Not the post Bob is expecting

07.22.2018

This weekend my goal was to paint some minis (Foundrey Wargames version of the A-Team). They're 90% finished, needing their weapons painted and whatever texture/terrain on the bases to dry and get the little details I enjoy putting in. I would have gotten them completely done except I spent too much time on Saturday running errands I didn't really need to run, and then I wanted to keep taking naps on Sunday. But that's part of a joy of the weekend. Procrastination!

One of those errands Saturday swung me by Harbor Freight where I picked up a cheap belt sander, as pictured above. Why do I need a belt sander? Well, obviously I don't. Why did I get/want one? For those times when I tire and bore of hand sanding! My first experiment in belt sanding, no I've never belt sanded before, will be to see what happens when you put a curved yet oddly solid piece of 3D printed plastic against 3400 RPMs of 120 grit sandpaper. The votes are evenly split between "melt" and "shatter" so far.

A-Team to be finished sometime this week!

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Moon Light and Open For Business

07.08.2018

Once I saw Christian's Moon Light, I wanted a moon light. I saw that Amazon had 16-color moon lights. The lone review on that light stated it was problematic. With only 1 bad review I decided to take a chance and ordered one. It arrived, I charged it up... and the damn thing didn't work. There was another Amazon option that caught my eye - a newer model/print, and larger. So I ordered that one, as I needed a box to ship my return of the non-working light back in. It makes sense to me! The newer, bigger light arrived and it worked like a charm.

I'm not as good a low-light photographer as Christian, but it was fun playing with the different colors.

With the mini mart and coffee shop complete, it was time to add them to the cityscape of the zombie apocalypse (or whatever else might come along down the road). My regular, modular map tiles are 7.5" square(ish). The mini mart had a 6.5" square footprint, which would allow for a 1" leeway for space, maybe a sidewalk around the building. The coffee shop was 8" x 6", so it would overflow a little.

And that overflow option bothered me. I wanted a parking lot for these shops. I'd made some parking lot tiles for the map before, but they didn't really work. The spacing was all off. I opted to try to layout something using some multiple(s) of 7.5" that I could keep together instead of cutting into sections, and it would still work with the pieces I'd been using. After some fiddling, I settled on a 22.5" x 15" layout - it would fit on foam board that I already had, and it would give me enough room for the 2 buildings and a little parking. Even though I made everything in Paint Shop Pro using a 22.5" x 15" image, I split it into 7.5" squares for printing. Gotta love letter size paper. Everything printed out fine.

Learning my lesson from the Gaslands track where the glue I was using made the board bow, I taped the 6 pieces of printed map together to line everything up. From there, a light spray of (Locktite) adhesive on some foam board and it was stuck good enough for me, which is good enough for someone who's had glue problems lately.

And then, I had to play around with actually setting things up. New buildings! Moon light! I even remembered I had a star field for X-Wing that I could use as a backdrop!

I look forward to using more of Christian's ideas. Between the Walking Dead Lucille threat tracker and moon light, I've got to make sure he doesn't start charging me royalty fees.

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies moon light ttcombat walking dead

Mini Mart and Coffee Shop

06.30.2018

It's been almost 2 months since I first mentioned working on the TTCombat buildings. Beleive it or not it hasn't taken that long, I just keep going back and tweaking things.

The TTCombat buildings are more of a budget line of MDF building. That's not a bad thing. While I really like the 4Ground buildings, they can get a little pricey. Nice, but pricey. TTCombat would give me a chance to exercise my skills at nicing up some buildings. The first 2 commercial buildings in what constitutes my zombie apocalypse thus far.

At some point I'm going to have to explain the setting for my scenery and how it's not just for The Walking Dead.

The first building I worked on was the Convenience Store, well really a Mini Mart. I was shooting for a 7-11 color scheme thanks to a batch of spray paint that I picked up when Hobby Town USA was closing up. Honestly, how often am I going to get to use orange? I primed the interior and exterior white, masked off the middle and added some accent stripes of red and orange. It turned out pretty good. I then got cocky and tried putting a red strip along the top of the interior. Either I didn't mask it properly, or the paint just decided to bleed. It did not turn out well. I decided to go work on the second building while mulling over how to turn a messy red line into a happy mistake.

For the Coffee Shop I wanted to go with the overplayed Starbucks color scheme. The problem I would have to avoid is using too similar a green that I used on the Mini Mart roof. I thought I was going with a lighter green with the can of something Dodge Charger Green something something. I was going with a brighter green. Way brighter. but at least it wasn't the same! I stayed away from masking frenzy on the coffee shop. I started having fun adding printed out what not to the walls - a menu, random coffee propaganda. The kit came with a counter, table, and chairs, and it fleshed out the interior really well.

I returned to the Mini Mart after the coffee shop was done, and there may have been a sale at Hobby Lobby. To cover up the bleeding red line, I picked up some clearance duct tape that was lacking most duct qualities. It didn't stick very well. It was a decorative dark red. It was thin. No wonder it was on clearance. But it suited my needs as a replacement stripe to go along the top of the wall. I'd also been 3D printing shelves to go along the walls. I tweaked the settings of the shelves - I'd learned when getting furniture printed for the houses that the default "real" volume makes everything take up too much room. The first thing I did was change the shelves from 15mm depth to 6mm. Yes, that's tiny, but I wanted something with just a little relief on the walls - honestly I'd been thinking of just printing a picture of shelves to glue to the walls until I thought it'd be cool to use that printer I've got! The best part is... it worked! It took a while, as I printed out 15 shelving units that took anywhere from 2 hrs to 8 hrs (I was learning how to tweak things!) to print. Once they were primed, I figured grey was a good shelf color, and the random products painted I used the sticky tac to hold it all against walls or floor, where appropriate. I've got plenty of sticky tac as that's what I use to mount minis on blocks to hold when I go to paint them, yet most people use it to hold up posters. After the walls were lined with shelves, I decorated the otuside with some random sales propaganda. The Mini Mart turned out a lot better than it was looking when the coffee shop started.

I really need to work on some proper map tiles for these 2 stores. Parking with an entrance, and how to deal with the footprint of the buildings. I've been meaning to work on this for a while, but I keep putting it off.

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2 More Houses With Garbage Pickup

05.08.2018

After the failed attempts of the last blog I went back to the well with something I was confident I could do without too much trouble. I still had 2 4Ground Shotgun Houses on the shelf, along with some TTCombat clutter that I'd primed a while back. I'd made one of the Shotgun Houses before so my confidence was high!

Last time for the house interior I printed off some wallpaper textures. While that worked well enough, I wanted to try something a little better. I stopped by Home Depot and went to the home paint section... and got lots of paint sample cards. Instead of printing my own, why not try actual paint colors? Most of the cards had too much print on them to be usable, but the Behr sample cards were perfect. In fact, 1 card would cover the vaulted/arched ceiling end wall without any problem.

I still glued some transparency paper between the walls to act as window glass. It's so subtle you can't see it unless you're looking for it, but I like knowing it's there. One of the things I learned from my first go around was to cut the window openings after the paper has glued and dried. In addition, although it was easy to fold back the paper from openings and cut flush with a razor blade, folding back left a lot of white (internal) paper after the cut. Still cutting with a razor, but without folding and just trying to stay flush to the wall/opening helped cut back on that. It still seems to be an affect of cutting this way though.

There's only 1 thing I screwed up on the houses. Well, 1 that I've noticed so far. When gluing exterior doors into the frames, I stuck them so the exterior of the doors face inside. After doing this on the first house I was extra careful to not do the same thing for the second house. So careful that I did exactly the same thing, but this time with great care and precision. At least I got the right side of the roof facing out this time.

Shotgun House C had etched walls to look like paneling, so I eschewed covering them with paper and instead the the easy route of There That's Good Enough.

The TTCombat clutter came from a set of garbage (I honestly don't remember what it's called) and cmaping equipment. The garbage set I got for the wheeled garbage bins - my houses need scheduled garbage pickup! The camping set I picked up to pad my order for the coupon I had, plus I had some other camping bits that would fit with it if needed later on. There's post-accident motorcycle helmet that looks like it's supposed to still have a head in it. That should fit in well with my zombie apocalypse.

Next up. I'm not completely sure. I have 2 versions of water towers in progress, but I'm not feeling confident the end result will be keepable. The TTCombat convenience store or coffee shop are the next buildings in the queue. A few Reaper Chronoscape minis will likely get primed by the weekend for when the painting mood strikes. There's also that 3D printer still waiting to be unboxed.

There's also been an addition to the mini painting backlog.

Adding in 32 Trek figures, for a game I likely won't play AND won't fit into any other game, isn't the smartest thing to do. Smart hasn't been something I'm oft accused of when it comes to either spending money or (not) get minis/toys/games.

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I got a thing

04.30.2018

Thanks to a little peer pressure, a low price, alleged low maintenance, and peer pressure (did I mention peer pressure?), I got a 3D printer.

I ordered it Thursday and it arrived today. Filament from Amazon will get here Thursday. I have plenty of stuff to print.

I can't believe I bought a frickin 3D printer after telling myself I wasn't going to do it for years. Now I'm worried about that laser cutter I said I was never going to get, too.

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