I fell for Faller because I didn’t look where I was going…
November 9, 2009
I decided to check how many bases I could fit inside that Faller house this morning – I was confident of getting one 40mm x 40mm base in, but hoped for two. Picking up a base, it was only slightly too big…but I figured Peter would rule in my favour. I picked up the Hasegawa Kattenkrad to look more at scale…and realised that my 1/72 scale troops would have to stoop to get in the door…and then kneel down to look out of the windows!
I looked at the box, hoping to ascertain what was going on with this size anomly. Nothing. Said ‘HO’ scale. Should be OK.
Then the penny dropped. HO, not ‘HO/OO’, as the small Airfix AFVs and troops of my youth were! ‘All about scales” over at The Miniatures Page confirmed my mistake…this house was actually 1/87 scale. Drat!
Motorbikes and Caeser’s WWII German Paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger)
October 25, 2009
I’ve finished my 40mm x 40mm base of motorcycles, which are part of my recon force’s HQ. These are all from the Italeri WWII German Motorcycles kit.
The artwork for the box and the uniforms of the figures show that they are meant to be down in Africa, as part of the DAK. To make them Eastern Front, I’ve painted them as wearing the “reed green” summer uniform, which was also known as HBT or herringbone twill. They’ve come out really well (except I don’t have much evidence of troops in the HBT uniform wearing that type of cap in that colour…that cap was very much a DAK item. Ah well, it’s just a game – and an abstract one at that. So a little artistic licence here and there is OK.
This means the oft-talked-about game on this blog for the last three months or so can finally happen.
***
In other news, the wonderful Paul who runs the brilliant “Plastic Warriors” blog passed along some vital news that I’ll share with you all – he’s found a link where you can go have a look-see at the new Caeser WWII German Paratroopers (why aren’t they called Fallschirmjäger?)?
It comes from Bunkermeister’s Bunker Talk blog, and here’s the link to the post you all want to see! Thanks Paul for the tipoff, and thanks Bunkermeister for making some photos so speedily available!
“Caeser, Caeser…” “Ah, it’s Stommachus Grossus!”
October 24, 2009
NEWSFLASH!
The Paratroopers release has caught many in the hobby completely unawares! It’s code is H068.
I’m going to wait this time before ordering – I want to see what Plastic Soldier Review have to say about them.
From love to occasional hate
October 17, 2009
I’ve finished the assembly of ICM’s kit #72451: Krupp L2H143 Kfz.70. I’d picked it up mid-year, you’ll recall, at the IPMS Expo. This kit hasn’t been easy to work with – unlike the Sd. Kfz. 222, which I’ve already reviewed on this blog and you can find the concluding entry about it here.
Since I’ve been doing the final painting of a base of Italeri BMW R75 motorcycles I need for this upcoming recon game, I wanted something to work on while waiting for the fiddly painting to dry. I dusted off the Krupp last week and began work on it building it.
I loved doing the Sd. Kfz. 222…but I haven’t loved this kit. The detail of some pieces is extremely fine. In fact, two parts (front axle, bumper bar) were broken already, and the kit hadn’t even come out of it’s plastic sealed bag! The pressures on the sprue are too intense. Some more pieces broke while cutting them off the sprue. I was careful cutting pieces free, even using ultra-sharp hospital scalpels (thanks to my inside contact).
So, there’s been attempts to fix broken parts with lots of fancy gluework (and me having to work in short spurts to escape the fumes) and some straight-out kitbashing with brass wire and cyanoacrylate superglue. Fancy gluework didn’t work for the crucial parts, leading to frustration and a number of points where I was going to give up and turn the whole lot into spares. The front axle was one of these prickly points – I ended up replacing it with brass wire and had to use lots of cyanoacrylate to get everything to finally stay solid.
Once assembled, though, it looks pretty good. However, I’m not going to buy any more (unless they are $5 AUD each or less) and I have to recommend that this is a kit for advanced modellers only.
Oh, and by the way – Italeri have launched a new version of their website!
Steps needed for a good smoke
October 13, 2009
Here’s how I actually made my smoke -
1 ) Gather your utensils. I used a large plastic take-away container to hold my water/paint mix. I laid down old newspapers to catch any wayward splashes or drips. I had a plastic soft-drink bottle filled with water within reach to make the paint/water mix, with plenty of leftover in case I needed to dilute the mix further. I had the paint also within reach. I had disposable rubber gloves for handling and mixing. I had a big cardboard box where the tufts could sit and dry. Lastly, I had a container for any rubbish (like the rubber gloves afterward).
2 ) Mix the paint and water in the container. My mix was about 50%-50%.
3 ) Prepare all the tufts that will become your smoke clouds. Tear them off the wad or pull them out of their container and lay them out for painting…well, submerging.
4 ) Put the gloves on and some suitable music, too.
5 ) Pick up a tuft and completely submerge it in the paint/water mix. While submerged, squeeze it, wring it, tease it apart a little. Take it out. Submerge it again. Take it out. While holding in your hand, squeeze out as much paint/water as you can. Then place it to try.
6 ) Keep going until you’ve done all your tufts.
7 ) Pack up for today. I drained out all remaining mix (only about half was used) and stored it for another time.
8 ) Next day, put the gloves on and lay out some more newspaper.
9 ) Pick up each tuft and really squeeze it hard. If paint comes out, it needs a few more days to completely dry. If no paint comes out, tease it apart until you can get to its core. If the core is still damp, it needs another day or two to completely dry – sun dry it or place it in a very warm room.
10 ) When you think they are all dry, put on gloves and lay out old newspaper and test the cores of any suspect tufts. Those still damp need more drying (perhaps push the core to the outside of the tuft). Those that are dry can be stored away for gaming or used right now in a game!
Since starting to play “Panzerfaust: Armoured fist” a few years back until 6 months ago, I’ve had thoughts niggling away in the back of my consciousness about making my own wargaming smoke. I used to have about four litres’ volume of wargaming smoke, a hand-me-down from Stephen at Nunawading Wargames Association. I can’t remember now if I sold it when I was having financial dificulties, gave it away or chucked it – but whatever I did, it wasn’t worth it. His wargaming smoke clouds were made from cotton wool and the ink from parcel markers/whiteboard markers, somehow extracted using Turpentine or Methylated Spirits. They were a perfect mix of dark greys, fluffy but not peeling apart, could be squashed up or pulled apart a little and could serve to show a brewed-up AFV or a wall of smoke from smoke shells or a smokescreen from smoke dischargers. I haven’t seen any other smoke as nice as that stuff of his.
6 months ago, I decided to finally act. I asked Stephen about how to make smoke like his old smoke puffs / clouds, but he couldn’t remember how it was done and wouldn’t recommend trying it again, as he said it stank; was too much effort and could be done more cheaply nowadays. I’d have to come up with a method myself. I began experimenting with various materials to see what might work and, when my day job permitted, searched the Internet for recipes from others.
I didn’t find much! It seems that very few wargamers are interested in documenting how they made their smoke – if they had even progressed beyond just using white bits of cotton wool (which can be purchased as is). I found a YouTube video that offered a possibility, which I did try, but I finally found sensible advice at Gabriel Landowski’s wonderful e-book, “Miniature Gaming, Volume I” which features his own wargames rules, called “Rules of the Damned Human Race”.
His recipe was refreshingly straightforward – use artifical pillow stuffing and darken it. I purchased some siliconised polyester stuffing from a cloth & craft shop and set to work.
I wasted half a bottle of valuable original (and now extinct) Citadel Black Ink dyeing a sample tuft. It took too much time to dry and left small congealed lumps on individual fibres which looked a little odd. This was going to be impractical. I tried the YouTube method, and sprayed Citadel’s Chaos Black spraypaint directly onto a second sample tuft. This worked well until you picked it up and tried to manipulate it, when the white fibres underneath became visible leaving a very unusual and unrealistic effect (and also staining my hands black).
I wondered about the pillow stuffing – perhaps this was the wrong type of material to use? As a fish-keeper, I had plenty of much thicker polyester filter wool sitting around. I wasted the other half of the Citadel Black Ink dyeing some filter wool. It turned out a marvellous uniform medium grey, but had hardened the wool considerably – it would not be easily teased apart and was no longer “fluffy” at all. No good.
Here are the three sample tufts, after the experiments detailed above, in order from left to right: 
I went to an art & craft shop to enquire about suitable paints or dyes for dyeing the pillow stuffing. Although they could’ve sold me expensive clothing dye for about $50 (I was willing to try it), I bought a simple bottle of basic black acrylic paint and experimented with it. I watered it down to a consistency of 50% – 50% and thoroughly impregnated a sample tuft with it.
Next day, once the tuft was dry, I tested it to see what it would be like if I needed to pull it apart a bit to make a smokescreen – and found wet paint in it’s core! I wrung it out and let it dry over a few more days. No problem. I quickly established an assembly line and now I have great-looking wargaming smoke for an extremely cheap price, with little effort or risk. Here’s a good-sized cloud comprised of a few tufts: 
and here’s a ‘group photo’ of the major test tufts and components:
, the winning result lying between the paint bottle and the spraycan.
PS. you’ll definitely want disposable rubber gloves, old clothing you don’t mind getting splashed with paint and a work area that can be easily cleaned up and doesn’t matter if not all paint can be removed…alternately, lay some plastic groundsheets / dropsheets / thick layers of newspaper around the place. Getting the wet paint into the fibres got a bit splashy and messy!
Kubelwagen type 82 – how to paint?
October 10, 2009
Working on the Hasegawa Kubelwagen required some research that went beyond my own personal library. Part of it had to do with the old chestnut of tarpaulins / canvases used by the Germans during the Second World War…in particular, what colours they were. I was also interested in some interior decoration – I wanted to see what the dashboard looked like and a few other small details.
I started off with Google, using the ‘image search’ option. The results quickly pointed to a better way of searching – using Flickr.
I’ve mentioned Flickr a few times on this blog. I’d forgotten its usefulness for a search like this. You see, Flickr has photos taken by enthusiasts whom take photos of exhibits at military museums; photos taken by participants at re-enactment events; photos taken by spectators at re-enactment events and so on and so forth. Some exhibit photos or re-enactor vehicle photos would do the job nicely – because they take the kinds of photos modellers want and need! Multiple angles, close-up on details, interiors.
It was as simple as typing ‘kubelwagen type 82′ and I was presented with a page of very useful results. I found what I needed pretty quickly!
The Kubelwagen has been a little less straightforward than the schwimmwagen as I’d chosen to assemble and paint the kubelwagen driver first before glueing him and his seat into place. This was a good idea that turned out badly. I had not done a test fit prior to painting – his feet were too big and his left shoulder was hitting the door and preventing the seat from locking into place. These were things I had to remedy after the fact, requiring filing done, re-painting and re-glueing and also damaging the MG pintle (which ended up having to be completely redone with some added kitbashing too). It looks fine now, but wasn’t worth the bother. I’ve undercoated another Kubelwagen and will be doing it with occupants in situ.










