Appendicitis

In the post before last I wrote:

I cannot report any progress. I was going to buckle down last night and get back to work, but some wretched event gave me belly-ache quite literally. What it was, I do not know. It may have been the wine gums I'd never tried before, which also dislodged one of my fillings, and had me tearing off northwards to have the gaping hole refilled. Bless you, dentist mine, for taking me at such short notice during your lunch break! It may have been some combination of things. I don't know. I do know that for the past twenty-two hours I've been aching like a zombie deprived of his daily dose of brains. Sitting down is unpleasant, lying down about tolerable, sitting is a one-way ticket to Yowsers-ville!. The pain is diffuse, lest any of you suggest the trusty old appendix is betraying me. So instead I spent a bit of time fiddling with scenery.

Of course, it was appendicitis, and I probably perforated it on Friday night, doing sit-ups to clear the imagined wind. Happily, by Monday night it was out, as was the pus I'd squirted into myself. Fun! I shan't apologise for the lack of updates, but I trust this is explanation enough. I'll get back to things in due time, but inevitably there's nothing doing right now.

Terrain: How to keep cool in industry Part I

I gutted my old PC the other day, and salvaged a few bits from it. First to get the terrain treatment is this small fan. Obligatory safety note: try not to electrocute yourself to death when disintegrating an old computer. I manage that first step, as this written report suggests. So here is what I did. First, I measured the sides of the fan (a smidge under 80mm), and cut some 2mm thick plasticard to provide four sides.



Of course, I had forgotten to allow for slightly longer sides so that the "walls" would join up. Anyway, I glued the walls to the fan.



Don't do that! Unless you have my inability to cut a true square corner. That can lead to some very wonky buildings. Next cut some small supporting pieces. These will support the fan from beneath, so it isn't reliant just on the glue to secure it in place. Try to ensure they aren't too visible from the top side when you secure them in place.







Then I got a piece of 0.5mm thick plasticard sheet. Bearing in mind my earlier undermeasurement, I cut a square with a side of 85mm.



I trimmed a border 5mm deep around the edge, and cut the corners so that they would cover the edge of the fan's casing.



Then I took the remnant 0.5mm plasticard sheet and trimmed the central 45mm portion into four 11mm wide strips.



Then I stuck these onto each corner. The aim for these pieces is for them to disguise the hollow corners. If you were more careful than I was, these can cover any minor errors. If you did it perfectly, they still look good, as they will look like corner supports once we're done.



These should be left to dry for a while. In that time I shall work on some pieces to detail the rather bald side of the fan. Tune in again for Part II!

Fiddling while Rome burns and Planetstrike

I cannot report any progress. I was going to buckle down last night and get back to work, but some wretched event gave me belly-ache quite literally. What it was, I do not know. It may have been the wine gums I'd never tried before, which also dislodged one of my fillings, and had me tearing off northwards to have the gaping hole refilled. Bless you, dentist mine, for taking me at such short notice during your lunch break! It may have been some combination of things. I don't know. I do know that for the past twenty-two hours I've been aching like a zombie deprived of his daily dose of brains. Sitting down is unpleasant, lying down about tolerable, sitting is a one-way ticket to Yowsers-ville!. The pain is diffuse, lest any of you suggest the trusty old appendix is betraying me. So instead I spent a bit of time fiddling with scenery.

All I know about GW's 40K expansion Planetstrike is that the Defender gets to put as much scenery down as he wants. Anyone want to correct that? I don't own the rules, so although I've heard of super-dooper bombardments and so on, that nugget is all I have. So I thought I'd set up a little defensive area and see if I had enough nasty stuff to fill up the rest of a six by four board. Barbed wire, trees, craters, tank traps, wire fences, walls and a few other bits and bobs all went into this. I expect the bombardments available in the aforementioned expansion would eliminate quite a lot of this stuff, but what these photos tell me is - drumrolls, please! - I need more barbed wire emplacements.









On the theme of terrain, I finally got round to gutting my old dead PC the other day. I decanted a few fans which should look good in some urban industrial setting. Space Marine scout (sans head) for scale.

I love it when a team comes together!

I pity the fool who hasn't bought these miniatures. That said, I've no idea what I'll do with them. Just owning them is enough! BA has been waiting for everyone else to be finished for quite a while, patient Sergeant. I just finished off the other guys watching the recent cinematic update. I rather enjoyed it. It had no pretensions whatsoever, which was just the right way to go about that sort of thing. If you want to see it done the wrong way, I submit The Expendables, which could not decide what it was at all. Tut-tut.













Now I just need that van!

The game is afoot!

I feel I should put in some awful joke about football here, but thankfully for you, loyal reader, the very thought disgusts me. As you will have deduced from the above picture, I have painted my first Sherlock. I am not the speediest of painters, and I have been finding more and more that I will start a project involving painting several models, get bored that I haven't finished any of them, and wander off. Can you guess what my Napoleonic command types are up to right now? That being the case, I decided I would concentrate on just two last night. So I put The Hound of the Baskervilles (Jeremy Brett) on the TV, and settled down to paint the first Holmes and Watson.







I'm quite pleased with how they've come out. I didn't go for anything fancy with these first two, obviously. The large flat areas of Holmes' clothing could do with dome sort of pattern, so I intend that for my next. Watson should match that with a less apparent pattern, I fancy. So keep your eyes peeled for the next pair. If you're to be a detective, you must practise your powers of observation!