BeeSPutty

Today's mail-order purchase, BeeSPutty:

It's a polymer clay, but sculpts more like a wax than a clay. What does that mean? According to those in the know, you do more carving rather than with regular sculpting clay. It has more "memory" than other modelling materials like Greenstuff. It is also sticky, which means you can affix pieces onto each other better than with conventional clay.

There are some guys on the Facebook 15mm fantasy group who are using it to make figures. Awhile back, I started sculpting faces onto Splintered Light Miniatures' armored ogres. I thought this might do a more detailed job than polymer clay.

Its a lot more expensive ($10 for a 3.5 oz. container) than a comparable amount of polymer clay, and so far the only place in the US where you can buy it is from Bombshell Miniatures.

I bought two containers, one for me, and one for my daughter who has really gotten into making charms out of polymer clay. She has pretty much absconded with my polymer clay. I thought this would be fun for her to try out.

1/285 Scale Saab 105 and Scratch-Built Gun Pods

It took over a month for me to get it, but I finally got my Shapeways order. I'm not going into the ugly details on how many trips it took to the post office, the time spent both on the internet and on the phone to track down the correct shipping number, but for the price you have to pay, you would think express mail would be faster and smoother than good old US mail. 

Among my purchases were two Saab 105 trainers, one of which is shown below:

Saab 105

They were a pain to separate as they have a pretty thick sprue attaching the two planes. Fortunately, the designer put the sprue at the two plane's bellies. I managed to saw them apart with a razor saw without any damage. As you can see, the plane is blue,but that is a superficial layer of plastic. When I cut the sprue off, the plastic below it is white. I'm not sure what the purpose of the outer blue layer is. The surface is pretty frosty, but I think using gesso or Vallejo's brush-on primer might smooth out some of the graininess. 

Why the Saab 105? If you have not figured it out by now, I like obscure weaponry. There were several variants that were modified for ground attack. Although I can't find the source again, I though I read somewhere that some were used during the various wars in the Congo. The model does have hard points. What the 105 doesn't have are built-in guns. Enter the gun pods....

Gun pods. Ruler is scaled for 1/285

These guys are probably the toughest scratch builds I've made so far...probably tougher than the light machine gun I made that cost me a drop of blood. They are made of styrene rods of 2.0mm diameter that I shaped using an emery board and my little chopper. The hardest part was the gun.  The gun is a very thin wire. I bore a hole in the front end of the pod using a small needle that I heated up with a candle flame (the soot is why parts are black and gray). The wire was glued in with CA-glue and it was very tricky trying to get the wire to be vertically and horizontally true. I'm not sure how successful I was. Once secure, I snipped off most of the wire with one of my older sprue cutters. 

They don't represent any specific, real life gun pods. They are definitely not perfect, but once glued to a hard point and painted, they will look ok. I have plenty other ordinance to mount on my Saab 105s like laser-guided bombs, and rocket pods are pretty easy to make.

I'll get pictures up of the planes when finished. 

More Federal Republic of Gambusia AFVs

I could have sworn I posted these, but I guess I have not.

The Federal Republic of Gambusia (FRG) has an infantry battalion of made up of more modern APCs than old Saracens. It consists of Canadian 6-wheeled Cougars and Grizzlies. The Cougars have been modified into fire support vehicles and ATGM carriers.

I used the turret from a Scotia-Grendel Stingray light tank for the FSV. The ATGM were scratch built. Unfortunately, they all came out a little different on those. This is the best of them. These were my first conversions that I made when I plunged into modern gaming and I am quite happy with them.

Bovatopia Campaign: Lavonian Units Painted and Based

I've had most of these done for awhile now. The most recent to be finished are the infantry, which for me, is the toughest to do in 1/600 scale. Lavonia is the main opponent to Bovatopia. Although it sounds like a small central European country, there is an actual Lavonia. Its a small town in northern Georgia (as in Georgia, USA; not the Georgia south of Russia) just over the border with South Carolina. We pass by it whenever we are going to my daughter's tennis tournaments in Atlanta.

Leopard M1A1

Polish Rosomak wheeled IVF

Brazilian EE-9 Cascavel AC

Lavonian infantry with supporting Milan ATGM teams

LEGO Kirk

I got this kit as a Christmas gift. I just got around to putting it together:

Battle Valor Dwarves

Lately, I've been on a fantasy mini painting kick. You can only get so creative with 3mm figures. I also decided that I want to whittle down my boxes of unpainted fantasy miniatures.  I've previously showed off my work on some other Battle Valor figures, including the dwarf hero riding a bear. Here are some dwarves with hammers and axes. I even broke out the static grass applicator, which as usual, did a less than satisfying job.

15mm Triceratops

In today's mail, I got from Battle Valor Games 15mm model of a triceratops with howdah and orc (orcian) crew: 

You get a two-piece triceratops that consists of head and body, a howdah, and three orcs.

The body is made of resin. There is some flash, but not overwhelming. One of two horns that stick out of the anterior of the body did not get completely cast due to a bubble. I think a little two-part putty will take of that. I didn't notice any other bubbles.

One thing that will need work on is the feet. The right front foot has a big chunk of resin stuck on the bottom:

I will probably have to use a razor saw to get that off. 

The head is cast in metal:

Sorry about the poor picture, but the metal is very shiny. No seam lines are on it.

The hodah is also of metal:

It is cast in such a way that it will fit only in one spot on the back of the triceratops. 

Last, but not least are the orcs:

I'm the least happy with these. First, they don't seem to have the detail compared to other Battle Valor miniatures that I have purchased. Second, they don't really fit with my idea of what an orc looks like. I guess it's all personal preference, but I actually prefer the more Games Workshop, cartoony-looking orcs. I guess I was inspired by the Hildebrandt brothers artwork that they did for their Lord of the Rings calendars. These calendars came out in the 1970s right when I was reading LotR (probably for the third or fourth time):

These Battle Valor guys are what I would call monkey orcs. I have some Essex 15mm orcs that are in the same vane. Instead of orcs, I might either use this triceratops for either barbarians, or more likely my lizardman army.