Scratch Built 1:600 scenery - Village (Part1)

I've had some 3mm buildings for a while now, from manufacturer's SPC Wargame Creations (complete structures, in resin) and Oddzial Osmy (damaged structures, in metal) obtained through Fighting 15's, but what to do with them? Well I've decided to put some of them in to a village for use in Cold War Commander games. This is how I'm going about creating the finished product. First find a suitable hardboard base, mine is about 300x200x4mm spayed up.

My next process was to decide a road layout and where building plots were going to be. For a bit of village flavour I'll include a stream, bridge, church, various house designs, shops and a pub plus a couple of light commercial buildings representing a petrol station as well as a couple of farm complexes. So I drew a rough map and cut out the shapes.
















Now I put on the first coat of paint to delineate the residential plots from commercial and road. Whilst i know this will be covered over it gives me a feel for what is going on as the build progresses.








Next port of call was to get a bit of surface contouring for which I turned to my trusted polystyrene pizza bases cut to shape using my original card map as a template.  This piece will end up in the top left of the board

I left the road and stream at base level and added the height (stick polystyrene to base using No More Nails); this is placed where where the buildings would eventually be. It also gave an opportunity to include pavements (side walks)

These are a selection of resin buildings primarily from SPC Wargame Creations in resin but also there are a couple of metal buildigs as well as parts from a children's toy.

At each stage I tend to add buildings back to the board just to keep the look in check. This arrangement will not end up being the final one.


This is the board with all the polystyrene glued on. At each stage I tend to add  buildings to the board for effect but they are not fixed at this point






















Everything now slows down a bit as I start to add detail such as walls (polystyrene), fences (plastic packaging straps) and hedges (green wool)

Scratch Built 1:600 scenery - Hills (Part1)

With the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War I have been looking to generate some appropriate scenery for troops to 'yomp' towards and storm. For those of you familiar with this conflict you will know that these objectives were essentially rock topped hills with dug in Agentinian defenders. So I've created a few hills as follows:


My usual technique for creating a bit of height was employed here. Layers of this polystyrene (ex-pizza bases) were sandwiched and stuck together using 'No-More-Nails' all pver a heavy card base. Once dry a final textural covering was added by stippling the glue with my finger. Finally pieces of cork (yes from a wine bottle) were broken up and applied with NMN. 



Once dry the grass slopes were painted green and the rocks grey.
Dimensions are about 200mm by 50mm and 50mm tall (8"x2"x2)




Ithen mixed up a combination of PVA glue, grey paint, and two sizes of railway ballast to act as fallen rocks.
A reasonably pleasing result was produced



I had to do a bit of touching up afterwards of both the grey and green, I also did a bit of dry brushing to add a biy of contrast. I still feel the grass is still a bit too green so will do a bit more work on this but I will probably leave the rocks as they are. Once complete i will have an acceptable 'Wireless Ridge' for the little 'uns to assault.
I will now apply this technique to a few more hills and see what they look like

I've been away

It's been far too long since I last posted to this blog. My other wargaming interest is in 20mm plastic Ancients and I've been doing a lot of painting towards my Greek and Persian armies and have spent little time on 1:600 matters - either playing, painting or creating. However, that has all changed recently and I'm now looking to catch up on the 1:600 blog side of things.

Building a 1:600 scale airfield (Part5) Scratch Built Buildings

I wanted to create a few representative military looking structures to embellish my airfield so here is a selection:

Weapons store

Made from appropriately shaped polystyrene packaging inserts, asymmetrically cut, stuck to a 20x20cm cardboard base with 'No More Nails' glue and stippled to create a grass texture

 

After priming it white the Grass was painted in

The concrete was painted grey and I then added in a roadway using a Microsoft word creation

These are the types of things I was after

Command bunker

Made out of an instant coffee jar lid 

Lid stuck to base and the polystyrene layers added and result stippled with No More Nails



Base sprayed white and grass area added

 

Final concrete finish

Securing s base to the construction

Small Bunker complex

Made from another polystyrene infill

Black infill based and then stippled with No More Nails



White polystyrene inserts added for 'concrete' fronts




Painted grass and concrete added



 Storage Bunker

This time made from a clear plastic blister mould for my son's 'Ben 10' watch

Based and surrounded by polystyrene then stippled

Grass painted on after base spraying white



'Igloo' and paths painted to represent concrete. 'Outbuilding' uses the strap buckle cover 



Scratch Building a 1:600 scale HAS complex (Part4)

Exhaust Ports

Bricks assembled

Having failed in my attempt to cast from the moulds I created time constraints of a looming game meant that I had to cut corners. So back to my son's Lego hoard for a 'long term lease' of bricks. As some of his Lego was inherited from my childhood then these pieces, being 30-40 years old had taken quite a bashing. My source was a 1970's era Lunar Lander in blue - no doubt worth a small fortune if complete but I know it was far from.

Lego bricks of the type chosen

 

The design was the same as my initial prototype (middle top still sporting 'Green Stuff'' from it's mould mission) and were duly offered up to the HAS board. 



Initial Exhaust Spacing


  

Initial Exhaust Spacing





Upside down view with Exhausts in place and painted


Only 5 sets of Lego components were super glued together, covered with a thin coat of No More Nails and then stippled. All shelters and ports were then glued in place and any touch up paint applied.

Board with HAS, final taxiways and hard standings
plus vegetation plus some aircraft for scale

 I knew I was tight for space on one HAS so I ended up with a simplified single brick design (bottom right above) so no engine run ups in this HAS then.
Vegetation
I then stuck on some Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage in light green and medium green to represent trees. I also touched up some final paint work to leave me with an acceptable product in time to add to the airfield for the game we planned. Time will tell if i come back to this model to apply detailed finishing touches.
In the mean time a few motivational shots with aircraft out front of shelter or on taxiway.

Tumbling Dice F-15's

Tumbling Dice F-16's

Tumbling Dice F-16's

Tumbling Dice F-16's

Tumbling Dice F-15's & F-16

Tumbling Dice F-15



Tumbling Dice F-15's & F-16



Scratch Building a 1:600 scale HAS complex (Part3)

Now that I have my shelters how can I mount them?
Well find a board suitable for mounting a number of shelters - my choice was to recycle an old thick card calendar backing (420mm x 330mm) that has already been utilised by my 8 year son for a school project, waste not, want not.

The recycled board with initial layout

I cleaned the board up by demolishing the large cardboard church that had originally been erected plus I removed various grave stones (the small oblongs upper left and right). I then sketched out the approximate location of where I thought fairly random HAS would go plus the associated taxiway. I then suck down various black polystyrene terrain features (these were cut from Pizza bases) with "No more nails" glue, utilising bulldog clips to temporarily secure in place.





HAS layout revised





I then textured the polystyrene to represent grass areas and then, once dry, spray painted with white primer. Next I refined the HAS locations and introduced spaces either side to allow for door opening resulting in additional cut outs. At this stage I had settled on US / RAF 3rd generation HAS design, see RAF Upper Heyford for examples. You can see silhouettes of my Lego / glue tube prototype with circles for aircraft hard standings and areas to allow the doors to open This revised the layout from my original with several HAS rotating up to 30 degrees just to fit them in especially once the exhaust ports were fitted. 




Most topography painted up

  

I then embarked upon painting up the board with grey concrete hard standings and green 'natural' areas. The main taxi way is still unpainted at this stage

Taxi ways and hard standings


I had two choices for the how to proceed, either to paint markings or to use a graphic package and print them out. The downside of painting is probably my ability especially when it comes to circles. The advantages of using a computer is that of consistency, correctability and repeatability so it is this direction that I went.


I have used standard Microsoft drawing tools in the past for anything from house plans and furniture layout of my home through to creating shop frontages for my scratch built 1:600 buildings. So I turned to MS word and generated the markings for the hard standing area in front of the HAS.


Board with hard standings in place


I then took these markings and placed them on the board in conjunction with the HAS prototypes as another check that every thing fitted OK.



Board with final taxiways and hard standings



I then used this layout to correct with pen markings on the taxi way that was also created in word. This was then revised in word.



 

Both hard standing and taxiways were then printed in colour and permanently stuck down



Finally, revisions were made to the concrete and the natural areas using paint.



Painted HAS added to Board for final fitting check



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