Sunday, November 2, 2014

A Firm Base

Not a lot of hobby time this week.

But I have scraped the flash and glued all my Elheim 1/72 scale Afghanistan figures to 20mm washers. There wasn't a lot of flash, mostly just the bits from the venting in the mold.

Group shot
I got a bag of Taliban LMG gunners and three of the four had separate bi-pods that required attaching. One of the gunners was lying prone so obviously wouldn't fit on a regular 20mm washer.

I thought about just cutting out a 20x40mm piece of heavy card, but that would look out of place to have one square base among all the round ones. In an 'aha' moment I had the idea to use two washers to make a longer base. With washers there are always a couple that have a flat edge where the stamping die was too close to the edge of the sheet of steel, so I took two of these and glued them together at the flat edges. I also used white glue to stick them on to some heavy paper for extra support. Once the glue was dry I filled in the concavity on both sides with some cheap caulking and let the whole mess dry.

Taliban LMG gunners and base in process
 I then cut the result out, trimming the dried caulking flat and trimming down some of the lumps.



Hopefully I'll retrieve my painting mojo this week.

4 comments:

  1. A very neat solution to a perennial problem!

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  2. Nice. I've done the same for prone figures and a motorcycle or two. I buy bulk washers and every so often there are ones that aren't perfectly round - there's a bit nipped off the edge which makes it a bit flat - I usually save these for just such an occasion I glue the two flat sides together with cyanoacrylate glue and fill in the sides with green stuff.

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  3. Neat trick! I'm really going to have to buy some of these figures at some point............

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    1. Oh yes you should! More sales will encourage Elheim to sculpt more Canadians! :)

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