Vickers Medium Mk.II* (1:285)

Get it at http://shpws.me/Mv2T

Here's my 1/285 scale model of the Vickers Medium Mk.II*, printed by Shapeways in FUD resin.

It's available as a sprue of five vehicles at http://shpws.me/Mv2T.

Carden-Loyd Carrier (1:285)

Get it at http://shpws.me/Og3u

This is the little Carden-Loyd Medium Machine-Gun Carrier Mk.VI, used by the British army and produced from 1927 to 1935.

This model is 1:285 scale, and therefore very tiny indeed, 3d printed by Shapeways in FED resin. You can get it at as a sprue of twelve vehicles http://shpws.me/Og3u

New Stuff From Shapeways

These arrived this morning from Shapeways. I've given them a squirt with a pale grey primer to make it a bit easier to see what's what; the translucent resin is terrible to photograph.

I'm pretty happy with the way they've turned out. They're pretty tiny; the carriers are only about 10mm long, and the Vickers Mediums about 20mm.

1:285 scale Carden-Loyd MG Carrier, still on the sprue (printed in FED resin)
https://www.shapeways.com/product/MS8BTEMAU/carden-loyd-carrier-mkvi-6mm-12up

1:285 scale Vickers Medium Mk.II* (printed in FUD resin)
https://www.shapeways.com/product/G66SP8C2P/vickers-medium-mkii-6mm-5up

H&R Covenanter

B107 Cruiser Mk.IV Covenanter from Heroics & Ros

This is the 1:300 scale Covenanter from Heroics & Ros. It's not a bad little model, though it could do with being hiked up a little over the running gear; the hull looks a little flat.

This is the Covenanter they have at Bovington. You can see that the track guards slope up quite sharply from front and back, creating a considerable gap between them and the tracks.

Thanks to severe overheating issues, this tank never made it into active service but was relegated to training duties only.  There's a possibility that a few were sent out to Egypt, but it's more likely that they were Mk.I Crusaders — the two types are superficially quite similar in appearance.

Centurion

Heroics & Ros B21  Centurion Mk.I

In my most recent order from Heroics & Ros, I included these, on a whim: the Centurion Mk.I of 1945, armed with the 17 pounder and a co-axial 20mm Polsten gun.

I have no immediate use for them, but they, and the large number of Comets I have that I also have little use for, will provide an answer for those guys who like to field imaginary German WWII armies consisting of nothing but King Tigers and Panthers.

I will probably replace their gun barrels with brass or steel pins at some stage. The soft alloy they're cast in is far too bendy for my taste.

More H&R Artillery

Heroics & Ros B102 4.5" Howitzer

Here's some more Heroics & Ros 1:300 scale WWII artillery, this time the venerable 4.5" howitzer. It was a British WWI model that served on into the early part of WWII, eventually being completely replaced by the 25 pounder.

I don't have any crew figures for these guns as yet, so I haven't finished off the base-work — the guns are just sitting on "dirt" made from MDF sawdust on 25 x 25mm magnetic strip.

H&R Big Guns (but very small)

B43 7.2" Howitzer

This is the British WWII 7.2" Howitzer from Heroics & Ros, with eight foot tall GHQ crewmen.

This artillery piece was a pretty massive piece of kit, so it's a pity that the figures are so tall — it makes the guns look a lot smaller by comparison. Next time I get a pack of H&R artillerymen, I'll swap them out I think.

They're based on 25x25mm pieces of magnetic strip, which makes storage and transportation a lot easier and safer. Plus, the strip is thick enough to give me something to handle without having to grab the models themselves — that's especially important for artillery, because it's the crew figures that bear the brunt of mishandling, and they're the most fragile part of each base.

New Arrivals From Heroics & Ros

A new batch of 1:300 scale minis just arrived from Heroics & Ros. From left to right and top to bottom, they are:

• B13 Grant
• B34 Archer
• B33 Deacon
• B68 Matador
• B108 Lloyd Carrier (with separate tilt, top right)
• B93 Humber Snipe (staff car)
• B43 7.2" Howitzer

and then (bottom section)

• B102 4.5" Howitzer
• B21 Centurion Mk.I
• B107 Cruiser Mk.IV Covenanter

Once upon a time, Heroics & Ros provided a crew strip with each gun, but it looks like that's no longer the case. It's a bit of a nuisance; now I'll have to order some and pay postage separately. I can't say I'm all that surprised though — it seems to have become standard practice amongst pretty much all manufacturers to provide guns naked and crewless. I just wish I'd known beforehand.

These are just as they arrived, straight from the bag. All I've done to them thus far is put the appropriate turrets on the right hulls.

Tiny 25 pounders

I've made a start on painting and basing my 3d-printed 25 pounder battery, c.1940.

The crew figures are from GHQ, and I suspect they're going to be too tall for the guns (as GHQ infantry are wont to be). I'd rather be using Heroics & Ros figures really, in spite of the lower level of detail, but they're taking a very long time about fulfilling orders these days and I don't want to wait another six weeks to get the bases done.

Something I realised when I was gluing the guns down is that there's no actual gunner. He should be sitting on the seat on the left of the gun, crouched over the sights — I think I might have to revisit the file and add one.

I'm using 25x25mm bases (cut down from old credit cards and the like), which would make the standard 8-man crew a bit crowded. However, the official "low establishment" crew was only four, so I've got a bit of leeway.

Couple of days later

I've finished painting and basing the guns and limbers. As I suspected, the GHQ crew are a bit too tall, but they'll just have to do. I'll probably glue some magnetic sheet underneath the plastic bases at some stage.

Considering the size of games we're usually playing, it's unlikely I'll ever need to field a whole twelve-gun battery, but if I need to, I now can. There's a comfort in that.

Shapeways Micros

I've painted the 1:285 scale Lanchester Mk.II armoured cars and Burford-Kegresse MG carriers I got recently from Shapeways.

These are printed in FUD resin, and considering that they're only about 20mm long, I think the amount of detail rendered in this material is pretty sweet. I'd like to see how they look in FED resin, but that printing process is even pricier than FUD.

The Burford-Kegresse is the first vehicle I've modeled crew for, and I'm quite happy with how they've turned out, though I'd say that in this scale I could do with ignoring a lot of the detail I included, and exaggerating features like noses.

They're both on sprues of five vehicles each, which is much, much more cost-effective than buying them individually.

More magnetic basing

One of the things I've come to appreciate about thick bases for micro-scale stuff, besides the fact that it makes handling the elements very much easier, is that the thickness of the base makes it possible to apply identification information to the rear. I print out the labels on my laser printer, and glue them to the base edge with superglue gel.

This magnetic strip is about 1.6mm thick, which is just enough to display 5.5pt text. My old eyes still need glasses to read it, but it's legible. I guess if I were to bevel the rear edge of the base, it would provide more height and thus allow larger text, but this size seems OK.

These figures are GHQ's individual Afrikakorps. Apart from the expense, I do like GHQ's infantry, except for one thing: they mould things like this tripod-mounted MG34  with a filler wall beneath the barrel. I realise that it makes casting in one piece very much easier and more reliable, but I'd rather get the models as two-piece castings for assembly, and not have the ugly wall between the base and the gun barrel..

1:300 BE2c — progress

The fuselage of my 1:300 scale BE2c is pretty much complete.

The majority of it is carved from a piece of clear 2mm acrylic, which is quite good for this sort of work because it's pretty hard, and takes good sharp facets. Softer materials are easier to work, but the down-side is that they're also easier to over-work inadvertently. It's easier to see what you're doing with opaque acrylic, but I don't have any to hand. Brass would be ideal, but again, I don't have any in the thickness I'd need.

The engine, crew and airscrew are made from stretched sprue, the cabane (?) behind the pilot is Green Stuff.

The War In The Air Proceeds Apace

Now that I have all the tiny aeroplanes I've built (so far) on little magnetic stalks, I can actually start playing with them. I haven't made any arrangements for representing different altitudes as yet, but that can come later — I've ordered some 3mm clear acrylic rod for the purpose.

The rules I'm trying to learn are Canvas Eagles, which have the significant benefit of being free.

I've created a game mat by the simple expedient of whipping one up in CorelDraw, pumping out a PDF, and getting it printed at A0 size at Warehouse Stationary for about $25. At the moment I'm using roughly 75mm hexes, which provides plenty of room for multiple aircraft in the same hex, but I suspect that 50mm would be big enough, and would provide a larger playing area within the same board size. I'll see if it's necessary; if so, it's quick and easy to get another hex-grid printed.

There's a DH2 and a Fokker E-III in amongst the melee shown above. They really don't stand much chance of survival; it's just not fair at all.

MicroAirWar... the Continuation

Next in the line of 1:300 scale WWI aeroplanes to take to the gaming board is this SE5a of 1917. The model is by Skytrex.

It's OK as a gaming piece, but those wings are very, very thick. And that's after quite a lot of filing. As usual, struts were added in wire.

Painting the RFC roundels by eye is a bit nerve-wracking; they never turn out precisely round. However, I think they look OK for gaming purposes.

This is how I make my magnetic flight stands.

I glued together a 90° MDF jig, to the bottom-plate of which I glued a steel strip for the neodymium magnets to stick to, and on the back-plate, a magnetic strip for the dressmaker's pins to stick to.

I used a set square to draw 90° lines on the magnetic strip to align the pins by, and at the same time, drew lines from the bottom of the square on the steel strip. This ensured that the pins and neodymium magnets were centred on each other.

In behind where the magnets go, I put a few layers of masking tape. This creates a stand-off for the magnets so that they're not inadvertently glued to the MDF back-plate, and also pushing them hard against it centres them on the pin shaft, so I don't have to do it by eye every time. I checked by eye with each layer to make sure I was getting the right thickness of tape; in this case, I needed three layers.

Then it's a simple matter of dipping the pin-head in super-strength 24-hour epoxy and aligning the shaft on the lines drawn on the magnetic strip.

One other thing: I draw on the end of the magnets with a Sharpie when they're still on their stack, before I place them. This ensures that I can keep all the magnets in the same polarity just by making sure that the coloured end is always up.

Tiny Halberstadt CL-II

Since I'm on a bit of a tiny-plane jag at the moment, I thought I'd put together and paint some that I've had sitting around for quite a few years.

This one is from Skytrex I believe (though to be frank it's been so long that I've forgotten exactly who the manufacturer was). It's 1:300 scale, with a wingspan of 34mm, and it's supposed to represent a Halberstadt CL-II, a German two-seater fast reconnaissance and ground-attack aeroplane which went into service in the latter half of 1917. The silhouette isn't absolutely perfect, but it's certainly good enough for gaming purposes.

Once assembled and painted, these Skytrex models don't look too bad. However, they do require quite a lot of attention to get to that point. I had to do quite a bit of filing to thin down the wings and tail, and I had to build the wing struts and landing-gear axle from wire.

The wing rib detail is incised into the surface, not raised, so I had to bring out the ribs with paint. That's OK; the scribed detail provides a pretty good guide for painting.

The post it's mounted on is a 1mm thick panel pin epoxied to a 3mm neodymium magnet. Eventually, when the 3mm clear acrylic rod I ordered arrives, I'll make a bunch of magnet-tipped flight stands and hopefully start using all these little planes to play some wargames with.

Sausage-fingers vs. Tiny Planes

A couple of months ago, a company (whose name now escapes me) had a half-price clearance sale of their Heroics & Ros 1:300 scale WW1 aircraft. Naturally, I couldn't resist bait like that, and I bought a whole bunch of them.

Among them is the DH2, a British pusher (i.e. with the propeller at the back) scout (i.e. single-seat fighter).

This thing is a double-buggering bastard of a model to assemble. I've scratch-built a micro-scale DH2 before, back in the Olden Days when I still had things like eyesight. It's the painted model in the left foreground of the photo. I made it out of wood, cardboard and wire, and I'm pretty sure it didn't take me as long to scratch-build that one as it's taking me to assemble this prefabricated model.

The problem with the H&R model is that almost every single piece is cast separately — every wing strut, each tail boom — and there is no easy way to keep everything straight and square while you're putting it together. The components aren't cast terribly precisely either, so the struts and booms are out of scale and everything has visible mould-lines where the moulds were slightly offset. I've replaced all the wing struts with wire, which still looks massively over-scale, but at least it's round and smooth.

This is a model that would be vastly improved by having most of the components made in photo-etched brass, with only the nacelle really needing to be cast. I'd make a template and do it myself, except that I don't have access to the means of exposing and etching the brass.