Chickasaw Fort WIP 3

The fort or palisade or whatever you want to call it is moving toward it's terminal phases.

I started by painting the palings Ceramcoat brown-gray and then washing them with Ceramcoat Walnut.  That made them look pretty weathered, maybe a little too weathered, and also gave the color just a little more depth.  I also used the Walnut wash over the built up areas to provide some shading to the earthen areas.

 After that it was patiently putting down the Woodland Scenics turf.  It's really tempting to rush through this, but that just creates holes in your work.  I use a big brush to apply Woodland Scenics cement and then just scatter it over the glue and try to recover whatever is left over.  Then I let it sit for 15 minutes before moving on to the next area.  When it's all applied, I Dullcoat it to more effectively hold it in place.

 Next, it's on to the finishing landscape pieces.

The Indian Stockade: WIP

It's great, I'm here at school on deadline on a Friday night, desperately hoping I'll get home in time to see the season premier of Portlandia.  Some things are more important than others. In between looking at stories, and page designs I decided to amuse myself by working on my next terrain project, the Chickasaw stockade.

As you can see from the illustration, the Chickasaw stockade is not huge, and is nothing like we see on the whites building on the frontier.  No bastions, firing platforms or interior buildings. In an Indian palisade, the palings simply are not flush together.  A gap is left between the timbers to allow fire. There's not a gate; entering and exiting  is done by a narrow opening.  My objective is to provide a simple fortification warriors can use to defend their village and food source, or send their families for safety.  And I want to scratch build it.

There is a commercial Indian palisade available from Acheson Creations. It's not even terribly expensive, and looks pretty nice, but I've decided to make it myself. 

I decided on dimensions of 12" X 6" with rounded corners.  I decided to make the palings two inches tall from 1/8" craft dowels I bought at Michaels.

Step One:  I cut the dowels on my little scroll saw, shattering a few along the way.  My bad.  After cutting the dowels into two inch lengths. I traced out the outline of the palisade. 

The dowels are sanded to flatten one end and an irregular peaked shape is created on the the other end

A hole is drilled in the flat end and a hunk of .032" brass wire is glued into the hole

 Step Two: I decided the best way to fix the palings into the plywood was to put a pin into them and glue them into the holes.  I sanded one end down flat and tried to remember to round off the top edge or to make a point; I didn't want them to appear too uniform.  I started by using a pin vise to drill the hole because I was afraid using a drill might split the dowel.  After taking forever and wearing out my hand, I switched over to my Dremel tool and it worked fine. I chose .032" brass wire for the pins and I began cutting it to length.  Actually, to make it easy, I inserted the brass rod into the hole and cut the protruding rod to the desired length, and glued it in with CA glue.

I started gluing the palings into the holes in the plywood and immediately discovered I'd need to skip some of the holes if the palings were to have enough room and leave sufficient gaps. 

One view of the Chickasaw fort under construction.  The palisade doesn't have a gate.  The entrance is open but protected by fire from the overlapping curved wall.

The palings don't fit flush and provide some fire openings between palings, yet offer some protection to defenders including women and children seeking shelter from an attacker.  The holes for the palings are clearly visible.

The brass wire offers some advantage.  It fits snugly in the holes, and can be bent a bit to get the palings perpendicular.

A cornfield wrap up

A frontal look, on my dining room table, of cornfield with 28mm infantry and a Hovels log cabin in background.

More of a top view.  The cornfield is 10 bases X 5 bases, 40mm square.

Another comparison shot of the cornfields with 28mm Mexican Presidial cavalry

I've made all the cornfields I have bases for, but would still like to make more.  I may even resort to something other 40mm square. Or I could just buy more, but I'm getting cheap in my old age.   I feel good about these. 

I actually have a bit more bases than I've shown.  Total of 64 bases.  The cornfield pictured is 15" X 7 1/2 "

Mediterranean Galleys WIP

One of the ship types I have to produce for my cog project is some 14th century Mediterranean galleys.  The French hired galleys and crews from the Genoese and the Castilians, so it's only right that I have a few in my collection.  Three models are necessary for Sluys, so I made six, hoping might get three usable ones.

Found this picture in Fighting Techiniques of the Medieval World by Matthew Bennett, Kelley DeVries and others.  Single square rigged sail, but I couldn't quite accept the low yard.  Why bother with a strange teeny, tiny sail?

I started with this picture of a 14th century Venetian galley and did the best I could.  I cut 1 1/2"  hulls from 3/8" by 1/8" thickness basswood, and cut the bow into a point.  I added a little forward and aft superstructure and followed up with lots of sanding.  Then I drilled holes for steel wire and voila, we have the unfinished product.  They will look anything but perfect, but I think they'll do.  I'll post the finished product when I'm done

Fairly close up shot.  As you can see, nothing special.

The lot of them definitely look better at a distance.

Cogs: Work in Progress

After reading over David Manley's comments, and taking a look at my 28mm cogs, he is correct, the fighting platforms should be reversed.  Too late for these fellows.  I like to call them my block 10 cogs.  A step beyond my prototype, but with improvements to be made on future models. 

I'll be painting the vessels and gluing the  sails tonight.  I'll have to see if the sails are worth the trouble.  At least the sails should distract the viewer from the silly castle problems.

 Also on the learning curve, the large cogs seem too long and thin at 2" X 3/4".   The small cogs seem too tiny at 1"  Don't quite know whether I should just call a do-over on these or not.  I did cut some larger hulls at 2" X 1" which seem more reasonable.

The video is just kind of silly, a lot of me talking and not showing much in a very useful way I'm afraid.  Yes, my den is very messy-you don't even see the worst of it.  Final update on the block 10 cogs soon. 

The Bug that bites you.

Painting figures and working on projects are hard work.  It takes money, time, dealing with a certain amount of tedium and the mental toughness to persevere a project through to completion.  I don't have all that.  I have to "walk away" from what I'm working on from time to time just keep moving forward on my painting goals--which is always to paint a lot.

 I promised myself no new projects.  I lied. Sort of.  One of the big deterrents to taking on new projects is cost.  I rattled on a couple of weeks ago about cog wars.  I truly believe I've found scratchbuilding, in this case, to be the antidote to the cost of taking on this project.  Deadline also broke my concentration on the AWI unit I was working on, and yesterday, my first day of not not working on the paper  in over a week, imbued me with enough energy to focus my attention on the mass production of English cogs for the Hundred Years War.

 Here is my improved prototype.  I've added a sternpost and a small bowsprit, as well as a crow's nest for the mast top.  The stern post is just a chunk of flat toothpick.  The bowsprit a bit of brass wire, and the crow's nest a simple bead.  Given the scale I think they all work.  The production models will be a bit different.  The forecastle will be smaller at Daveshoe's suggestion.  The mast will be the same height, but the yard will be raised higher and will be thicker-brass wire the same thickness as the bowsprit.  I'm at sea about sails (pun intended.)  I will probably try to determine if it is worth the effort. 

If I can retain some momentum on this I'd like to finish 15ish vessels this week to show off at Drumbeat on the 29th.  Dave and I are hosting at an Airwar C 21 game, and I've agreed to pull my Lewis and Clark project out of the box and host a game using the Brother Against Brother rules.

Scratchbuilding Cogs

What's a cog?  No not those, you've been watching too many episodes of the Jetsons.  Cogs were medieval warships, as ungainly as they sound.  Typically they were the simple clinker built merchant vessels planked over front and rear with raised fighting platforms.  Some were big--120 tons--some were small--30 tons--all were tubs.  Big tubs, small tubs, medium sized tubs.  They were difficult to manage in any kind of weather or rough seas.  It could take months or more simply to cross the English Channel.

In any case, after Lepanto and the acquisition of David Manley's medieval naval rules I've been trying to figure out how to acquire enough cogs to game with.  NavWar makes cogs, but they're NavWar, and without pictures to look at I'm skeptical .  Outpost miniatures makes some really nice looking cogs but at three pounds a pop and 50% shipping (!!!!) it doesn't seem feasible to put together a large fleet. Daveshoe and I were mulling this over yesterday and we discussed sizes and building materials.

Today I went to Michaels while out on my errands and picked up some bass wood. The   I purchased enough to make quite a few hulls and a fair number of castles and set to cutting the wood I'd need.  this is my prototype miniatures.  A simple tubby hull 1 1/2 inches X 3/4 inch X 1/4 inch.  I made the base for the castle 3/4" X 3/8"X 1/8" trapezoid.  I cut 1/4" very thin plasticard and cut crenelations in it to represent.  Plastic pole mast with steel wire yard.  Voila.  It probably took me an hour to make, but it would be very easy to mass produce and make eight in an hour using my Dremel tool. 

Interested in your feedback.  Considering I would like about a hundred of these, do you think they're workable?

Trenches Full of Figures

Just a quick entry to follow up my last. These are some quick photos of the finished trenches with figures. My intent was to provide the sense of "hey these are trenches!" on the cheap. I think they serve my purpose.

The two close ups are of the MacKenzie-Papineau battalion of the International Brigades. The shot of three trenches shows the Mac-Paps, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion on a regular Republican battalion.

They seem just right to me.

Entrenchments on the cheap

When I was a kid growing up I had some of the cool Who, Why Wonderbooks on various topics. I had one on rockets, another on dinosaurs, but my favorite was on World War II (of course.) The books were written for eight year olds with lots of pictures, big topic headers and writing easy enough for wee folk to read. My book mentioned the Spanish Civil War as a practice ground for WWII.

That was sort of true with more battlefield movement through the widespread use of tanks and aircraft. However there was also more than a little use of entrenchments. Though the war did not become the bloody stalemate of the Great War, no Spanish Civil War battlefield should be without trenches.

For the last year I've been promising myself some ways to come up with entrenchments. I've looked a the JR entrenchments. They are very nice and not super expensive. They have the advantage of being very flexible and expandable, but at $25 for eighteen inches of front, it was more than I wanted to spend. Company B has a real nice set of entrenchments, with great detail, though probably more for 28mm than my 15's, and pretty pricey.

No I decided I could do this myself. I am scratch building them. True confession--I hate making terrain. I'm not imaginative. I'm not good at it. It wastes valuable painting time. But in my new year of frugal gaming, it was the only way I was going to justify entrenchments for my 15mm battlefield.

I started with a simple trip to Michaels for 12" X 4" plywood and strips of basswood. The plywood was heavy enough to make a good base and thick enough not to warp. The basswood was dense enough not splinter when being cut.

I started by designing the dimensions of the entrenchment. I wanted something that could easily bear an 11 stand battalion of infantry on 1 X 1 bases, so I designed single battalion entrenchments with refused flanks. Orwell discusses these in Homage to Catalonia.

I drilled holes at the corners of each turn to sink corner posts. I also sank a post in the center (sort of) of each long straight section. I just used 3/16 " mini dowels, also available at Michaels.

Step three was to put together a framework for the trenches. No entrenchment for the game table quite looks like it's supposed to--trenches sunk into the ground. They have to fool the observer into believing the structure is a trench, even though it's above table level. I cut basswood into strips, and stacked them three high. Most entrenchments used some kind of timber to provide strength and structure to the fieldwork, so I wanted timberlike material that looked plausible. I assembled the structure with CA glue-that seemed to do the trick.

The hardest choice to make was the material to simulate the earth outside the trench structure. I've made similar earthworks before only to be disappointed when the base warped. I considered three substances. First was Celluclay, which is a form of papier mache. It looks earthiest, I've used it before, and I have some. However, it takes too long to dry, and the worst warping I've ever gotten in my efforts is with this stuff. Too wet. I also considered wood putty. Doug Hamm uses this for his basing and his stuff looks great. But Mark Waddington suggested modeling paste by Liquitex. It's an acrylic compound, and I've had lots of success with other Liquitex products. They dry fast, I can stir paint right in with the paste. So I tried that. I applied it with some artists tools and sprinkled some ballast and turf from Woodland Scenics over the top and voila.

I figured I paid about $12 for the three unit sized entrenchments. I finished three last night and hope to do three more today.