In which I blog about my miniature wargaming and whatever else takes my interest!

In which I blog about my miniature wargaming and whatever else takes my interest!

Friday, September 18, 2015

Compounding the Compounds and Grappling With Grape Huts Some More!

Lots of progress in the last two weeks.


Put the finishing touches on the four compounds I started. Over the gritty pink glitter paint went a coat of  chocolate brown latex paint. I then used khaki and ivory spray paint to over coat that and try and give some depth, although better control and a lighter touch with the ivory would have been better.

Wooden posts, thatch and doors were then painted. I used brown inks on the posts and thatch. Blue doors seem pretty common in Afghanistan so I did them in a pale blue with blue grey highlight.

To give them the look that these are actually someone's home I added stuff to the court yards. Someone, maybe Mikey or probably Pasha Dan, gave me a sprue of 1/72nd scale accessories; two bicycles and some picks and shovels. To these I added some tires and an oil drum from my bits box and made wood piles and a stack of lumber out of off cuts. I'm thinking these are farmers, and the farms around here have all kinds of clutter, so why should they be different?





I also made a breakthrough with the grape huts yesterday.

I've decided that the one I started is too big. So I tried using some fiber board and drilling pilot holes with my dremel tool and then cutting the vents.

Yeah, that didn't work so great.

But then I had the idea to punch the vents into foam core. I tried a few different ideas and then had success by sharpening the end of a piece of scrape plastic and pre-cutting "I" shaped slits for each vent.


Last night I cut out, cut the vents and assembled two grape huts.



Tonight I started on the thatch roofs by building the rafters to attach the thatch to so that the roofs would be removable. I notched the short ends to take the main beams which are cut from bamboo skewers.


I then cut cross beams and glued them in place with epoxy. I could use PVA or superglue, but the rest of the roof is going to be grass, so I want them strong so they can withstand play.


Now all this activity in the last few weeks has left my gaming table/terrain work bench a bit of a mess!


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