Bits Bits and Bobs

Alot of how much we are willing to pay for something comes down to how much of it we get. There's also the detail, accuracy and quality of sculpting, etc. But most things in miniature modelling on are a similar level these days and fall into similar price brackets. If you are a student scumming off my parents like I am, or have screaming kids, or are just plain old fiscally aware (Scroogey) then we really want to save money while still enjoying ourselves in our hobby.

I thought about it long and hard. Then I decided I would sit down and compare some similar kits from different companies and see what kindof quality and volume you got from them.

Then I thought this was boring and thought I would make use of my intense gymnastic and martials arts training as a young, orphaned child and instead dressed up as a catwoman/ninja and broke into a Modelzone warehouse to steal tanks and glue. Previously I had only used my skills for breaking into fine art institutions containing legendary works of art or the guarded houses of old horrible ladies owning piles of jewels. Silently and invisible skulking around buildings, ducking out of sight of wandering flashlights and the gazes of portly underpaid security guards. Applying amazing strength and finesse to bound over complicated sensors and detection systems.Sneaking up on highly trained guard dogs to give them paralyzing belly rubs before they could scent me and become aggressive.

The warehouse was different. It wasn't easy like stealing a Faberge Egg. I couldn't put swanky music and a suit on and just whisk it out from under someones nose in an overly complicated but dull series of stupid coincidences and waste of acting talent. This would take planning, practice, and skill.

I planned a route through the building. I could get in through a small window on the top level of storage, but I would not be able to leave through it again with a full bag on my back. Thinking back I could have pushed the bag through first and then followed myself, but it's too late now. Maybe next time I crave hundreds of tiny contacta glues I'll try it.

Entry should have been simple. I just had to climb up the side of the building using the guttering and then swing myself through the unlocked window. I should have been wearing my giant whiskers; my ass got stuck and I made a loud ooph noise as my momentum was stolen. Approaching footsteps told me that the men working the night shift were not accustomed to their boxes making oomph noises and had come over the see if there was anything happening. I saw his belly round the corner first and began a desperate wiggle to escape.

You may think you have wiggled desperately, but until you are stuck halfway through a window with your arse in the rain and a fat man waddling towards you with a flash light you haven't wiggled at all. It chaffed slightly.

I can suck my stomach in. I haven't worked out how to suck my ass in so decided to abandon the window idea and finally pulled myself out. My swearing and clanging on the metal of the walls had made quite a racket and attracted the attention of the men doing inventory overnight. They had all come to my position, and as I clung to the guttering outside I could here someone getting the lift over to check the window.

A graveyard shift - not many of them in the building. I slide down the soaked pipe with much swearing and I think I ripped my trousers too. I legged it as fast as I could to the side door, propped open so the blokes could stick their head out for a cigarette every so often. Luckily the downpour was heavy, as I ran like a cat being soaked in the rain - yowling and hissing everytime my foot hit a puddle and arching my back and baring my teeth when water sloughed off the side of the building down my back. I poked my head in and grabbed the first small box off a shelf that I could see. Then I popped back out and splashed home in the rain, elated with my success.

Sitting at home I decided although I had the option of employing years worth of intense training and skill, I should use it for good - like Batman. That was why I had chosen to emulate catwoman after all. And ninjas. There were ninjas in the first Batman film. So here's a comparison of what you can get in different boxes, and what kindof price you can get them at.

My father and I sat down together to build a Revell Truck thing from the 1950's or sometime around then. I'd picked up the thingy and a Sherman tank by Revell for about £8 each at Modelzone on sale. They are 1:35 scale; a tiny bit bigger than 40K scale.

This was the beastie we were putting together. I didn't think it would be too big a deal - then I pulled out the sprues and saw the hundreds of tiny its. Father and I decided to go crazy and follow the instructions. It started us off building the engine; we were building from the inside out.

Yes I understand this

 Here's the sprues

These are the canvas sheets that cover the form of the track, and some external accessories like the jerry cans. 

Here's a mix of things including shocks, window wipers and strange magical components that make vehicles go broom broom.

Some more external components like the wheel covers. 

The set even comes with tiny window wipers and mirors.

It took damn well ages to get anything put together. Here's what we managed to get assembled.

We realized as we tried to go further from here that we were putting together very fiddly things that we kept crushing with our stupid impracticed hands like the clutch pedal. Instead we decidedto start building things from the outside in, and see what bits were left over.

Essentially the truck is a cube and therefore only requires six pieces to complete, give or take a few. There's so much on the sprue that is aimed at people wanting historical accuracy but in reality there's not much needed for the model to work structurally. Most of it can be used as mechanical bits in bases or in conversions.

Most non-GW type sets come with these. Revell, Dragon, some Tamiya sets. Even if you don't want the model itself, or the set isn't the right scale these are really good to pick up when you see them on sale and use for parts. The actual outside of this truck for example would be really good half buried in a diorama.

Ork outhouse Part1

After the success of my box earlier in the week we decided to make an ork outhouse for our ork camp! It has been fun and surprisingly easy and simple to make. Not entirely accurate, but I thought I'd have to make quite a few of these things before any of them started to actually look good anyway.

All you need to make a basic wooden building is some form of wooden sticks, pva glue, and a cutting implement and cutting surface. These are just craft things I picked up from hobbycraft for a pound or so for a bag each. Much cheaper than balsa wood and just as good for things like this. Any pva is glue is good - and trust me, pva glue is far better than you think! I can't believe how strong it sets. A scalpel isn't bad but something designed to go through wood would be preferable, and any cutting mat or board will do but the grided ones do come in handy.

I started by making the door and door frame. I cut the sticks to be just higher than my chaos space marine horns / just taller than orcs. This actually ended up being each stick cut in half with the rounded ends taken off. I used the big ~1cm wide sticks for the door, and the smaller ~.6cm ones for the frame.

I wanted a rickety shack type of look, and I wanted it to be extra strong to I glued the door pieces together using matchsticks layed across perpendicular, with a thick-ish layer of pva along them. Further down I show how I glue these on for sturdiness.

As you can see on the right, rather than glueing the pieces of the frame to each other I fixed them togethed using matchsticks across the joins. I did this for two reasons; I won't get glue spilling between the pieces and showing at the front, and it will result in a stronger structure.

I measured up the sticks for the walls by eye. To add strength to some of the joins in this I put a little dollop of PVA gue either side of the matchstick as well.

I made the walls out of horizontal slats cut from the larger sticks. I stuck them together as you can see with multiple matchsticks and kept the slats uneven. I was also careful to be imprecise when finishing cutting the individual pieces out of each of the sticks so that it wouldn't be neat and tidy. Much more orky this way!

You want quite a bit of glue when putting support sticks in these things. PVA will bond strongly and set quite hard.

It can be a bit fiddly using tiny sticks covered in glue. Here's how I get them on easily; layer of glue, hold close over destination, drop, gently push down. Don't push too hard - pva will just smoosh everywhere until it's cured. That's it's main downside, because it can take a while for PVA to cure enough that it won't shift about with the slightest nudge.

Checked to see if the door looked ok- just had to trim one of the sticks a bit.

Trimmed, glued and plopped into place. Made it wonky to distinguish it as a door a bit more from the rest of the woody structure. Also glued a side panel on so the front was a bit more than just a door.

I made the roof out of the smaller slats. Roughed the edges and made them uneven for a more worn and damaged look.

Finally for today; a 1:1 mix of VMC chocolate brown and water was slathered on the inside of the walls. Because it's not all perfectly fit together you'll be able to catch glimpses of the inside when viewing the hut. Painting the inside means you won't see bits of glue and lolly stick - ruining the painting and weather on the outside!

I'm going to put it all together and finish it in a couple of days when we're back at boyfriends house.

I made a thing!

I wanted a break from painting today so I made a little piece of scenery for my orks. A scalpel, some lolly sticks and pva glue were all I used to make it. Cutting up lolly sticks with a scalpel is... interesting and no good for precise work, but for something an ork made it's perfect. I don't have my tiny hacksaw with me so I'll be making all ork stuff this week!

Lucky Butt Stitches Munition Boks!

It was pretty simple to make, but involved a degree of trial and error to start with. And loads of making shit up all the way through and constant fixing things. Making things for orks is actually a fun way to get into this for me - because I can end up with anything at the end and no matter how messy it is it will still look orky.

I'm going to try and make better crates/boxes/outhouses when I have my little saw and metal square. Here's how I made this one, in the meantime.

I started out by marking the sticks into sections. The box is roughly 3.5cm wide by who knows what! I cut them into sections using my scalpel on a cutting matt. If you use steady, careful strokes at an angle you could use the scalpel to create very neat pieces, but it's much easier to do with a saw and I was making this for orks so I started off each section with a few neat strokes to guide and then just hacked it apart.

Then I glued three of the pieces lengthways side by side, with a tiny gap between each, together using a matchstick type stick. I used PVA glue. When I had 2 I glued them together as close to a right angle as I could.

PVA glue is good for this kindof thing if you have a little patience or think ahead. It's ridiculously cheap and when it does set it sets nice and hard. It can take a little while to get to the point where it can hold itself in place though, so I spent a lot of time trying to prop this all up and hold it together without squishing things about.

I found putting a stick on the inside would help alot if I could bear to hold it in place for a bit. Additionally I started squirting glue everywhere I could on the inside.

I added the other side in the same way (badly)

From left to right here I have; added the 'front', then stuck sticks to it on the outside to act as support, then made the top panel with a broken strut going across. When all the PVA is fully cured this thing became as stable as a rock. I could put quite a bit of weight on it before it felt like it would move at all.

I primed it with my Citadel White Primer - because I need to use it up and I'm saving my Halfords primer for my models! It feels really runny and gives bad coverage compared to the halfords... oh well, it did a good enough job for my ork box.

Basecoat was khemri brown 1:2 paint to water. Only needed one coat - it was at this stage it started to look properly cratey. Until now I was feeling a bit wound up having spent so long trying to work something so simple out and holding bits together, breaking things, regluing etc and thinking it just looked... a bit crap, really.

Devlan mud wash went on, then when that was dry I drybrushed scorched brown on selectively to pick out details. I went heavy near supports and ends of planks and very light in the middle. I topped this up with a light application of badab black wash in the same way, but not going as far out.

Now orks really don't like having this stuff stolen - I thought I'd help them out by painting on some suitably orky faces so no one could possibly get confused about who it belonged too. Regal blue base with enchanted blue on top. 2:1 paint to water.

Very happy with how it turned out. I'm exhausted now so nighty night!