Industrial Wild West Part 5 - Water Wheel System

Time to give my water works some attention (I'm not getting an younger!)

The main challenge with the water wheel is the painting. All sides are visible, but not very accessible once built, so it was a double sides paint job before construction, using the same bare wood technique as the mine entrances.

Once painted the construction could begin. Pretty straight forward as long as you notice the there are 2 different sizes of parts to form the internals of the wheel. The joining of the two halves is a bit of a fiddle with so many tabs looks to be housed, but manageable.

The finished construction.

Now the waterway that feeds the wheel has always looks a bit flat and 2-D for me so I thought I'd build up the sides to stop the water running out. Out came the lolly sticks and coffee stirrers.

Strangely the water section of the piece is laser cur all the way through with only 4 small tabs to hold it on. I don't think it is maens to come off at all (no instructions remember) so I added a couple of stirrers to the underside to cover the gap. It also adds to the constructed look to the piece which is good.

Coffee stirrers to the flat and lolly sticks to hold the water in. I didn't run the "planks" as a single piece down the length to give a more constructed feel again. The small joining board halfway down the side is really only cosmetic, but helps with the strength. The whole thing was then painted as the wheel above.

All this extra work had made the already narrow based scenery more top heavy, so I glued it to a wider piece of plastic. nice and steady now.

For the water I mixed a little blue paint with PVA and gave it a couple of coats. Before anyone starts to make a fuss, water is blue, OK. Ask any small child!;)

15mm Skirmish Box - New Board

Over the summer I've been working on constructing a new custom board for the Skirmish Box. The one you see on the other articles is very nice but I was wanting to add in the future extensions (such as wilderness sections) which wouldn't match up with the existing textures.

So I've used Dave Graffam's Cobbled Streets Kit to construct a new tile set and been stitching it together with GIMP (which is a learning curve in itself at times!). This kit has mud, gravel and grass layers that can be used for wilder areas as well and with a bit of practice the tiles can be combined.

After several town layout designs and lots of pixel gazing the final design is done. It should fit better with the number of buildings I'll be putting on the map. The previous one is lovely but seems to have slightly too many roads for the building population. The gravel section at the bottom to the map is to allow a link in with a future planned forest\wilderness map.

My test print of the board had a couple of print issues (the printer I used didn't seem to like the card surface much) but I've made it up anyway to get the design in use and tested before taking it further.

Additionally I've been working on the scenery sheets to maximize the print efficiency. I now have two buildings and some walls on one sheet of A4 card. The whole thing is another testament to the flexibility of Dave Graffam's photoshop file format option. I've settled on using two distinct texture layers for each house design and I think 6 houses with the the walls is just about right.

Zomtober 2014

With numerous projects crawling along on the paint table the last thing I need is another distraction.

It's a shame then that I'm joining Brummie's call for participants in Zomtober 2014. Basically it's a painting challenge. Paint at least one Zombie or Survivor and post a picture on your blog by the end of every Sunday in October.

I've a ton of oft-glanced at unpainted undead waiting to go. Best go and look them out.

Feel free to join in (or even monitor everyone's figures) at:
http://brummieswargamingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/zomtober-2014.html

Industrial Wild West Part 4 - Track and Carts

The main attraction of this set has to be the Mine Carts and Track. These are the pieces that shout "Industry" here. I didn't expect them to take quite so long however...(hence the delay in update)

There are quite a few track pieces included in the kit split up in the ground boards and separate rails to go on top. The wooden sections were painted just as the Mine Entrances. I flipped over a couple of the tight turns to make sure that all my tracks didn't have to turn to the left.

I only put the final "sandy" dry brush on the outside of the tracks to leave a darker, "well trod" section down the middle.

The rails were seperately painted black and brushed with gunbolt metal before being glued to the bases.

Once dry I gave the rails a weak wash of rust and a light drybrush of chainmail. These tracks will be in use, so not completely rusted over.

The cart pieces are over quite a few sheets, so I thought it more useful to lay the required components out as above.

The carts go together nicely, but it takes a couple of drying time breaks to allow the undercarraige and the wheels to become attached. The wheels are just flat surfaces gluing onto the assembly so its best to have the cart on its side and attach one side then, once dry, the other.

I also decided to sand down the lips the cart side.

I've read many times in painting articles how painters use salt crystals to add a chipped paint effect to their vehicles, etc. This seemed like a good opportunity to try it out for myself. The carts were undercoated brown and then gunbolt metal. They were then sprayed with hair spray, sea salt crystals stuck on, and another covering of the hair spray (i found the crystals fell off without this second spray).

The carts were then painted using the same 3 base colour technique as the office building and a weak brown wash. I used yellow as the base to match in with the building. Once all that wash dry I brushed off the salt crystals to expose the metal surface underneath.

I then mixed up some weak rust mix, dotted it under the chipped areas and smudged it down the cart side with my finger. Sometimes a couple of applications looked best. I also did this on the cart rims and gave a dry brush of chainmail for recently exposed areas.

The final touch was some white glue soaked tissue paper in the bottoms of the carts and glue over that a couple of layers of Javis Coal scatter that I had. This was given a quick dry brush of brown (we're not mining coal)

Not that I have a picture of it, but for those that are curious the cart wheels snugly straddle the rails so they won't be falling off during gaming.