Tuesday 17 August 2021

Merchants for "Sails of Glory"

Some more models that I printed a while back but only just got around to finishing. These are a couple of examples of Henry Turner's HMS Bounty model rescaled to 1/1000 and then shrunk a bit more so as to print a medium and a small merchant.

Bases are made from laser cut MDF and Perspex, sourced by Chris Haigh (aka "Capn Duff") on the Sails of Glory Anchorage, and the ship cards drawn from the anchorage files area.




Well done to Scotty for getting in the way of the third photo :)

There is something unusual about these prints - which is that they are one piece prints. I assesmbled the hull, bowsprit, masts and sails in Microsoft 3D Builder and then printed as a single entity, just to see if it was possible. Setting and removing the supports was "fun" but ultimately successful. I may give it another go with a larger ship to see if having more space to work with helps. Painting is also "fun", but overall I'm happy. Both need to have their paint jobs completed but I wanted to get these up sooner rather than later to show to someone who was interetsed.

Tuesday 10 August 2021

Field defences at Lansdown, 1643

A while back I walked the battlefield site at Lansdown just to the north of Bath (Laura has gone to uni at Bath so I stopped off there after one of my trips to deliver forgotten clothes to her halls of residence).  Its not a particularly large site so it makes a good walk for an hour or so. Naturally I got to thinking about sprucing up my 15mm ECW collection that I'd started for one of Peter Colbeck's campaigns and expanded slowly over the years. I decided I needed some additions to my ECW scenery and "Waller's Wall" was a natural thing to start with, so I knocked up various dry stone wall sections using budgie grit, PVA glue and lolly sticks, with molds made from Lego. 

There were also some field defences built along the ridge line at Lansdown and I decided to collect some suitable twigs which would make decent tree trunks in 15mm. I finally got around to working on these this weekend, and they've just finished drying out. They were very simple to make - 40mm or 80mm lengths of thick card smeared with flexible fill Polyfilla (the same stuff I use for making sculpted sea bases), then the twigs broken to suitable lengths and pressed into the filler. Scatter over with budgie grit, then leave overnight to dry. Next day, paint over the polyfilla and grit with a mix of PVA, water and earthy brown paint, again leave overnight and the next day they are all done. And very nice I think they are too. Shown below with some of my 15mm Peter Pig ECW collection.

Now all I need to do is find some time to refight the battle :)