Sunday, March 30, 2014

Prototyping for the Crusades

 I have finally, after many years, made the conversion from polystyrene as my main source of building material to high density extruded foam. It comes in various colours, pink, blue or yellow but all have the similar virtues of strength, allowing score-and-snap cutting and also enabling the paitient modeller to emboss detail with a scribing tool.
The material is relatively expensive, so I've decided that I ought to prototype my building projects in white polystyrene to settle questions of technique before applying hot wire cutter to my more expensive building material.
 What you are seeing here is my first experiment; a Crusader donjon from Northern Palestine (the plain of Sharon, no less) around about 1120-30CE.
The knights and infantry are all Spencer Smith "Classic" Normans. Excellent figures which I am enjoying painting very much at the moment. There is a deal of pose-ability and even some conversion potential that is quite appealing to me.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Skinner's Horse

A Funny Little Conceit

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Littler Britons - a project update

 Oh, it's been a while since I last posted. I've just been steadily pottering about with my various projects. As you can see, I've added a second unit of infantry here.
 Lord Cardigan personally leads a vedette of the 11th Hussars. No black bottles here!
 The band continues to practise. The brass section needs a little more bass.
The guns continue. I have a boduy of gunners on the go at the moment - a dear friend it busily sculpting spare arms for me. Thats as far as the lead mountain takes me for now. I did trade some plastic Spencer Smith ACW for some Paypal pounds which I've used to buy more. Expect to see the rest of the 11th before long and possibly a pontoon train from Fife and Drum as well as some 4Ground wagons. More infantry? Yes, of course, another two units. A ballon corps and a couple of engineer wagons would be nice, too.