 25mm and "Heroic" 28mm scale covering subjects as diverse as the Old West and Europe WW2 is Sarissa Precision. This is another company that I stumbled across by accident, here is a sample of their stuff;


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Plastic Soldier Company Russian 45mm anti-tank guns kit review

     I saw these when I walked into Michigan Toy Soldier and grabbed them right away (not just for the review, I needed them for my FoW Soviets). When I got home and popped the box open I was well pleased with what I found inside. This kit will provide both the early and late versions of the gun as well as the 76mm field gun mounted on the same chassis. Very nice indeed. Now all I have to do is to convince the boys at Battlefront to do a little research and add the 76mm to their lists (yeah, right, like that will happen).
Anyways off to the show;

the box-art is a photo (and I think it a picture of the 1/72 scale model)

OK I guess, no doubt about what you are getting

Wargaming Convention; Drums Along the Rapids 19 May

      Held at the historic and picturesque Fort Meigs the HMGS Great Lakes will be hosting Drums at Fort Meigs. This is always a fun event and has the added bonus of being held inside a real War of 1812 fort, which is a treat in and of itself.

      Do try to attend it is well worth the trip!

Book Review; Osprey Raid #29 The Hunt For Pancho Villa

Author: Alejandro de Quesada
Artists: Peter Dennis, Donato Spedaliere, Johhny Shumate
ISBN: 978-1-84908-568-7
  

Book Review Osprey Fortress series #105 Forts of the American Frontier 1776-1891 California, Oregon, Washingron and Alaska

Author: Ron Field
Artist: Adam Hook
ISNN: 978-1-84908-315-7

AK-47 Republic Kick-off

        The other day we played a large AK game to layout the basis of the campaign and to get everybody up to speed on the rules. I took a few shots early on but ended up too busy running my troops to keep a good narrative going in the photos, sorry! As it went my troops performed like the heroes they are and shamed the feeble efforts of all the other forces. JUSTSUCCS is off to a grand start and soon we will have spread the light of liberation to all those suffering under the evil hand of the Opressors!

my brave lads ended up in a foot-race with the Religious Movement heading for the town