Hot Glue Stick Turrets

As I have mentioned previously, I struggle with making ship turrets and especially gun shields for my pre-dreadnought project. I have not been happy with the material used to make them. Rubber erasers sort of work, but even these are not perfect. 

Facebook posts these short videos (I assume they come from Tik Tock, or maybe segments from YouTube videos) that show people making tiny pieces of furniture, bicycles, and other objects out of scrap material. There is one guy in particular who uses hot glue sticks to make things. He isn't using them to glue things together but as material for when he needs a circular base. I started playing around with the glue sticks. It seemed to have similar properties to an eraser, but better. What I noticed was that its solid but not that hard to cut.  It seems harder than an eraser but is a little easier to slice. I can poke holes in it and it won't potentially tear, and when stuck a piece of wire into a hole to make a gun, the glue stick didn't deform as much as an eraser. This is particularly important when using thin slices to make gun shields. 

Results of my experiments 

First up is a basic cylindrical turret. One of the advantages of the glue stick over wood and cardboard is that I can line up the wires better so that they are more parallel. Very often the guns will not be parallel next to each other when using other other material. The translucent stick makes it easy to watch and control the angle of the needle as I poke holes in. 

The next type is a oval turret. After cutting consistent cylinders, I sliced off the edges on either side of the cylinder and then angled the end where the guns went into. One of the advantages of the glue stick over the eraser is that you can push and pull on the wire guns to help line them up better. An advantage of both the eraser and the glue stick is that you don't need to apply any glue to hold the guns in place. I doused the turret closest to the camera with superglue, but it didn't help one way or another. I think I was pretty consistent with slicing off the edges of the cylinder, but I think I can do better if I use a razor blade rather than my craft knife. 

Finally, I made some gun shields using the cut offs from the turrets above. I still need to practice but I think they are a big step up from what I have experimented with up to this point. The "carvibility" is equal to an eraser and there was much less distortion the shield when I pushed the wire through to make the gun.  

Final thoughts

I used mini glue sticks that have a diameter of 0.7mm. Standard glue sticks have a diameter of 12mm. I will probably buy a pack of the standard. It will give me a little more area in which to carve different shapes and give a little more surface area to build triple turrets or use slightly heavier gauged wire. I wish there was an even smaller diameter of glue stick. That would be useful for smaller turrets and things like sponsons. 

I have not glued the turrets to anything yet and was a little worried about whether superglue will stick to solid hot glue. However, the people making their little objects use superglue all the time to glue them in place so it should not be an issue. I do not expect painting to be an issue either. I think paint will hold to the glue fine. 

Newish Ironsides

 I noticed that I have two posts that I have yet to put up on my blog. One was started over a month ago and the other about a week ago. Unfortunately, I have had very little time to do much of anything and they remain unfinished. For the past month or so, I am lucky if I can stay awake long enough to get in a half hour of hobby time at night. So, if push comes to shove, I choose working on stuff than blogging about it. 

My current work in progress is tiny ironclad based very loosely on the US Civil War USS New Ironsides: 

Source: US Library of Congress

From my brief research, the masts for the sails were removed and replaced by two simple pole masts for signaling purposes. It was not very sea worthy and had a lot of mechanical issues. It did participate in the First Battle of Charleston Harbor but most of its action at sea consisted of bombarding forts. 

Here is my take on the New Ironsides:

Just to be clear, it is not done yet. Mine has a flying bridge, the original does not. In fact, I'm not sure how the original New Ironsides was steered. It took me a while just to find its conning tower, which looked no bigger than a garbage can and aft of the funnel. Mine has fewer gun ports and lacks a ram. I will finish it, but I plan to make a New Ironsides II. For some reason, it came out shorter than I would have liked. Measuring in at just under 4 cm, the gunboats that I have made are longer than this thing. Therefore, I want to lengthen it by at least another centimeter. A longer ship will mean I can add more gun ports. I will keep my flying bridge and add a conning tower just to the front of the bridge. I will also add a ram to it. I might or might not add sail masts. 

The Fleet Continues to Grow

 I had my spring break. As in the past, I had plans to accomplish many things, but probably a fourth were accomplished. This included building a lot more ships. Like everything else in my hobby endeavors, I jump from one thing to another. I probably have ten ships at various stages of completion. That being said, I think I have enough built to finally have a sea battle. Of course I say that about a bunch of things. My previous post showed the work-in-progress of the protected cruiser and gunboat below.

Protected Cruiser

This ship is loosely based on the Russian protected cruiser Boyarin.

The differences are the greatly reduced ship's boats, and the secondary guns are peeking out of the bulwarks on the superstructure rather than sticking out on small sponsons. 

Gunboat

This is the second gunboat made. This one is based on the imperial Russian gunboat Khrabri. 

There were some rearrangements such as repositioning of the bridge from the forecastle to behind the mast, and the number of secondary guns due to size constraints. 

Latest ships on patrol

Destroyers

Destroyers of the time period are pretty generic looking. This is a plus because, barring color scheme, they can fit in with any navy. I guess since they are technically torpedo boat destroyers, their initial emphasis was on destroying torpedo boats and the carrying of torpedoes was secondary. I wanted one that took its torpedo duties seriously. So, I made one patterned after a British WWI destroyer that had twin torpedo tubes. 

I wasn't in the mood to mess with gun shields, so I just added blobs of thick UV resin on the middle part of them and quickly cured. This represents the wider part of the gun. It doesn't even have a flying bridge....lazy builder!

Older model on the left.

Several things I have noticed as I build these ships. Not surprisingly, old photos are a hit or miss, often a miss. Ship plans are far more useful but you are only getting a top view and a profile view. Sometimes, I cannot really tell what is going on, especially with the superstructure and bridge. In a lot of ways, photographs of models are the most useful, especially when paired with plans. I've had a lot of "oh, so that is what this structure looks like" moments. They really helped a lot and my increasing level of detail on these ship is due to using ship models as a source.

Game Board

I did manage to spend a day expanding my hex board. I needed to make new sections and paint the underside of the sea hexes a green. This way, I can flip over the sections to make land. 

Sea

Land

The sea side is more unified in color than the land side of the sections. I experimented a lot with different colored alcohol markers. I avoided acrylic markers except to highlight the edges of the hexes. The hex tiles are a thin wood and I was afraid that the acrylic paint would potentially warp the tiles. I tried different glues to put together the sections and the best seems to be contact cement. Super glue works but the tiles snap off too easily, and the glue from a hot glue gun dries way too fast. I have been doing my gluing in my garage with the door open. It helps with the fumes, though Gorilla Glue makes it in a tube form, so I cap it as soon as I put the bead of glue on the edge of the hex tile. 

I think I have enough hexes to a least get a 3' x 5' board done. I will use any extras to build islands, some of which will have forts on them. 

Gun Shields

 Gun shields are the most ubiquitous means of defense for small caliber guns. They should not be that complicated to model them, and yet I find that they are. My previous posts show examples of how I've tried to make them. I have yet to be happy with the results.  Materials used for the gun shield is one factor. Wood splits and thin cardboard bends in ways that I don't want to. Consistency is another issue. It is difficult to make them all the same size. Once you make them, I find it very difficult to try to shape them to look like something more than a tiny cube. Additionally, it is difficult to drill tiny holes that run true from one end of the material to the other.  

Styrene rods to make shields

The gun shields for the above light cruiser uses 2mm x 2mm styrene rods. First, I drill a hole and then glue the wire in for the gun, then I cut the whole thing off. The result is the gun and its shield ready to go. I mark off the length of the gun using an acrylic paint pen, but once I make several, I line them up to make sure the lengths are reasonably consistent. I would like to have the front of the shield to slope a little, but I have yet to figure out how while keeping them consistent. I discovered I had a package of 2.5mm x 2.5mm rods that I will use for a larger caliber gun. That 0.5mm increase might be just enough to modify the shields.

Experiments in unusual materials

Many years ago, before the widespread use of blogs, there was a web site of a fellow that focused on modern microarmor gaming. I wish I could remember who it was because I attribute my interest in modern armored warfare (pretty much anything post-WWII) to the after action reports on his website. In addition to the time period itself, he also showed that it was possible to modify microarmor. One of the materials that he used was erasers (!?!). He used it because it was a material that was easier to carve than plastic, and it had no grain to deal with. 

I tried using the white vinyl erasers but those are too soft and tear easily. Next up the pink erasures. They are soft, but firmer than the white ones. It is easy to cut into them but they don't tear up, especially when you poke a hole in them to push in a metal wire for the gun. 

As a test, I grabbed some old pencil erasures that have been sitting around at home from my kids' elementary school days. 

You can see on the picture above where I cut out the gun shields. Below the end result before painting:

The lip of the eraser had was curved and beveled at the edge. This gave the shield a more realistic design. It also didn't tear like the white erasure did when I poked a hole in to put the gun in. It was more difficult to be consistent in dimensions when I cut out the shields. Also, I glued them down with superglue gel. I hope it holds. Maybe contact cement will work better.  

I will show the painted results in a later post.

 

New Ships for the New Year

 Two more battleships ready to be painted.

Battleships work in progress

 Finally, the big guns of the Avalonian fleet are starting to take shape. And by big guns, I mean big guns. I am building my impression of the Royal Sovereign-class battleships. They have 12" exposed guns on barbettes. Unfortunately, I used a way too thick 16 gauge floral wire. I should have used the 18 gauge that would have make them less exaggerated. 

The back story is that these are older ships, though not as old as the central battery ships. 

Artistical shot of two Avalonian battleships.
A modern frigate having nothing to do with
this pre-dread university is in the background.

New Project: Pre-Dreadnoughts

 I have hinted several times now that I am diving into a new project. The new project is pre-dreadnought naval warfare set in an ImagiNation world. I will have a future post on the various opponents and fictional-historical background, but first a look at what's being built in the shipyard.

The basis for my hulls and superstructures are various-sized popsicle and coffee stirring sticks.

Here are couple of hulls: 

Generic torpedo boat destroyer hull

Light or Protected Cruiser hull

Many years ago, I built a fleet of US, British, and Japanese WWII ships for gaming. From a time and quality control standpoint, its a lot better to make copies of at least the hulls than to try to carve out each one individually. So, I played around with make molds out of my initial wooden hull.  Back then, there were little options for making molds of hulls. Now there are a lot more mold making choices that are more easy, health and environment friendly, and probably cheaper than back in the 80s. One of which is this transparent material that comes in rectangular sticks. It is listed on Amazon as reusable mold clay, but it has the Japanese name Oyumaru. It softens quickly in hot water. You have to work with it rather quickly but it makes nice push molds that hold a lot of detail and doesn't shrink. They suggest to avoid any casting material that will give off heat as it will remelt the mold, but I have yet to experience that. 

Once I made my mold, I tried an number of different materials to to cast ship hulls. 

From left to right of the above picture is the original wood hull, the next three are green polymer clay, the white one is Milliput, next is from multiple layers of clear UV resin, next is from moldable plastic beads, and the last two are from cheap fast drying two part epoxy clay. The one on the end hasn't been cleaned up yet. 
The winner would be the moldable plastic beads. Like the Oyumaru, they melt in hot water and can be pressed into a mold. HOWEVER, its made of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic is the same stuff that milk jugs are made out of. There is no glue I know of that will stick to the stuff! So, the winner ends up being this two part clay that you can buy at any hardware or home improvement store in the US. You have to work fast, but so long as you press it in well, you get a very good reproduction. It is mushier than Milliput, but that is an advantage as it gets into crevasses better, not to mention its a lot cheaper. Its other advantage is that you can use super glue on it and even though its impregnated with iron, you can drill holes in it. I was surprised how difficult it was to drill a hole in the HDPE plastic. 

Once I made the hulls, I then started building the ships. 

Torpedo boat destroyers with their conning tower and forward gun

Here is the finished but unpainted destroyers. 

I used a combination of wire, thin cardstock, and dowel rods to build them. I ended up using that HDPE plastic hull, but I roughed up its surface a lot, glued things down with the superglue, and then flooded it with the thin UV glue. Fingers crossed that things will hold. 

Here is an early pre-dread battleship:

Battleship in progress. Along side is a destroyer. Its seems that
there is a fire erupting on the dock in the background! I hope
that freighter is not loaded with explosives!

Finished battleship. Now it needs to be painted and based. 

The mighty battleship Curmudgeon leaves port followed by the torpedo boat destroyers Swiftly, Speedily, Quickly, and Hurriedly.

Cheap Game Table Mat Work in Progress

 As I mentioned in my previous post, I am switching gears after suffering painting burn out. It is time to actually play games rather than just paint hoards of figures. The few battles that I have had were on unnaturally colors tables. As cool as those neoprene, giant mouse pads are, they are way too expensive for me. I'd go with felt, but I found that the width dimensions are short and I am no good at sewing. I found these plastic backed table cloths at Walmart for about $5. They are textured but slick. I tested a spot with craft acrylic paint and it sticks and does not seem crack when gently folded.

I started with a big bottle of leaf green craft paint that I had from a previous attempt to make a mat. Unfortunately, I ran out before I was completely done with this one. Guess what? They don't make leaf green anymore. I got the closest thing I could find plus a darker green for a little variation. 

I'm using a wadded up paper towel to apply the paint and rubbing it on. I figured that if I use a brush the paint layer may be too thick and it might be subject to cracking. The paper towel seems to waste some paint but puts down a very thin layer that I go over again when dried. If the decorative pattern peaks through a little, its no big deal.

I'm almost done with it. When its finished, I will make another one in blue for naval games.

Painting in progress. Objects other than the
craft paint bottles holds the table cloth down while I paint.

Its Been Awhile

 My last post was all the way back in August. I have been working on things, but I have not had time to post. Work has really taken up a lot of time as I had a new-ish class that I had to teach. Due to my illness over the summer, I had little time to prep for it. So, it was fly by the seat of my pants. 

Second, I have been involved in my son's school work. This is nothing new, but due to recent changes in the school system, he is now technically in middle school even though he is in sixth grade. A lot more work has been dumped on him and his ADHD does not help. 

Third, after I don't know how many years of no independent research students, I now have two. I have been working closely with them, including taking them back in October to New York to one of my old stomping grounds, the American Museum of Natural History and then two weeks later, to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Cincinnati, OH. I continue to be impressed by their serious attitude toward their work. It really shows in what they have accomplished so far. 

My students and I on the Brooklyn Bridge. 

In front of our poster at the SVP meeting. Very
proud of my students and the hard work they did!

Fourth, pretty much all I have been doing is painting figures for Lion/Dragon Rampant games. I have not felt like blogging about it. 

Besides getting in some painting fantasy figures, I have been dipping my toe in some various other projects:

1. Dungeon adventure. Several of my colleagues have expressed in trying out D&D. Not completely sure that they will fall in love with roll playing so, I put together a one-off adventure. Pretty happy with it. Fingers crossed that its more than one session. 

2. Very generic modern ships. To supplement my various modern campaigns, I have started to put together VERY generic looking modern warships. Being the packrat that I am, I have accumulated a bunch of wooden coffee stirring sticks. These would make nice hulls. There is no plans to be accurate in scale. They will be something like the ships you find in the game Battleship. There are several rules that I might use including Bulldogs Away! among others.

3. 6mm Napoleonics (!). Again, I am buying some to play Black Powder rules. I'm going cheap and painting will be as quick and dirty as possible. Its a long story of why Napoleonic gaming, but that is for a future post. 

That's it. Hopefully, there will be things to post about in the future.  

Fantasy Painting Challenge V: Callie, Female Rogue with Bow, Part 1

I seem to be on a roll with the posts lately! Is it the free time? I didn't know I had any. Best not to question it. 

Anyway, a few months back, my buddy who I have these painting challenges with wanted to do another. I was sort of hesitant, but I agreed so long we didn't have to build any elaborate terrain to go with it.  I got to pick the figure. I settled on Callie, the female rogue with bow.

Unfortunately, she did not come with a stand. Reaper Miniatures are like that. Some do, some don't. They should really mention that on their web site for each product. It has been a slow start, mainly because I couldn't decide what to paint her. I settled on a red outfit with a gray cloak. She's a rogue, not a ranger.

I have not gotten too far with her. the cloak is gray due to the primer. Like a lot of either fantasy or scifi miniatures, there are costume pieces on the figure that I am not sure what they should be painted. In this case her knee and shin guards. Perusing the internet, some folks painted them leather, others metal. I went for metal. I found this base in one of my junk boxes. I wasn't crazy about it, but it did the job. I covered the base with green stuff putty. 

I felt she needed a companion, so I got her a wolf.

Last Father's Day, my son got me a Reaper dire wolf made out of plastic. It is better sculpted than this one, but it is way too big when next to Callie, plus he'd kill me if I painted it and gave it away (bad daddy!).  I didn't have a base that seemed to fit the length and width of the wolf so, I cut one out of this thick polystyrene plastic used for mounting posters. It's thickness matched Callie's base height. This plastic is tough but I can cut it with a utility knife and rounded off the edges with sand paper. The wolf also got green stuff smeared onto the base.

Next up is to paint them and then decide on what to put on the bases. I am thinking of getting some of those fake leaves. H-m-m-m, between the wolf and the leaves, maybe I am making her into a ranger after all.

Quick Follow Up on my Last Post

 In my last post, I grumbled about rebasing. Going thought my collection of fantasy and medieval 15mm figures, some seemed rather awkwardly based in their present state. These were rank-and-file troops that had overly dynamic, action poses. There was a unit of spearmen that seemed wildly swinging (I'm exaggerating here a little) their spears. Based on 15mm deep stands, there were a number of them that risked poking the eyes out of their comrades in the next rank. So, I decided to rebase this unit onto single stands. I can used them for rules that require figures to be on single stands, my skirmish like battles with my son, or for sieges where individual figures would be more appropriate for climbing up ladders or defending the walls. 

Before:

After:

New Project or Crazy Impulse Buy?

 Many, many years ago (late 1980s), I did mini-campaign for my fictional WWII world that pitted the Soviet Union against the UK for a race to take over Iran for its oil resources. It used mainly early war tanks and equipment. I altered the geography such that there was more seaway. That allowed for some naval battles to be fought. I had a map, but its long gone. Also, having read The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater, my brain got all going to recreate that Iran campaign though set even earlier, and expand it geographically include other foreign nations. I have been slowly building up fleets in 1/6000 scale. 

So, I started buying a bunch of 1/600 aircraft for the air combat portion of it. These guys are from Tumbling Dice Miniatures

Hawker Furies

Polikapov I-15

Henschel Hs 123

Martin B-10

The biplanes were a major pain in the arse to put together. Plus, I only got three fuselages for the Hs 123s. I did get the upper wing and even two sets of landing gear, but not the rest of the fourth plane. 

I also got the Martin B-10 bomber. I've always like slightly archaic weapons and the B-10 especially. I need to figure out what rules to use. I might use Wings at War Battle of Britain rules and make up the stats. I might even try Bag the Hun. Jim over at his Jim's Wargames Workbench has a lot of variants for these rules and I might crib some of his stats for the rules. Unlike my modern air gaming, I am less interested in detailed aircraft stats. 

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman part 3

 I am moving along on my part of the challenge. I hope to be done this week. I leave Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting) for the beautiful state of Kansas and I won't be back until them following Saturday or Sunday (weather permitting). It's a road trip to visit some natural history museums and to hopefully visit some friends that are still out there. Renting a car is a LOT cheaper then flying and then renting a car. I hope the bean counters at my college appreciate this. Other than the weather, I am somewhat apprehensive about the drive. I used to do this sort of long distance thing (about 13 hours), but that was when I was young. Anyways, I want to wrap this project up and send it to my friend.

As I said in part 2, there needs to be some sort of scenic piece to go with the figurine. I decided on a statue of some Lizardman deity. My sculpting abilities are crap and it shows, but I figure that monumental sculpture is not a hallmark of Lizardman culture. 

Most of it is made of polymer clay that is slathered over the an aluminum foil armature for the statue and a block of wood for the pedestal. Most of the bas-relief lizard heads were also sculpted from polymer clay, but for a couple of them, I experimented with Green Stuff. The whole thing rests on some foam core board where I removed one side of the paper. That in turn sits on top of a base made of a scrap of vinyl flooring from our first, pre-flood floor. We have lots of that in our garage. With the except of the pedestal to the foam core, everything is glued to each other with E6000 glue. Its strong but it would have melted the foam board. As of right now, I am at the stage where I need to put some ground cover on the base, paint and then add some sort of foliage. Since this is the first time I'm making something like this, I am not going to make it overly ruin-like. I'm heading to Walmart today to pick up a prescription and might see if there are some cheap aquarium plants to use. We had some plants from an old aquarium but when I picked it up, they fell apart. 

Stay tuned for the final installment!

Fantasy Painting Challenge III: Lizardman

 My friend and I decided to do another challenge. We decided we were done with Dwarves for awhile and wanted to do something different. This time its lizardmen. I just got my order from Reaper Minis in the mail so this is an unboxing as they call it out there.

It was very difficult to choose. Reaper has pretty big variety of Lizard folk, including Dragonmen. We weren't really sure what the difference is between Lizardmen and Dragonmen. The only thing I could tell is that Dragonmen have tinier heads and longer necks, as well as more armor. This guy seems pretty cool plus he has a shield that looks like its made out of scales or scutes. 

As a freebie, I got this Reaper Bones Hobbit (?). Usually, they throw in a mystery paint bottle. Maybe this is a promotional item. I won't complain.

No, the eraser wasn't included in the order.

I couldn't resist ordering some paints. I'm really putting the love on Reaper's paints. They are very smooth and cover well. I have been disappointed with Vallejo paints the year or so. I kept getting ones that don't seem to dry no matter how long I shake them, or they "dry" very shiny. Army Painter paints are not bad, but tend to be a little on the thick side. Citadel paints are nice, but rather expensive. Plus it seems they are making a whole bunch of specialty paints whose colors I would prefer in their base line.

I'm pretty excited to start this new challenge. I already know the colors that I am going to use to paint it. It should be a good one!

Testing a New Method of Flight Stand

 I dread helicopter models for two reasons. First, they are a pain to put together. They always have "fiddly bits" as they say across the Pond that drive me nuts. This is more of a problem with 1/300 models than 1/600 but I have a hard time attaching those clear plastic disks that represent spinning rotors at that scale. Second, attaching a magnet to the bottom of the model is a pain, particularly on 1/600 models. It is bad enough that those rare earth magnets do not stick well, but the helicopter models tend to be either too narrow, and/or have landing gear that interferes with a good attachment. Some time ago, I was grumbling about this in one of my posts (I grumble a lot). Pahoota of The Solipsist Gaming blog recommended using staples as a bridge between the aircraft and the magnetic stand. So, I tried his suggestion:

1/600 Hind with staple stand bridge

 I broke off a block of four staples from a larger block. They are fused together, but I needed to be careful as it is easy to separate one from the rest. It was a little too long to use as is, so I carefully bent them and then cut off the bent piece. Sorry, I don't have a picture to show what I mean but you can see on the part of the staple that is holding onto the magnet where I cut it. I then glued one side to the helicopter with the other end going onto the magnet. So far, it seems to work ok. One advantage of this is that I can paint the helicopter while holding the stand rather than the model. I've been using staples for paper for 1/600 helicopters but I might try heavy-duty staples for 1/300 helicopters. I think it will also work well for very small aircraft. I recently got some 1/600 Pilatus PC-9s, which at that size can pass for either a Super Tucano or an AT-6B. They have very thin fuselages, so the staple bridge might work better than even a narrow cylindrical magnet.