From the Antique Roadshow, Sept 8/13.

http://youtu.be/UR_qh2phhz8

An interview with (I believe she says), Colonel Olive O'Keefe, at the Eastborne Bandstand, discussing his grandfather George's lead soldier collection, started in the early 1870's.  Also mentioned are George's wargaming exploits, his note book, and travels with his soldiers.
Note that this period predates published wargaming rules !

"Emperor George !"

Sometimes when you are bidding on interesting figures on Ebay, you toss a dollar on an odd figure and win - its like the thrill of gambling.  I knew nothing about this figure when I won him for about $1.

My Google-Fu is pretty strong...  but when I turned up nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing on the whole of the interwebs on this figure.... I figured there had to be reason... and at that point.. I turned to the collective wargaming hive-mind that is The Miniatures Page....  and boy.. what I story behind this little guy....

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=298703

Wow... 

A Friendly Building.

Built:  October 2012

So I got a phone call:  

" Hey can we come over tomorrow and use your gaming table and terrain.. cuz we don't have any ? "

"Sure" says I.

".. if you happened to have a building that would be great too..."

Lacking anything period suitable for their needs...  I said "Sure!".

And so it begins..  dropping everything non-gaming that I was in the middle of, as the Valkyries in the Attic were making too much noise for me to focus on anything else...  I scratch built a building in about 2 hours, without any detailed plans, or even a shopping trip... 

 

A sloppy slightly medieval stylised workshop of some sorts - suitable for a steam punk inventor I suppose.

Removable roof- just lift it off.

Balsa wood framing.
Cork sheet for walls & floor.
Styrene Chimney - from a gardening fan-like thing, for tying tomatoes too. (Dollar Store).
Hinges - from the wooden craft boxes (Dollar Store) that I used in a previous project.

Covered the roof frame with thin Balsa sheet, to give it some firmness.
The Straw Mat is a cheap yoga mat from the Dollar Store (previously used in the failed jungle huts projects).

Turned out ok.  Doors work nicely, the metal hinges are much better then the plastic nylon aircraft hinges I've been using.  The roof looks pretty good.

 With a bit more paint, and some detailing, it will be ok.

Oh look, someone's moved in already, and put the kettle on for tea !

Toy Soldier Picture Frame

Saw this in the window of a local eclectic artsy/used item store.

The frame has toy soldiers, toy animals, kinder surprises toys, etc glue on it, and all painted like it was the original frame.  Pretty nifty.

No idea what the actual artwork in the centre was suppose to be, the frame eclipsed everything for me.

*  Apologies for the extremely hodge-podge multi-photo garbage collage, the strong glare off the glass made a picture from further back useless.

https://www.facebook.com/PlanBHalifax

Rulers

Measuring is an important part of Wargaming.

However Tape Measures are be very awkward devices - can't be used one handed (need your other hand to pull the tape out), sometimes the lock doesn't hold, weights a lot if you drop it on a figure & your foot, and it can be hard to measure short or tight distances with its bulky size.
A gamer once brought his electric tape measure to a game - it extends & contracts with the push of a button.  Rather a handy good idea I admit.  But the sound of coffee beans being ground every time he extended and measured and retracted, extended and measured and retracted, extended and measured and retracted, drove me crazy...

I prefer to use a folding ruler - perhaps its eccenticity appeals to me, but I can't think of any reason that it stands out as superior to a tape measure.

The best device I've found so far, is the multi-sectional kids ruler (blue).
Each section is 1", which makes short distances easy to measure without needing numbers.  Its flexibility makes measuring short or awkward distances a breeze.  And its sorta fun to play with, without any annoying noise.  They are difficult to find, but kids stores, teachers stores, etc, can be a start.  They are on Ebay (search: plastic folding ruler) (three for ~$10). 

Tin Man

Official Hallmark "Wizard of OZ" Tin Man Xmas tree ornament.

Suitable for my 28mm VSF games, although may work for larger or smaller scales as well.

These go for about $10 online, I found this one at a yard sale for $1.

Definitely needs to be armed with an Axe....

Desert Town - Accessories

Built:  April 2012

The ability to accessorize, is what separates us from the animals....

Balsa wood Merchant stalls.
With replaceable divided table top sections - as this will allow me to use these for a variety of time periods - colonial, VSF, and modern - simply by changing what the merchant is selling - fruits & nuts, ancient books & tomes & elixirs, etc, etc.

 

Bamboo skewers lashed together with thread (liberally coats with white glue, for security), make the sun covers for the stalls.

Cheese cloth, covered in white glue make the aged canvas material.

Still wet (above).  Dry (below)

Revisco tent & barrels (I believe), 28mm.
I found these very light weight, and as I dislike my terrain moving, I added some modelling clay for weight.  However, when the clay dried, it had shrunk, and I had to super glue the clay into position.  They have a nice heft now, and don't feel like hollow plastic items.

The cheap plastic fountain centre came from a Dollar Store Cinderella kit  - which also came with 2 40mm female figures, and a horse drawn coach suitable for 28mm!

A large flat fender washer in the bottom, once again for added weight - with a smaller washer to raise the fountain up that little bit, above some additional glue to make the water in the fountain smooth.  Pink insulation foam, cared into a ring makes the outside of this.

Resin 20mm items here, but close enough for 28mm work.
The resin explosions on the Right hand side I couldn't decided what to do with - as I had no immediate need for  explosions markers.  These got painted red, and used as vegetation for VSF games on Mars.
In the back, a resin African drum, a fireplace, and a 54mm+ Victorian Xmas decoration hand pump (rather out of scale for 28mm, but by itself, it looks ok).
Everything mounted on fender washers, and texture with drywall compound - and soon to be painted to match the table top.

Plastic wishing well, from the Cake Decorating section of the local craft store.

 

Stalls, mounted on fender washers.
In the middle row:  2 plastic Cots, a resin African Oven and large pot...  suitable for Cannibals I suppose.

Desert Town

Built:  March 2012

Having 1 or 2 of these one each recent trip to the Dollar Store over the years, I figured I better start this project, before I ended up with an entire bin of wooden boxes!

I later learned, that these boxes are the cheapest source of Hinges for doors !  2 hinges and a wooden building for $1.25 !

A little Creativity, and a model saw, and presto, a town was born.
The box with one mesh side, became a garage type thing, with large double doubles.
Using the rounded ends of pop sickle sticks in the corners of the rooves, these became the support tabs for keeping the roof on the building.

Dollar Store bird feeder.  These were hard to take apart, had to hammer it some, and cut it some.  They use good glue wherever these are made.  However the wood is soft, so its easy to cut.
Added a disc under the roof, for support to keep it on the side walls, and cut out a door.
I think these make better storage huts, then living spaces - esp with the lack of windows.

FAILURES

Not everything I build works out.
Sometimes the Devil is in the Details.
Sometimes my Imagination exceeds my Ability.

 

These are a variant of boxes from the Dollar Store.  Notably a couple are in the perfect shape of a peaked roof building, one has a curved top, and another is cylindrical for holding a wine bottle.  All great shaping for buildings.

I decided to build some Jungle Huts out of these boxes, and cover them with various materials, to get that bamboo & grass roofed hut feeling.  - a Straw Crafting Mesh, Burlap Bag, Straw Place Mats  (all from the Dollar Store).

After cutting the building (dam that card board material was hard to cut by hand!) (note also the sloped roofs on a few of these with shorter rear walls), and applying the burlap, I noticed a problem.  While I accounted for the the width of the material while soft - once glued, they became rather hard, and difficult to get the roofs back on.  Unacceptable.

These was to be a arabian tower of some sorts.  The dome was a half a styrofoam sphere, and cork sheet was used to make the balcony floor & walls.   Once again, this material was bloody hard to cut, and produced some un-level edges.  The interior steps are reinforced balsa, and wit the sections being removable made the tower very playable for single 28mm figures.  However... when I went to paint it, turns out that the paper is plastic coated, and paint doesn't adhere to it!  Too much wrong with this project, so it went to the Unacceptable pile.

Pack Rat ?!?

One or two fellow wargamers over the years have labelled me a bit of a "Pat Rack".

I am unable to walk past a Dollar Store or a Yard Sale, without looking at everything - as you never know what you might find, that can be turned into something else.

The problem then becomes storing all these bits & pieces.  However, as you can see, everything gets put in the proper bin - there is nothing "rat-like/rat nest" about my storage system!  It makes scratch building easier, as well, opening a box filled with inspiration is a good feeling when the "mood to build something" strikes.

However... i do love a cluttered workspace....   sigh.

Armoured Cars

Built:  March 2012

Requiring some  pseudo-historical vehicles for my mish-mashed Colonial/VSF forces, i decided to scratch-bash some quick models, using Balsa wood.

The E-V/4 Panzerkraftwagen Ehrhardt fit the bill, so I made a sketch, figured out what balsa wood shapes I could purchase (angled wedge like pieces were very handy for this project - as well as a variable of square & rectangular stock).

Wikipedia: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrhardt_E-V/4

Landships:
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/erhardtkit.htm 

For the rather fast pace I made these, I was pleased.  They aren't as detailed as I'd like, and cutting perfect angles with soft balsa wood is a challenge - but suitable enough for a wargame, but not a good example of model making.

They are in need of a more detailed paint job, but even just a solid grey colour made them look formidable on the table.

One note:  these had a large crew, and were able to simultaneously fire most of the MGs shown at the same time!