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 Red Harvest wrote:

 Dr H wrote:
Yeah, it's a very good point. I can't saw a straight line to save my life... and yet I keep on trying.

Nobody can, that's why we used fences/guides Well, not entirely true, I can saw a perfectly straight line with a gent's saw, or a dovetail saw, or a back saw, or a crosscut saw, or a... But then I've been doing it for a very long time-- not quite a lifetime, but I did get my first saw when I was 5 years old. Still have it too . For power saws, always use a guide. No reason not to. I still have trouble at times with Japanese saws. Those you pull rather than push to cut. They give much finer cuts --thinner kerfs-- due to their thinner blades.

Point taken.
It also seems that even when I get a straight line, it's never at the right angle.

This is why I like working at scale, in plastic; minor errors can be hid, large errors are a piece of sandpaper (although I now have some nice files) away from correct.

Final plexiglas note. Make sure the plexiglas is solidly supported underneath the bit, and cannot flex.

Yarp. Also saw that note. Prevents chipping when the bit goes through the last of the plastic. Thanks.

You've got a fine looking extractor there. Now, if you test it with water through the airbrush, what effect will that have on the cardboard filter mesh? Or did you answer that and I missed it. Been a rough few days for me.

Thanks. I have not answered that question as I have not asked that question myself. I don't intend to soak the cardboard (intent does not always produce the results we want through) so it shouldn't be a problem...

Bare in mind that I found this being used in an existing extraction hood (on the internet, so can't possibly be wrong).

If it does turn out to be a problem it's easy enough to replace with new or with metal mesh.

Hope you get over the roughness.

Progress:
Drilling was a success.
I used a hand drill, took my time (didn't get impatient and break anything), and used the weight of the (cast metal) drill as the only force.
Given a choice of wood or metal (and masonry) bits, the metal bits did the job. Started with 1.5mm bit and followed that (for each hole) with 2mm and then 3.3mm with a bit of wiggling to make the hole large enough for the screws without them putting any unnecessary pressure on the acrylic.

The current screw-through-acrylic-into-wood set up is temporary until I find myself in a position to pick up some nuts and bolts that'll fit.

I dremel-ed the ends off the far too long screws, because if I didn't I'd stab myself on them at a later date.

I've now cut the side pieces that you can see laying inside the hood. These have now been glued on to the lid.

I've added furry draft excluders at the top of each side to seal against the side pieces.

Here's where it's at:


Current injury tally:
Cut to left index finger, skin deep, no blood, from B&D workmate.
Cut to left thumb, a little blood, 1cm long, from wood drill bit (probably jealous of the metal bits getting all the hot acrylic action).
Cuts to right index finger, one with blood, from scalpel's new blade.
Burnt in marks of screw thread to left thumb, index and middle fingers, Turns out that dremel-ing metal screws makes them pretty hot (the scientist in me had to check...twice).
...

Impressive tally of injuries, required blood sacrifice for awesome construction efforts complete!

Thanks Graven. And all those between the last two updates. No new injuries on the final stretch though.

DONE! for now...

There is a list of things that I will/may add over time, through use. But it's good enough to use now.

I know you've all been waiting for it to be finished before commenting, so now you can.


With the movable lid and front flap, the opening can range from ~9cm (3.5") to 28cm (11inches). I'll probably use it in the 17cm (6.5") lid-down configuration (3rd pic) mainly.
And with an internal width of 39cm (15inches).

Airflow isn't mind-blowing, but can cope (even fully open) with anything up to an airbrush at full blast (on a reasonable model-painting pressure) for a few seconds... For good results, you shouldn't really be using the airbrush at full blast for long anyway as that leads to spidering and runs.

There are plans to add:
A turn-table type device (as that's better than painting my hand each time I paint a model).

More permanent height adjustment fixing solution (the lengths of foamboard are therefore temporary).

Maybe an internal shelf above the filter for... things...

Better filter attachment solution (current filter seems to restrict the air flow quite a bit, but will test when I actually paint something and maybe try a few more different filters and solve this when I've found the "best" option).

Some kind of storage solution for the hose and power cable/adaptor.

And anything else I find through usage.

Now to find something to paint...

Very interesting and informative, very curious about the filter. Sounds like it will give you room to do work, now you just need something to paint?

That's a really impressive achievement Dr H. I love the big tube coming out of it... looks like it's from the movie "Brazil".

Thanks Cam'. The current filter to test is the cheapest oven grease filter I could find. It has the stiffness of paper and the feel of fabric. But it's denser than I expected, what I really want is something looser and fluffier... maybe. Testing will commence soon.

First, I have to fight off an evil virus that is threatening to drown me in my own bodily fluids (otherwise known as a cold). Not had the motivation to do anything for the past two days. At least the sore throat has gone.

Thanks Gits'. They probably used the same type of tubing in the film and just painted it silver.

These don't have names yet, but the smaller is becoming a barricade/shield and the other is intended to be a crash of some vehicle (as yet unknown); so, "shield" and "crash"...

In an effort to produce something more relevant to you lot here on DDakka, I present the start of some gaming terrain.

Keeping them small for ease of postage/storage and usability.
And I intend them to be usable pieces of terrain for gaming and less of a display diorama that my work often tends towards...

That said, I'll likely end up detailing them to my usual fine level. I just can't help it, OK...
There's already some "rope" lashings on the woodwork.

I'm also trying to keep in mind the regular handling that gaming terrain will endure. So less fiddly bits that can be knocked off, etc.

Without further musings...

...the story so far:

The bases are CDs.
The larger base is 2 CDs with ~1/3rd broken off and glued together with the other third for overlapping support.

Both bases were covered with a tissue/PVA layer (or 3).

The "walls" are some leftover cardboard box pieces (from the extraction hood concept), that have been attached to the bases and filled/coated with varying quantities of PVA, plaster and tissue/PVA to make them as solid a single piece as possible.

This brings us to the first photo here:


Photos 3 and 4: The "ground" was covered with my usual mixture of dried paint.
Crash also received some flooring using some of my own sprue (I have loads of this spare from my various mis-casts) and more cardboard (that I'm unsure of, but it should be fine once dirtied and painted) for some planks.
The black area (water filter carbon grains) is where the crashed... something... will be. Thinking of a futuristic civilian car-type thing, which may end up a UFO...

The rest of the photos show the frame I've constructed on the "shield" piece; this will receive various junk, metal, wood, cloth, etc. to cover it and create a hidden corner for blocking LoS.
Should be enough space there for even the most "heroic" of models.

"not so heroic" Number 6 for scale.

That frame is also pinned in all the important places so that it should be solid enough to be handled too.

Nice stuff dude. Love the open framework especially.

Thanks Graven, wow you got in before I'd changed the title.

I've been pulling out odd bits and pieces to use and I've been having flashbacks to my junk pile:


This shows the stages I go through when building up something like this.


It won't be quite so rusty as the junk pile, but it will have rust and flaky paint and more variety in colour.

The hole on one side will become a raised shooting point, just for a bit of flavour. Sandbags and the like.

Love the gear bitz.

Looking good, nice frame work, and the bits add a nice variety, could be used in many systems.

Looks like someone dismantled an old mechanical timer or clock. I've got bits just like those. It's a cool looking piece.

Thanks Dave. Yeah, I have quite a few gears about. They are good for showing post-industrial landscapes; all the machines are broken and the bits are only good for barricades.

Thanks Cam'. Variety is key to avoid things being recognised.

Speaking of recognising bits... Yes, Red', I have dismantled a couple of AA-battery clocks. While the small internal bits are easy to fit into a model, the larger shell pieces are trickier.

Next stage of building:


I'm about to add some rivets and welds to certain areas.

While I go about this, I have a question to those of you that actually play these games:

As I mentioned, the hole in the one wall is intended to be a firing point.
You will notice that Number 6 there, is a bit short to see out.
This means it requires a platform for him to stand on...

Building the platform and a step for people the climb up is not a problem, and I can make them large enough for a model to stand on:


What I want to know from my game-playing friends here on DDakka is;
a) Would anyone make use of the firing point if it was set up like this? (lesser cover-save, and only 2 models are going to be able to shoot)
2) Would the majority prefer there to not be a platform and be able to hide a model for better cover-saves? (a simple LoS blocker)
3) This setup would limit the positioning of larger models within the cover, is that a problem? (I've seen people turning large models sideways to fit into a piece of terrain, which tells me the cover is more important than "realism")

I can easily make a broken version of the platform that will sit flat maintaining the firing point (from past usage, and realism/storytelling), and allowing models to get their cover-saves.
Thoughts?

That piece of terrain looks so very Fallout-like or even Orky

Thanks Shas'. It's a shame we can't easily do something like this in FO4, I'd have all kinds of barricades up... Might give it a go though...

Anyway, while I wait to see if I get any input on the above terrain issue, I've moved on to the other piece.

As you will remember, this is intended to be a crashed "something".
Therefore, I started collecting bits to make the something and find out what it's going to be.

The initial plan was some kind of car or wheeled vehicle, so I went searching for wheels... and found my box of "round, wheel-like objects" that mainly consists of the screw-top pieces of soap dispensers. I found 4 identical ones and added them to a few interesting shapes I pulled from some other boxes.

Below you see the "car" go from the laid out pieces to attaching wheels, building the shape and creating a framework to keep it together/rigid.

Turns out that whatever plastic they use for these soap dispensers, it's highly resistant to all forms of glue; so I had to pin it to pieces of sprue so that I could attach them.

I'm now working on filling in the gaps in this framework and then I can form it's final shape, add details and incorporate it into the ruin...

The building/ruin is looking great, and I'm intrigued to see how the car turns out.

Not sure if it helps you now, but I've found this stuff to be useful when trying to bond different types of plastic together:
http://www.loctiteproducts.com/p/sg_plstc/overview/Loctite-Plastics-Bonding-System.htm

I like the firing point. BMG has very specific cover and obstacle rules, along with the fact the models are considered to be volumetric. So yeah, works for me

Thanks Cleatus. The car appears to be turning into some kind of mini-van. Which is fine; I wanted "civilian" and that's how it's going.

Ta. I'll look into it. I was being impatient and just wanted them tacked on so that I could move on and build the shape. I probably could have used 5min epoxy, but that would take too long... so I spent ~15mins doing all the drilling and pinning.

They are now solidly attached with some PVA/plaster mix. Which was also required for filling the holes in their centres.

Thanks Graven. How about other games? I know you've played a few. I'd like to get a good feeling for how people like their terrain to be used; the more I know, the better the terrain I'll make.

In most gaming systems I've played, Linear terrain like this will get used most often. Any kind of hard cover that troops can get behind and fire over. Then again, I don't play very often.

Here is why I never use cars for terrain to fore from.

Cheers Dave. I think I'm going to keep the platform; no one has said it's a bad idea.

dsteingass wrote:...Then again, I don't play very often.

Still more often than me.

Shas': I'm fairly sure one of my mods has non-exploding cars...

Here's the next stages on this car:
Building up the shape with layers and shapes of cardboard and tissue/PVA.


Next I can add details:
door/window frames,
wheel arches,
etc.

Smooth out the shape and give it some dents (it's crashed into a building after all...).

 Dr H wrote:

Shas': I'm fairly sure one of my mods has non-exploding cars... .

Blasphemy.....

OOoh plenty of room for an..advertisement of sorts...and weathering

 dsteingass wrote:

 Dr H wrote:

Shas': I'm fairly sure one of my mods has non-exploding cars... .

Blasphemy.....

But if I was going to use a car as part of a wall or building, I'd be sure to remove the engine and fuel tank.

OOoh plenty of room for an..advertisement of sorts...and weathering

Ja, indeed. and graffiti.

Progress on both:

Shield has received some sandbags and some scattered bits.
And in a moment of pure "I learnt'd somefink" I remembered to not glue the platform on; thus making painting that much easier.


Crash has now had some putty work and smooth card to give it the final shape and some details (more still to do).

I am a bit late to the show, but let me say a big Thank You for these notes on airbrushing setup! Quite a lot of things to think over, and it is always easier to follow someones steps in that. Thanks!

No problem, Wirecat. Glad to hear it helps.

Once these 2 terrain pieces are built I can actually make use of the extraction hood.

Smoothing and details added to the van:


I think that's enough on the van and I can now install it into the building and add rubble...

I can't help but think I wish you'd made a Jonny Cab to blow up...

 inmygravenimage wrote:
I can't help but think I wish you'd made a Jonny Cab to blow up...

Sadly that'd require windows all round, and that's more work than I want to put in at this stage.
Maybe I can fit in a reference somehow... Johnny Van, Johnny Deliveries...

I love the wheels on that vehicle. Excellent use of random detritus.

I can't help but visualise a big rocket on the back of the vehicle, ala Mad Max... Great progress though, enjoying the step by steps...

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:I love the wheels on that vehicle. Excellent use of random detritus.

Thanks 'boss. Good to see you back. Yeah, I'm heading into a push to use some of the many "that'll be useful one day" items that I've collected.
Considering how chunky the tires are on "official" models, such as GW's, things like these and bottle-tops are ideal for wheels.

Thanks Ruglud. Good to hear.

Onwards...
The shield has received some cloth.
Started with some tissue/PVA to get a feel for where and how it'd hang, and then went over that with putty to make it rugged enough for handling.

Looks more like slime in yellow at the moment, will hopefully look better once painted.

Crash has had it's rubble added.
Started with cardboard off-cuts, added some polyfilla, and then a final layer of my usual dried paint.
And a couple of pieces of hardboard for internal wall posts/doorframe/etc.


Now to add the final small details to finish these off; give them a story / life / history.

One question:
Should I board up the remaining window in the crash piece? For gameplay purposes.
As it is, you could hide a squad behind it, but line of sight could be drawn through the gap. Does your local meta prefer simple LoS blocking terrain with no ambiguity, or more complex pieces where you have to think about gaps and angles of view?